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MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


oF BRITISH REGISTER 


LITERATURE, SCIENCES, AND THE BELLES-LETTRES. 


. Neo Series, ° 


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VOL. VLPRESENTED 
= 8 DEC 1949 


LONDON: 
_ PUBLISHED BY GEO. B. WHITTAKER, AVE-MARIA LANE. 


1828. 


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THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


Neo Series, 


Vou. VI.] JULY, 1828. [No. 31. 


MEDITATIONS ON MOUNTAINS. 


Part Second—Aneus GILCHRIST- 


WELL, what was your entertainment, and how did you sleep, in the 
turf castle under the coppice? Charming ;—and you care not though 
there were not a city or a town on the face of the earth. In these, all is 
toil; amusement is labour, and pleasure itself is fatigue. Is it in 
private?—there you must keep up your dignity—must sink the man, 
in order to exhibit the statue. With your own sex, you must cram and 
ill till you are in a fever ; stupify yourself with cigars or opium ; 
7p into a disturbed and painful sleep ; and, when you have wearied 


t hold light colloquy about forms and feet, the fascinations of 
shes of hair, and tatters of taffety; or be in ecstasies when some 
_ dowdy lass macadamizes the King’s English, misplaces all the fragments, 
and, as she slides from /’ Allegro of her own charms and conquests to 
il Penseroso of the more sadly successful ones of her cousin Jane, you are 
by turns choked with dust and covered with mud, worse than if you 
re in the midst of that chef-d’euvre of the great man of mud, New 
ridge-street, Blackfriars ;—old, you must make your election between 
the notable and the bas bleu, and have your mind stored with the bitter 
of dentition, or the sweets of poesy, according as the “ link-boy god” 
may or may not have'crossed the path of your charmed and charming 
confabulatrix. Escape you upon the water >—Faugh! the Thames runs 
coal-tar and sopers’-waste ; the oar splashes you with oil, or the wheel 
of the steam-boat stirs you up a hell-broth, worse than weird sister ever 
messed together for the purpose of stenching the devil out of his spiritual 
invisibility, and giving him a visible, tangible, and credible shape. 
M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 31. B 


2 Meditations on Mountains. [Juuy, 
Then the reaches and the retchings :—O how catching example is! and 
how the loves leap away across the waves—no, the ripple—as that erst 
lovely creature hangs over the gunwale, wan and sickly, as if she were 
seen through the flame and smoke of sulphur, and lets all on board know 
that—she is no chameleon. When you land, what isit? Do you get the 
pure atmosphere? No such thing; for just as you have ensconced 
yourself in the inmost parlour, and are throwing up the casement to 
catch the odour of a rose that hangs temptingly by, a juvenile Jew— 
gentleman for the day, but, at other times, vender of treasure lrove, in 
the shape of sealskin-caps—snaps your flower from the stem, and 
envelops you in the foul cloud of his filthy cigar and filthier breath. 
This goes to every cranny and crevice of your inner man, and so para- 
lyzes every cavity, and tube, and nerve, that you lose all relish for the 
only thing that you can get—eating and drinking. Then the little man 
with the cadaverous face, the long, hooked nose, with the vulgar point, 
and the abominably prurient septum, worries you to death upon the effect 
that the massacre of all the Christians in Constantinople, or the final 
overthrow of the Ottoman empire, may have upon the price of Chilian 
bonds, or of shares in the Thames Tunnel ; and the waddling mountain 
of purpled grease, as he shovels load after load of white-bait down his 
cesophagus—or, rather, his Bosphorus—wastes all the transient remains 
of his breath in muttered and mingled curse and lamentation at the 
state of total misery and starvation into which this once fat and flourish- 
ing country has unhappily fallen—since the war was at an end, and an 
honest man could not turn a penny for a contract that cost him nothing 
but his vote. Disgusted with a day’s “ pleasuring,” you wend your 
way home, eschewing the water, and preferring the thick and burning 
whirlwind of the dust-enveloped coach ; but, in the whole chaos, there 
is not a point upon which the eye can light with pleasure, or the mind 
dwell with satisfaction. 

Walk you forth into the moral menagerie ; visit you the lions of the 
age, or of the season—and you fare never a bit the better. They, no 


doubt, consume your time and your life—the latter faster, far faster, YN ‘ 


you are haply aware of ; but the only pleasure that they give you isthe ~~ 


your ribs are punched, your shins kicked, your clothes torn, your pocket 
emptied, and your lungs invaded by the most offensive malaria, that 
comes reeking from the “ rotten fens” of ruined reputation and stagnant 
health. Even with the keenest wind that blows, those places are more 
offensive and fell than the Maremma of Tuscany and the Campagna ; 


pleasure of being a little nearer your grave. Go you to the Y 3 


but then, when the dog-star brings the depth of fashionable winter, and — 


the fires of earth combine with the fervour of the air, they are the 
very “ Grotto del Cani:” even a dog could not live in them. And what 


have you in return for ali this? The classic song of Germany—quavers, - 


whipped up into syllabubs—crotchets, pulverized to dust; and you marvel 
at it, as a man of real literature marvels at a German commentary of ten 
volumes, folio, upon ten pages of text. It puts one in mind of foul 
weather : first, a growl or two of the thunder ; and then, patter, patter, 
comes the hail—till, in the midst of your physical broiling, your spirits 
run cold as the ice-brook. Sontag, “ und alle Tag,” let them gash and 
mangle the body of music as much as ever they please; but, O, for 
heaven’s sake !—of which music is the charm—kill not, mangle not, the 


7 


eg 


a 
: 
d 
4 


1828. ] Meditations-on Mountains. 3 


soul! Do have a little feeling, for the sake of those whose hearts have 
not yet evaporated off by their ears, and left nothing but a hollow shell, 
in which idle and untouching sounds may rattle and reverberate, and 
mere din assume the name and usurp the throne of delight. 

_ The exhibition-shops, again?—Bah! An angel made out ofa spoiled 
child—a goddess out of a very vixen—and the effigies of the most vene- 
rably-wigged wisdom in the land, literally converted into a sign-board— 
speaking as plainly as if in the largest letters that ever lied— 


“« If you can afford the price, 
I paints your effigies so nice.” 


Even the senate-houses, how dull and disagreeable they are, after the 
; weather is such as to exact the forfeiture of the pound of flesh from every 
one who launches and loses his argosy on the sea of politics. 
4 By day or by night—in the world, or in your own chamber—all is 
pain and exhaustion ; and, unless it be a tombstone, which records the 
death of one just at your own age, there is not an object within the city 
__ upon which you can look with any satisfaction and hope. 

How different are your feelings in the turf castle! It is so simple, so 
rustic, that it harmonizes with the situation, and looks a thing of nature 
and growth as much as any of the rest. The sun had sunk behind the 
clump of trees, as you approached it ; but his last level beam found its 

: way to the single-glazed pane in the structure, and gave you a more 
glorious welcome than the most gaudy lamp at the portal of nobility. 
‘Then there was no surly and sotted porter to take your card and the 
; measure of your quality, and “ pass the word,’ as you passed mute 
through the gaping, or, if they liked not your grade or your bearing, 
the grinning and deriding menials. To a man whose mind will not bend 
to that degradation, by which the mansion of a man that is great only in 
his greatness must be approached, and sometimes is acquired, there is 
nothing more offensive than the gape of those beef-eating trappings that 
have “ two bodies apiece, and not one mind to the dozen ;” and, there- 

re, the absence of them makes you feel toward the cottage that glow 
the heart with which its master comes forth to meet you. The cup of 
ae is in his hand ; and when he and you have once put the same 
* chalice of the fragrant juniper to your lips, you are sworn brothers, 
_ and he a be your protector to the verge of life, even though his occu- 
pation should be rapine and plunder. Of that you have no reason now 
to be afraid in this country ; for, since the great men were pensioned into 

eace, and gave over worrying one another, vice has fled from the moun- 
; and Angus Gilchrist, into whose hand you are now returning 
up, has far more of the real saint in him than a hundred of the old 
ctures or modern moveables. 

nstinctively you sit down, side by side, on the settle of sods beside 
the little porch ; and, after your walk—even before it—the surface of 
moss and wild thyme feels softer and more grateful than the ottoman 
of down and velvet in the most luxurious saloon. Rely upon it, that, 
let man make for his enjoyment what he will, Nature has something 
better, if he would but find it out. 

Many are his questions—of you, of your residence, your journey, your 
business, the business of the world ; and you are apt to be astonished at 
the shrewdness and pertinence of his remarks, and the power that he has 


pCa 


4 Meditations on Mountains. [ Jury, 


over you in concatenation and reasoning, while you are so much superior 
to him in facts. But though to you it may seem singular, the cause is 
by no means either deep or unnatural. We men of the town have a world 
before us every day, and a new one the next ; and before we have had 
time to think of one object, a hundred new ones are assailing us on all 
quarters. We cannot, therefore, think, if we would; and, as we have 
occupation and excitement without thought, the will in us soon dies ; 
and if there were no other proof of existence save the “ cogito’’ of 
Descartes, none of us would be able to establish the fact of our being. 

While Angus is getting his lesson, and turning that which with you 
is mere memory into rude philosophy, his better half is adding the 
stranger’s share and the stranger’s dainty to the evening. A youth of 
fourteen or fifteen, of short stature, but firm and well-built, with his 
bare feet on the sward, and his storm-bleached hair about his ears, shoots 
past you with the light and bounding step ofa fawn ; and, with a rude 
fishing apparatus, begins to thrash the stream just where it takes its 
first eddy and ripple, after leaving the lake. Short space is he gone, ere 
he again returns with a dozen of excellent trout, as the reward o* his 
skill; and, pulling his top-lock to the stranger, with that half-inquiring, 
half-askance air, which is the indication of talent in a rustic of middle 
boyhood, Donald glides into the house, to add the produce of his sport 
to the supper store ; and then he is off like lightning, to aid in the fold- 
ing of the herds and flocks. 

The younger branches of the family have heard the glad tidings that 
there is a stranger; and they come to take you with all the wariness of 
a besieging army. The first parallel is in the midst of the trees, and 
each fires its observation and wonder from behind one which shall 
cover it from your notice. You are engaged in answering the queries, 
and wondering at the inferences of the father ; you do not, therefore, 
** open your fire” at all, which, at this stage of the attack, would in all 
probability drive the assailants away. Emboldened, they run their 
second parallel at the very foremost of the trees ; and, before they have 
been long there, little Angus, who is his father’s favourite, and spoken gt, x 
to be made a doctor, because he is the seventh son, boldly appears upon 
the glacis of the sward, and anon takes a position on the other side of — 
his father. The “ colley dog” comes also, and, after “the usual com- * 
pliments” to his master, lays his rough nose on your lap, wagging his 
tail, and offering to shake hands. Then the rank of the children closes 3 & 
in; and, though they still keep at a respectful distance, they have notin 
their air much of that sheepishness which you would expect in so lonely — 
and isolated a situation. ee! 

The arrival of the faithful dog is a signal that the cows and ewes are — 
in the milking-pens; and Angus Gilchrist, with some of the pride of 
«© a man of substance,” and an apology for the trouble he gives you (he _ 
has no idea that, within reascnable hours, any man could be tired with 
walking), invites you to walk with him to the evening survey; and, 
though your joints may be a little stiff, you cannot refuse. You 
make way by the little path which winds among the birches, as the 
masses of stone will allow it; and, as the dew has now began to fall, the 
canopy over you is delightfully fragrant. There are no nightingales or 
even linnets in such situations; but the heath-cock raises his voice on 
the height, and is answered by the bittern from the hollow; yet the 


ms 


1828.) Meditations on Mountains. 5 


sounds of both are distant and low. Upon the night air, however, there 
comes a sound, clear, sweet, and unbroken, without one shake of art, 
or trill of ornament, and with no accompaniment save the echo of mead 
or of rock, according as the pitch and volume of the note suits the rever- 
beration of the one or the other :— 


“ Up among yon cliffy rocks, 

Sweetly sings the rising echo, 

To the maid that tends the goats, 
ee o'er her native notes. 

Hark! she sings,—young Sandy’s kind ; 
An’ he’s promised ay to lo’e me.” 


The sound comes from the ewe-pen under the cliff; you have it just as 

nature makes it—unfit for manufactured ears, of course; but true to 

youth, innocence, and love ; and though he be so concealed as that he 

cannot be seen by Mr. Gilchrist, Sandy, the betrothed of the lively Jane, 
listens and loses his heart more and more to the lay. 

Hark again! Another voice from the other hand, more soft and 
mellow—it comes moaning, as though the true love of the singer lay 
expiring at her feet, and she were essaying to soften the flinty heart of 
the angel of death :— 

“ T’ve heard a lilting at our eve’s milking, 

Lasses a lilting before break o’ day ; = 
But now there is moaning in ilka green loaning : 

The flowers of the forest are wended away.” 


That is Morag Douglas, with the raven hair and the dark blue eye, 
who used to be the most lively lass in the whole district ; but her lover 
perished last winter in attempting to ford the river amid the flood and 
ice-brash of a thaw; and poor Morag has ever since been the true 
descendant of her clan, “ Douglas of the bleeding heart.” 

You have, however, seen the stock of the mountain grazier—at least 
the home portion of them; they are abundant and choice; and that 

messenger comes to announce supper. The cloth is laid in the best 
- yoom—a modern addition to the rear of the house, and far better than 
te front you would have expected ; the cloth is white as snow, 
d 


and the feast is plentiful. Trout, fresh from the river, and simply 
_broiled—its best dressing, stewed mutton, broiled chickens, and goat 
ham, with (though it has been kept waiting him for a week) the stranger’s 
loaf of wheaten bread. The smell of the viands is savoury, and your 
appetite is keen ; you, therefore, in spite of its solemnity, and your own 
politeness, inwardly grumble at the length of Angus Gilchrist’s grace, 
__ which contains certainly more varied matter, and nearly as many words 
as one of your fashionable sermons. 

The party consists of only four persons, though the house contains a 
little colony, who all mess together except upon great occasions, such as 
that produced by your presence. Mrs. Gilchrist, though plain and 
matron-like, has an air of superiority—a feeling of her own dignity about 
her, which, even though nobody should tell you, would lead you to sup- 
pose that she is the daughter of a proprietor or laird ; that, in spite of 
their pride, she would, and did, have Angus Gilchrist ; and that she 
blesses herself at the having, as also do her family, since they found out 
how very thriving a man he has become. You are seated on her right ; and 


6 Meditations on Mountains. [Juny, 


but that she presses her cheer upon you with more earnestness and 
repetition than you are accustomed to, she acts the lady, or rather she is 
the lady, without any acting at all. On her left sits a thin young man, 
with a look wavering between bashfulness and confidence. He goes by 
the name of the master ; is a student in divinity ; and, during the long 
vacation of his college, acts as tutor to the boys that you have already 
seen. There is a respect for the learning and occupation of the master 
which are probably new to you; and Mrs. Gilchrist considers that she is 
paying attention to the interests of her children, when she shews kind- 
ness to the young man to whom the formation of their minds is entrusted. 
Gilchrist himself is not a man of many words; but those that he does 
make use of are to the purpose; and though “the master” does not 
obtrude his lore upon you, he shews that consciousness of its possession 
and its worth, which is so becoming, and even promising, at his years. 

After supper, the whole family assemble, the “ bigh ha’ bible” is taken 
out of its goat-skin case, and the simple people perform their nightly 
devotion to their Maker, with an earnestness in which you cannot trace 
either bigotry or fanaticism. Men and ages differ in their customs and 
opinions ; but the man who would not feel pleasure in witnessing the 
piety of such a family as this, performed in the wilderness, and with no 
view to gain the approbation of men, would not have very strong claims 
to rank as the ornament of any age. 

The devotions being ended, the domestics, and such of the young 
people as are able to keep awake during the service, retire to their 
repose, while the mistress of the house produces the favourite bowl, 
which is kept sacred for family events and instances of hospitality ; and 
by its appearance you may judge that you are a favourite of the first 
class—for had you been one of the second, the jug, of less honour and 
smaller dimensions, would have been substituted: 

Conscious of having discharged his duty to God and man according to 
the best of his knowledge and ability, Angus Gilchrist sets himself to 
the mixing of his bowl of punch with a science and a glee, which the 
former gravity of the man would not have led you to expect; and, as 
the glass circulates, license of omission being given to “the master,” both 
on account of his youth and his profession, Angus Gilchrist gradually _ 
uncoils and comes out ; and you discover why “the fair maid of Moulin- __ 
dervan” should have adhered to her choice of him in spite of the proud 
hostility of her kinsfolks. Under all his steadiness in the conducting of 
his business, under all his regularity in his devotion, Angus Gilchrist — 
was (and why should he not be?) what is usually called a glorious fel- 
low. He loved his friend, and could afford to entertain him ; his glass, 
and. well could he stand it ; his joke, and he could give it point; and 
his story, and he could tell it with exquisite humour or deep pathos, 
according to the tenor of the incidents. Those who have not seen pru- — 
dence and good sense united to a warm heart and a glowing imagination é ‘f 


—those who have been in the habit of mistaking hypocrisy, which turns 
human life into gloom, for religion, which makes it all sunshine—those 
who, ignorant of the true spirit of religion, are foolish enough to sup- 
pose that a proper feeling of the bounty of the Creator, and a proper 
reverence for his power and gratitude for his goodness, should make men ‘ 
enjoy with less zest the good things which he gives, or display in a less 

attractive form the powers which he implants—may lose their senses in 


i 3 aie 
Sa Ss = 


1828.] Meditations on Mountains. 4 


the mazes of their own errors—fancy that virtue must go sorrowing and 
in tears—and imagine that, without the destruction of all moral restraint, 
there can be no volume of enjoyment. But that which mocks in a crowd 
what it trembles at in secret—that which supposes that the edge of wit 
consists in the rust of licentiousness with which it is covered—that which 
concludes that there can be no humour, if innocence do not turn away 
the head—is the very extreme of error and fatuity. A sound heart swells 
the laugh—a good ‘conscience gives sparkle to the anecdote—and the 
tale, in admiration of which all may joi, runs the most glibly from the 
tongue. : 

Thus you found it with Angus Gilchrist: as the generous bowl exhi- 
lirated him—as those powers of giving pleasure, which had lain dormant 
till the proper occasion and circumstances called them into play, gave 
fascination to his humble but happy board, as they crept over you like 
an inspiring spell, and even made the young divine draw upon the 
anecdotes of his professors, and the adventures of himself and his com- 
panions—the current run more rapidly, but it run equally pure as in 
the most tranquil moments ; and because it ran pure, it sparkled as it 
ran. 

As the mother of the “seven braw sons” came, and went, and came, 
in order to see that the hospitality of her house was not improperly or 
laggingly sustained, her presence shed over the scene a new lustre ; and 
there cannot be a more certain test that mirth is in the proper channel 
than when the presence of a modest and matronly female lights it up. 

The choicest hour on earth must, however, have an end ; and as both 
your mountain journey, and your hospitable, and (as you now found 
him) your intelligent and delightful mountain host’s labours were to 
commence with the dawn—the early dawn of a summer’s morn, you 
address yourself to your pillow. It is a comfortable one ; but you have 
no time to examine its comforts ; for the moment your head is down you 
are in a profound, balmy, and dreamless sleep, which lasts only for three 
hours, and yet you rise from it more refreshed and invigorated than if 
1 had tossed and tumbled upon a city bed, until the sun had been, 
lining in the west. You feel altogether a new man ; and are quite 

rised to find that you are well-slept, though the sun be not up, and 

here is no parching in your throat, or throbbing in your temples— 
one fiery pulse in your whole body, though Angus and you, with 
but scant aid from “the master,” and but a sip or two from Mrs. Gil- 
_ christ, drained the half gallon bowl, and once, though filled to the 
_ flowers on the rim. 
_ Wonder not at this. The nectar that you were quaffing was nowise 
allied to the “swipes,” adulterated in all its ingredients, with which 
you are poisoned where all is art. The spirit is clear from grains of 
aradise (sad prostitution of the name), and all the other abominations 
of the London peculiar : it is pure mountain dew, fresh from the native 
grain; and the flavour and aroma which shed forth such a perfume, 
and gave such delight to the palate, were not communicated by limes 
and lemons, pulled in an unripe, and therefore unwholesome state, and 
only mellowed by fermenting in the hold of a ship, while stewing for 
months in a warm climate—they are all from the rare and racy berries 
of the mountain, and fermentation of any kind—acetous or putrid— 
they have never undergone. Something, too, must be attributed to the 


8 Meditations on Mountains. [Juxy, 


keen freshness of that mountain air, which played over you while you 
slept, and bathed you in perfume, pure and uncontaminated from the 
living plants. 

Whatever may have been the causes, there you are—dressed, hale and 
buoyant, just as the approaching sun tints with gold the under edge of 
the lowest streaky cloud in the east. But, early though you be, 
you are not the first; the shepherds and herds are on the hills and the 
meadows, and, as you cross the threshold, Angus Gilchrist stands ready 
to bid good morning, and pledge you the matin cup. Do not refuse or 
linger, for Angus intends to take you to the top of that knoll, which 
you would worship as a mountain, if you had it at home, there to show 
you the most exciting sight in nature—the first smile of the sun upon a 
wide landscape. Thus you have not much time for observation ; and 
the strength of your lungs is pretty well tried as you trot in echelon 
from terrace to terrace. At last, however, you gain a point some eight 
or ten hundred feet above the lake; and you gain it before the sun 
makes his appearance ; there is a stone seat, “rest, and be thankful,” 
and look about you. The lake below—the patch of green that follows 
the windings of the little river—the clumps of trees—the little huts, 
from each of which a column of smoke twines upward in the calm 
morning air—the brown heath, over which you came the preceding 
day—the lowland valley, filled with the soft white cloud of night, 
with only the trees appearing like little islets in an arm of the sea, and all 
as gay and fresh as if newly awakened into growth and life. Anon, the 
sunbeams come dancing in; the earth glows, the water glitters, and, as 
the dew around you evaporates, the mountain side is painted with rain- 
bows. Even the irrational creation (as we call them, without knowing 
much about the matter) feel the genial ray: and in lowing, bleating, 
chirping, and chattering, send up their mingled matin song. Here 
you sit and meditate for a while, and then fetching a circuit of a mile or 
two, return to the farm-house, to victual yourself for the arduous part of 
your journey. I need not wish you a good appetite; you will find a 
glorious breakfast ; eat away, and then we start. 


1828.) bcd. al 


DON ALONSO.* 


Tue example of Sir Walter Scott, in works of fiction, has exercised 
as powerful an influence in France as in England. If that great man 
has consigned to everlasting slumber, on the shelves of our circulating 
libraries, the Smiths, the Lewis’s, the Radcliffes, the Roches, and the 
other innumerable caterers for the public taste, and has stimulated writers 
of higher powers to follow him—sed non awquis passibus—in the splendid 
career on which he was the first to enter, he has also cast, into a tempo- 
rary oblivion, at least, the equally numerous host of French novelists. 
With his soporific wand he has touched the Chateaubriands and the Genlis, 
whose mawkish sentimentality had long disgusted their readers ; and he 
has raised the dormant energies of their countrymen to labour for fame 
in an untried field. 

But though France has lately produced authors of respectable talents, 
and justly esteemed for their efforts in other paths of literature, we are 
not aware that one of them has equalled—we do not say Sir Walter, but 
his imitators in this country. Their works, for the most part, are neither 
natural nor probable ; the descriptions they contain are neither animated 
nor just ; they are conversant with art, not nature—with the accidental 
forms of society, not with the everlasting springs of human action ; and 
they are as destitute of strong, vigorous imagination, as of true taste. 
Add to this, that there is something in the national mind not very favour- 
able to the recondite pursuits of the antiquary—that the colouring of 
existing habits and manners is applied to those which prevailed in former 
ages—and we shall cease to be surprised that our neighbours have failed 
in that most difficult path, the historic novel. Yet if such productions, 
considered as a whole, are lamentably deficient in the requisite qualities, 
some portions of them are worthy of all praise: they contain scenes 
which, in graphic truth, are little inferior to the admired ones in the 
author of Waverley, and which, in ease of dialogue and natural simplicity 
anners, are certainly equal. 

e popularity which the work before us enjoys in France, induces us 
e it partially known to our readers. It has already reached a 
edition—a thing very unusual on either side the Channel. Its pro- 
-fessed object is to give us a faithful picture of Spanish manners and 
Spanish politics, from the administration of the infamous Godoy to the 
_ restoration of Ferdinand. The unbridled ambition of the former ; the 
_ means which he adopted to strengthen his party; the open contempt 
_ with which he was regarded by the ancient nobility of the kingdom ; his 

fall; the subsequent domination of Joseph Buonaparte ; the indignation 
_ which the unprincipled aggressions of Napoleon roused in every patriotic 
Spaniard ; the almost supernatural efforts which the nation made to 
ecover its independence ; the ultimate success of the allies ; the return 
of the “ Beloved Ferdinand” to the palace of his ancestors ; and the state 
of parties, both before and after that remarkable event, are described with 
considerable effect, though too minutely—so much so, indeed, as greatly 
to weaken the interest. In this country we have had quite enough of 
the subject: the public appetite is more than satisfied—it is satiated with 


triéme Edition. 4 tom. 12mo. Paris; 1828. 


* Don Alonso, ou l’Espagne, Histoire Contemporaine. Par N. A. Salvandy. Qua- 
: M.M. New Series—Vou.V1. No.31. C 


10 Don Alonso. [Juny, 


interminable relations of the Peninsular war. We shall not, therefore, 
even advert to the battles and sieges which accompanied that desperate 
struggle for usurpation on the one hand, and existence on the other. 
Neither can we advert to the plot of this novel: plot, indeed, it cannot 
be said to possess. The incidents are so closely interwoven with the 
political events, as to be inseparable from them. Besides, they are neither 
natural nor connected. The characters, too, are so numerous, that the 
interest is continually divided and weakened ; and they have little origi- 
mality. Some of them are manifest imitations of Scott. It is solely as 
a picture of modern Spanish manners, that we think the book worth 
consulting. The author was himself in Spain, and he has imparted to 
many of his descriptions a life and an animation, which could come from 
no other than an actual observer. Of these, we proceed to extract two 
or three, which we know to be substantially correct. In wandering 
among the Pyrenees,— 


“ You sometimes encounter a Basque maiden, with large black eyes, and 
slender form, who sings as she moves along. With naked feet, and her head 
bearing a burden which not even the men of our cities could carry, she flies 
through the precipitous paths, and, in her rapid course, she knits the many- 
coloured garment destined for her aged father. Sometimes you see a man 
seated on the enormous bales which cover the mule that carries them. With 
an immensely-brimmed hat on his head, and a brown cloak over his shoulders, 
he is proudly smoking his Havanna cigar. You are struck by the expression 
and nobleness of his countenance: his eye is motionless. To see his hand 
leaning on a blunderbuss, you would take him for a warrior meditating heroic 
deeds: to see his guitar hanging at his side, you would think him a poet 
absorbed by the inspiration of the muse ;—he is only an arriero.* He is fol- 
lowed by twenty mules, heavily laden, all of which keep pace to the ‘ drowsy 
tinkling’ of a bell, borne by the last in the line. France is approaching that 
period of improvement when commerce abandons highways for canals: Spain 
is not yet arrived at the simple cart; she is waiting until a government shall 
arise to give her public roads and bridges. More fierce closely follows the 
smuggler of the Basque provinces. To protect him in his occupation—the 
only industrious one, in the most fertile of countries—he carries a shini 
musket.- The wool of Arragon and the two Castiles, which he is conveying t 
our tewns, he will soon return with across the frontier, after it has been con- 
verted into rich stuffs in the French looms.”’—*« A bridge, half-broken dow: 
appears: your horse passes boldly over the tottering arch—more boldly, per- 
haps, than yourself. But if your heart beats strongly, it isnot from fear: you 
have crossed the chasm, and you look behind you with something like trepi- — 
dation. You see a little stone cross, which time has covered with moss and ~ 
ivy—the only solid thing on this tumble-down bridge. Why this emotion at _ 
the sight of a despicable stone cross? This is the boundary between the 
Catholic and Most Christian Kingdoms. The modest monument tells you, — 
that the soil you now tread is not that of France.” oe 


We now approach the first Spanish village, situated at the foot of a 
deep ravine—the first, we mean, which the traveller meets with, when, 
instead of entering Navarre by Yzun and the Guipuzcoa, he takes th 


road to Pampeluna, through the French villages of Ainhoa and 
Ustaritz -— 


“Urdax does not contain fifty cottages: it is overlooked by a convent, 
which ornaments the place, and imparts animation to the country. Not far 


~ 


* A muleteer. 


1828.] Don Alonso: ll 


distant from the church, and close by the burial-ground, where so many gene~ 
rations of simple and peaceful men repose, undisturbed by the soft murmur of 
the Ugarana, is a rustic house of entertainment, kept by the alcalde of the 
place. Above the entrance, I observed an escutcheon, rudely sculptured, 
which, from time immemorial, has denoted the importance of the inmates. A 
young villager, apparently about fifteen years of age, was leaning against one 
of the pillars of the porch, as if gravely watching the progress of time. I 
wished him to hold my horse: he remained immovable ; and I should have 
concluded he had not understood me, had not an expression of equal anger 
and disdain been reflected from his countenance in that of a crowd of children, 
which my foreign garb had gathered around. I was, therefore, obliged to. 
fasten my courser to a post of this rustic porch ; and by a ladder, which trem- 
bled under my feet, I ascended into a room that. possessed no. other furniture 
than a few worm-eaten tables. On entering, I perceived a man, seated, with 
a huge hat on his head, one leg thrown over the other, and regaling himself 
with a cigar. From the dignity of his appearance, I knew that he must be the 
owner of the house. I asked what refreshment I might expect? ‘ Whatever 
you bring with you!’ was the reply ; and he puffed away. I persisted in 
demanding if bread and’ wine at least were not in the house? ‘ To be sure—I 
have bread of the very best kind, and red Tudela wine in abundance.’ I 
hoped that eggs, which are so plentiful inevery village, would be added to my 
frugal repast: ‘ Look for them in the country !’ replied Don Jeronimo, who 
immediately relapsed into his usual silence. 


« The young Navarrese had followed me, and was standing at the thresh- 
old. Though his large eyes were fixed on me, he looked like one asleep. fk 
again ventured to solicit his services ; when a woman, bearing some domestic 
utensil, appeared. ‘ You are surely not so bad to please as that comes to,” 
exclaimed she, with amazing volubility. ‘ You must know that my son, the 
Sefhor Don Francisco de Paula, is not made for your service, but for God’s: 
he is about to take the habit of the Dominicans. He will then be respected 
by every body ; and some day, perhaps, God will be so gracious as to give 
Spain a saint of our blood and name. God be praised! he can count among 
his ancestors one of the colonels who, in the great battle near Roncevaux, were 
the chief means to drive the powerful Emperor Charlemagne beyond the 
mountains.’ The torrent stopt short. This modern Cornelia had no other 

clothing than a woollen corset, and a coarse stuff petticoat, which reached no 
‘wléwer than the knees, and shewed how her bare legs and feet had been begrimed 
by constant exposure to dust and sun. Her husband, mine host and alcalde, 
care, however, to give her the pompous appellation of Senora Dona 


ip re 
The stranger begins to fear, and not without reason, that, unless he 


~ deport himself with all due respect to the members of this illustrious 
family, short commons are likely to be his portion. He accordingly made 

mown, with proper humility, the cravings of his appetite to the said 
enor Don Geronimo, who, disdaining to apply himself to so ignoble‘an 
fice as providing for travellers, called aloud, “Francisca!” She at 


ngth entered the room, accompanied by amonk :— 


“ JT ventured to address myself to the pretty Spaniard. She listened to me, 
and shewed, both by her eyes and mouth, how my French accent diverted 
"her. At this moment, Dona Urraca entered, as indignant as on the former 
occasion. ‘ Do you know,’ demanded she, ‘ to whom you are talking? This 
young lady (Senorita) is as noble as the Senor Don Francisco de Paula, who will 
soon be called Fray (Brother) Francisco, if it please the Holy Mother of God 
to protect his vocation. She is the daughter of my brother, assistant-adjutant- 
general in the king’s service: and, though the general is enrolled amongst the 
enemies of God, his dignity still remains.” 


€ 2 


12 Don Alonso. [Juny, 


The expression, “ enemies of God,’’ is to be understood as applying to 
all who, in 1820, the time when the author crossed the Spanish frontier, 
supported the constitution of the Cortes against absolute monarchy.—At 
length, Francisca promises to procure him some refreshment ; but she is 
diverted from the task by the arrival of her lover, a jolly muleteer, who, 
notwithstanding his occupation, can boast of good blood in his veins. A 
conversation then commences between the alcalde, the monk, and the 
arriero. The subject, as may readily be supposed, was politics—the only 
one which had then any interest. The following extracts (sometimes 
abridged) afford a pretty fair specimen of the feeling then existing :— 


““* Most reverend father,’ asked the arriero, ‘ are you then of opinion that 
all will end ill ?’—‘ Friend,’ replied he, ‘1 know not what Providence destines 
for unhappy Spain ; but I do know, that, when a people imprisons and outrages 
its king, the rebellion is always followed by a dreadful punishment.’ —‘ Reverend 
father, you are beyond the mark. Who canever think of injuring Don Ferdi- 
nand? They who would attempt it well know how we defended him once. 
Myself, for example, with the assistance of St. Anthony, and Our Lady of 
Atocha, felled great numbers of the invaders.’ A stranger (who had hitherto 
sat unnoticed in an obscure corner of the room), hearing the words Cortes, 
constitution, revolt, afterwards uttered by the monk, asked the landlord what 
was meant by the terms. ‘Senor Basque,’ answered the latter, ‘ the nation 
is in rebellion against its king: It has compelled me to take the heretical title 
of Constitutional Alcalde: instead of being head of the village by hereditary 
right, according to the privilege obtained by my ancestors in 1684, I must in 
future, it appears, be elected by the people. This is not all: I must also 
send in my accounts.’—‘ But,’ interrupted the stranger, ‘ what constitute now 
governs the kingdom? Who has made it? who has granted it ?’>—* Repub- 
licans,’ replied the monk, turning round for the first time—‘ that is to say, 
enemies of God and the king, have fashioned it; and, lastly, some soldiers 
and pedlars have imposed it on the king our lord.. It is called the Constitution ~ 
of Cadiz.’ At these words, the stranger threw down a piece of money on the 
table, and disappeared. The Spaniards looked at each other. ‘I am much 
deceived,’ said the monk, ‘ or this gentleman has not always been accustomed 
to the names of the Pyrenees.’—‘ I recognized him,’ cried the muleteer, ‘ not- 
withstanding his strange costume, and long absence.’ The latter then paden ties 
arose: ‘I could not be mistaken; I will.run after him. —‘ Beware of that? _ 
thundered the monk, who seemed transported with apeeT : ‘do you not know as 
this man? a wretch, sullied with the greatest crimes !’—‘ Reverend father, I E 
should prefer a wretch, such as heis, to a thousand servants of God suchasI 
could name. I must follow him ; happy shall I beif I can trace his footsteps.” 
—‘ By all the saints, fellow, I forbid thee to leave the house! Remain, I say, — 
or be excommunicated!’ The arriero seemed highly indignant ; fury shone in 
his eyes ; but the crucifix, extended before him, rivetted him to the place.” 


This stranger was well known to the muleteer, and, doubtless, to the 
monk, as one of the most powerful supporters of the constitutional 
cause. On the suppression of the charter, and the restoration of despot- 
ism, he had been exiled from the court, and sought a retreat from the 
fury of his enemies in the heart of the Pyrenees. He afterwards turns 
out to be Don Axonso, the hero of the novel. 


“© At this moment, a man, with importance in his looks, entered the room. 
He scarcely deigned to honour the alcalde with the precipitate motion of his 
fingers, as he protruded his hand from beneath his blue cloak—the usual form 
of salutation throughout the Peninsula. The whole family rose to receive him 
with respect. He approached the monk, and presented his reverence with 
some papers, the sight of which appeared to give pleasure to the circle: there 
was a list of names enrolled for the military service. ‘I hope,’ said Dona 


1828.] Don Alonso. 13. 


Urraca, looking up to heaven, ‘ that my two sons will increase the number 
of heroes—the elect of the Queen of Angels !—‘ The defenders of the faith’ 
must use all possible dispatch,’ rejoined the intendant (for such was the 
important personage who had last entered); ‘ for I have bad news to announce. 
Some troops are arriving, headed by your brother, Dona Urraca.’ 

“ The sound of trumpets was now heard ; a squadron appeared, preceded 
by a general officer ; the village drum joined in the flourishes ; the inhabitants 
gathered together to increase the cries of Viva la Constitucion! Viva el Rey 
Constitucionel!* Equally surprised and indignant, the monk and the inten- 
dant shewed themselves at the window. On seeing them, the villagers, some- 
what intimidated, either held their peace, or retired. Some women, whose 
opposition had been manifested by a mournful silence, recovered courage: but 
the curate appeared ; his parishioners rallied round him ; reassured by his 
example, and the presence of the dragoons, they no longer feared to display 
on their hats the yellow and red ribbon. The phrases ‘ Sacred Code !’ and 
© Well-beloved Ferdinand !’ were uttered by all. The monk and the intendant 
saw themselves defeated ; they left the field to the conquerors, and escaped 
by a door which opened to the mountains.” 


Some of our readers are not, perhaps, aware that the constitutional 
code was as much supported by the regular clergy as it was opposed by 
the monastic orders. To secure the former, the Cortes had decreed the 
abolition of the onerous pensions which weighed on most of the eccle- 
siastical benefices; but, convinced that the number of monasteries was 
injurious to the national prosperity, they had also resolved either greatly 
to reduce, or entirely to abolish, those religious establishments. No 
wonder, then, that the church should range itself under the banners of 
both parties—that it should be divided by the opposition of interest. 
But to proceed— 


“ In the meantime Francisca, filled with joy and affection, hastened to 
meet her father. The general kissed his daughter’s forehead, gently touched 
the tresses of her dark hair which fell to the ground, and said, with emotion : 
—‘ Thou hast thy mother’s beauty, her very figure, her hair ;’ but, raising his 
head at this moment, and discovering that the constitutional stone no longer 


ccupied its accustomed place, he hastily disengaged himself from his daugh- 
rs embrace, and severely reprimanded the inhabitants for neglecting to 
e-erect the sign of the public regeneration. They attempted to excuse them- 
selves for the omission, alleging their fear of the alcalde, the monastery, and 
the intendant : but all now hastened to collect the fragments of the consti- 
ie nal table, which had been thrown down in 1814. Most of the pieces had 
een preserved in the presbytery, the remainder by the peasants ; soon there 
arose before the escutcheon of Don Geronimo, amidst the applause of the 
crowd, and the stifled curses of Dona Urraca, the restored monument, which 
bore this incription, in letters of gold—‘ Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy, 
_ sanctioned March 19th, 1812. 
“The general entered his sister's house: she had been praying ever since 
his arrival. He had a savage appearance ; he was tall and stout; his scarf 
trailed on the ground ; he had a fierce dignity of mien; a menacing, look shot 
from behind his long eyelashes; his eyes were half concealed by his bushy 
brows; his enormous whiskers, his disordered hair, and several deep scars 
covered the remainder of his face. He received almost unnoticed the obse- 
quious attentions of his brother-in-law the alcalde:—‘ Fewer compliments 
and bows,’ said he, as he sat down on the long bench by the wall ; ‘ my eacel- 
lency, if you will call me so, wants only one thing—obedience to the laws to 
which Don Ferdinand has sworn. You are not greater than he: imitate him, 
that this hut may bless you, as all Spain blesses her magnanimous prince.’ 


* The Constitution for ever! Long live the Constitutional King ! 


14 Don Alonso. [Juty, 


The alcalde bowed his head to the ground to answer—‘ Certainly ;’ but the 
word appeared to stick in his throat; and Dona Urraca, shaking her rosary; 
observed, with indignation, the humbled air of her husband.—‘ Sister,’ said 
the general, ‘ thou dost not look on me with the eyes of a Christian—what is 
the matter ?’—‘ No concern of yours ; if I wanted a confidant, he should not 
be selected from those who are given to innovation.’—‘ Sister, thou dost not 
speak like one of Arragon ; if the wine of Navarre had not turned thy head, 
thou wouldst know that the Cortes are not an innovation. The states of the 
crown of Arragon were always free, and would remain so, were it not for the 
Camarillas,* whom God and his saints curse! Sister, I am in earnest! the 
king has sworn to the system, and it was high time he should; the nation 
and he went on badly enough. They are now reconciled ; and may the foul 
fiends seize on the man who would attempt to interrupt the concord which 
exists between them! Were it brother, sister, or nephew, I would hang the 
culprit on the highest oak in the country—not even our Lady of the Pillar 
should protect the wretch!’ Here an officer whispered in his ear, that, by 
the terms of the constitution, the military authority could not hang citizens. 
‘Simpleton,’ replied he, ‘ your articles are not designed for the d—d scoundrels 
who trample on the sacred code. They stand aloof: so much the worse for 
them. Let them complain at the day of judgment if they like.’ 

“ During this discussion, Francisca was serving the numerous aides-de- 
camp of her father with wine and chocolate. They were for the most part 
very young, and superior in birth to their chief; to their red cockade was 
attached the famous green ribbon worn by the soldiers of the Isle of Leon, on 
which was inscribed, Constitucion 0 Muerte/+ At first they regarded the 
daughter of their general with great respect; but her condition and beauty 
soon emboldened them; so much so, that one among them threw his arms 
around her waist, and attempted to snatch a kiss. She gave him so hearty a 
box on the ear, that the whole house rang with it. ‘Well done,’ exclaimed 
the general, lighting his cigar: ‘her mother could not have done better.’ 
This recollection brought an emotion into his countenance which nothing had 


> 


seemed able to effect.’ : 


We shall not dwell on the noisy acclamations which were afterwards 
raised in favour of the new order of things ; nor on the applause lavished 
on the general, for his late glorious efforts in support of freedom. We 
continue the personal narrative of our author :— 


«© T had remained two whole hours in the house, but no one had time to 
serve me. I therefore resolved to return to a French village, where a repast™ 


might be procured with less difficulty. I called for the reckoning. Dona 
Urraca asked little for corn and hay ; and I was surprised at her moderation 
when she demanded a veal more for the stable. My poor horse had remained 
all the time in the street—the only place I could procure for him. I ventured 
to remind her of this, and, in return, I had to sustain a deluge of furious 
curses ; I satisfied the noble lady, and was glad to be so easily quit of her 
abuse, and of the battle of Roncevaux. But this was not all: three reals 
more were required for the noise that had been made (para el ruido). I 
thought it hard that I should be compelled to pay for the noise which I had 
heard ; she indignantly told me it was for that which I had made myself. ‘One 
may see, continued she, ‘ that you have never travelled in the dominions of 
his Catholic Majesty ; otherwise, you would bless your stars for guiding you 
among us: any where else, you must have paid much more.’ I gave her the 
reals, and prepared to leave. For the first time Don Francisco de Paula, 


* Camariilla is applied, without distinction of rank or birth, to all who enjoy the privilege 
of being continually with the king. They are his intimate friends, or favourites, among 
whom he passes his evenings. In an absolute government their influence must be all- 
powerful. 

+ The constitution or death! 


1828.] Don Alonso. 15 


touching his hat, and advancing from the post at which he had continued 
immoveable, descended so far from his future dignity as to ask, first humbly, 
then more loudly, for his perquisite as ostler. On my refusal, his mother 
followed me with imprecations: she took care to call me cursed Frenchman ! 
in the hope of exciting the mob against me. Some dragoons then hastened to 
hold my stirrup as I mounted. A brigadier offered me an escort through 
the mountains, infested, he said, with banditti and wolves. The ornaments 
on their helmets were broken; and their clothes were ragged. The diversity 
of materials, colours, and fashion, increased their uncouthness ; some wore old 
tattered French. uniforms, stripped from. the dead ten years before. These 
miserable defenders of a great nation, when they saw that I did not accept 
their proposal of escorting me, informed me that they had received no pay 
during the eighteen months preceding. The constitution, said they, was 
about to discharge the debts of the country, but hitherto it had not had time 
to do so; and the Holy Virgin would reward me for what I might give them. 
I blushed as I relieved each modern Belisarius ; and I set out compassionat- 
ing Spanish liberty for the melancholy inheritance which absolute power had 
left it.” 


The colouring in the preceding descriptions is doubtless overcharged ; 
but not so much as might be supposed. No man who has travelled in 
Spain will soon forget the inns at which he has called. Not only are the 
inmates too idle or too proud to serve him, but his accommodations are of 
such a description that he envies the poorest peasant in the bog huts of 
Ireland. Yet he is obliged to pay as much for his sorry cheer, as he 
would were he in the comparatively comfortable inns in the southern 
provinces of France. 

The zeal with which a great portion of the regular clergy promoted 
the constitutional cause, and inculcated the most violent hatred against 
the French invaders, would really surpass belief, did not the very cate- 
chism exist that was put into the hands of almost every child in the 
Peninsula. We have not, indeed, been able to see a copy of it; but, 
from what we have heard of its contents, we do not think the questions 
which our author professes to have extracted from it, in the least degree 
exaggerated.* Weare much mistaken if the following specimen do not 
th surprise and divert the reader. A curate, in one of the wildest parts 
Spain, is examining some rustics in this national catechism. He first 
dresses a little boy :— 


“© Q. Tell me, my dear, what art thou?—‘ A. A Spaniard, by the grace 

of God. —* Q. How many duties has a Spaniard?’—‘ 4. Three To be a 

Roman Catholic ; to defend his holy religion, country, and king ; to die rather 

than be defeated..—* Q How many natures has the emperor ?’ 

© Here Zacharias looked confused ; he had forgotten his answer, and none 
around him could prompt him. ‘Two,’ said the curate: ‘ the devil’s and 

. All the Castilians present devoutly repeated what most of them had 

otten. 

e The curate then addressed himself to a young man who was playing on a 
musical instrument. 

«<< Q. Angel, who is the enemy of our happiness ?’—‘ A. The French Em- 
peror,’ replied the musician, without raising his eyes, or ceasing to beat the 
measure with his hands and feet.—* Q. Who are the French ?’—‘ A. Anciently, 
Christians, but now, heretics. —‘ Q. How many emperors are there ?’—‘A. One 
in three perfidious persons. —‘ Q. Who are they?’—‘ A. Napoleon, Murat, 
and Godoy.’—* Q. Is one more wicked than another ?’—‘ A. No, father, they 
are all equally so..—‘ Q. From whom does Napoleon proceed ?’—* A. From 


* See the Memoir of M. de Naylies on the Spanish War. 


16 Don Alonso. [Juxy, 


sin. —* Q. Murat ??—* A. From Napoleon.’—‘ Q. Godoy ?’—‘ A. From both 
together.’.—‘ Q. What characterises Napoleon?’—‘ A. Pride and despotism.” 
— Q. Murat?’—‘ A. Robbery and bloodshed.—* Q. Godoy ?’—* A. Covet- 


22 


ousness, treason, and ignorance. 


The curate turned again to little Zachary, and put another string of 
questions ; but we can only afford room for the last :— 

«<« Q, Is it a sin to kill a Frenchman?’—‘ A. No; it is meritorious to 
deliver our country from her hateful oppressors.’” 

Stern as is the last maxim, it was continually put in practice during 
the war of independence. - If a French soldier strayed from his com- 
panions to implore the hospitality of the cottage, he seldom found mercy: 
from some unperceived quarter, a musket-ball reached his heart :-— 

“I was about to turn into the highway leading to Bribiezca, when a 
French lancer appeared, and took his stand on an eminence near me: he 
looked to ‘see if any enemies were in the valley: a gun sounded, and he lay 
without life. I sought for the hand which had killed him ; but there was not 
a.rush which could conceal the assassin, and the plain. was uninhabited ; 
nothing was to be seen but a labourer who was peacefully ploughing with his 
oxen at some distance from this sad scene. I walked on; another lancer 
appeared on the height, who was surprised at the sight of his dead comrade. 
The labourer, towards whom I was advancing, took up a musket from the 
ground, pointed it from behind his oxen, brought down the horsemen, threw 
the weapon into a furrow, and went on with his plough as if nothing were the 
matter. I spoke to him with indignation of his cold-blooded cruelty. ‘Ido 
not understand you,’ replied he ; ‘I am doing a soldier’s duty, and attending 
to my labour at the same time.’” 

We fear that not only the French invaders, but the English allies, occa- 
sionally, fell victims to the political hatred or religious bigotry of the 
Spanish peasantry. Whatever was the reason, we have but too much 
cause. to know that our gallant countrymen were often found dead in 
places far remote from the common enemy :— 

“ One day, as a military friend was halting in the environs of a town which 
had not witnessed an engagement during the whole continuance of the war, 
he perceived some mounds of earth; ‘ What are these ?’ inquired he of a pea 
sant.—‘* The graves of Frenchmen whom we surprised: and slew,’ was the 
reply. ‘ And those farther on?’—‘ Oh, they contain a few of our allies.’ 
‘Whom you served in the same manner?’ An intelligent look was the only 
answer. ‘onae t oe rail ’ ‘ 

The work before us contains many other good descriptions of Spanish 
manners and opinions ; but they are so mixed up with the political events 
of the period, that we should not translate them if even our limits would 
permit their insertion. In attentively perusing four rather thick volumes, 
we have been often pained to perceive that a writer of some powers 
should bear so strong an antipathy to our countrymen. He cannot for- 
give us for the humiliating reverses which attended the French arms 
before the genius of Wellington. But, in denying bravery to our troops, 
and attributing the splendid successes of the war to Spanish valour 
alone, he seems to forget that he is passing a severe censure on those of 
his own country—that vast, well-disciplined armies were dispossessed 
of the strongest forts in the kingdom, and pursued into France, by a 
few thousand ill-clothed, ill-fed, and undisciplined peasants... Perhaps 
some French author will be sagacious enough to discover that the 
triumph at Waterloo was achieved by Dutchmen alone ! 


1828] eae yea 
. HAROLD HARKUNG, 


« Hence, then, proud scorner of the power of Urfred! hence to 
unknown seas, where thy pennon shall droop idly on the mast, and thy 
sail hang loose and quivering ; where the dauntless riders of the ocean 
shall sink, powerless and unresisting, before an unseen enemy! Hence, 
and learn how swiftly comes the vengeance of the gods on those who 
mock their favoured servants !” : 

Such were the accents which pursued the young and valiant Harold 
Harrung, as he launched his gallant ship, in those far-distant days when 
the children of Norway were rulers and dwellers on the deep. The 
betrothed husband of the beauteous Ulla, the favourite leader of a bold 
and numerous crew, he had vowed to undertake a distant voyage, and 
to return with spoils sufficient to render his bridal splendid, as became 
that of Odin’s lineal offspring. But the imprudence of Harold was, 
alas! as pre-eminent as his valour ; and, in his recklessness of danger, 
he neglected to propitiate, by gifts or flattery, the favour of the sor- 
ceress, Urfred—-the most powerful of those who were then universally 
believed to direct the elements at will. He made no prayer to her for 
prosperous winds ; he even treated with scorn her prophetic warnings, 
and thus drew upon himself those maledictions which filled the bravest 
of his followers with dread, and caused Harold himself to wish in secret 
that the hour of his return to the embraces of Ulla were now come, not- 
withstanding his ardent anticipation of a successful descent upon the 
shores of Spain. But he carefully concealed such feelings as he cheered 
his drooping warriors to spread their broad canvass to the wind; and a 
favourable breeze from the north-east soon bore them far away from the 
Norwegian coast, till the cloudlike hills melted into air, and the sinking 
sun gleamed only on a world of waters. 

It was high morning, and the young hero still rested half-slumbering 
on his couch of reindeer-skins, when the aged pilot roused him to point 
out the tokens of an impending storm, which his experience warned him 

__ would be violent. But the bold sea-kings of those days were too much 
_aecustomed to brave the utmost fury of the elements, in their small and 
fragile barks, to tremble at the coming of the tempest ; and the delay of 
a few days, which might result from driving out of their course, was all 
that Harold feared. But there were some among that crew, who, while 
_ they remembered the threatenings of the sorceress, could not, without 
some sinking of the heart, mark cloud upon cloud piling in awful accu- 

_ mulation toward the south, or watch the rapidly-increasing swell that 
_ came from that quarter, though the vessel now lay rolling heavily, with- 
out a breath to fill her flapping canvass. Suddenly, the cry of the steers- 
-man was heard to take in every sail; and, ere this could be more than 
partially accomplished, a blast, that swept off the whole surface of the 
sea into a mist of foam, snapt the stout mast in twain, and the vessel was 
in a moment driving northward with portentous swiftness. Four days 
and nights did that resolute crew in vain expect the lulling of the gale ; 
_ though its violence abated, it still drove them powerless before it, unable 
to use oar or sail. On the sixth morning, it grew calm ; and all snatehed 

a brief space of delicious slumber, before they gathered round their 
leader, to consult on their perilous situation. The land was not in sight, 
and in what direction any lay, the most experienced of the crew were 
ignorant ; but the intense cold which benumbed their hardy limbs, and 

M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.31. ») 


fn 


18 Harold Harrung. [Juty, 


the vast fragments of ice that floated on all sides round the ship, both 
proved that.the power of the tempest had driven them farther to the 
north than any, perhaps, of their countrymen had ever ventured to pene- 
trate before. What was their horror and astonishment, when, after 
wasting the dubious twilight of those arctic nights in troubled slumber, 
they woke to find themselves encompassed on all sides by rough fields 
of ice, to which the swell from the south, yet unsubsided, was each 
minute adding in extent. Hour after hour, as it passed, only increased 
the dangers of their position ; yet the bolder still talked hopefully of 
escape, and their chieftain went from man to man to cheer, by exhorta- 
tion and example, their fast drooping spirits. But when a discoloured 
fog gathered round the ship, and the thick-falling snows reminded them 
too surely that autumn was advancing—when their ‘provision, though 
scantily doled out, began to fail—then dismay and despair fell on all but 
the firm soul of Harold Harrung.—“ Warriors and friends!” he ex- 
claimed, as they stood with stern and anxious looks around him, “ fear 
not for yourselves ; curse me not, that I disdained to purchase the favour 
of a loathsome witch! Can ye believe that the mighty Odin would per- 
mit his descendant, hitherto so favoured, to die the death of a dog ina 
wreath of snow? No, friends! if it had seemed fitting to the gods to 
bid me thus, in early youth, to the banquets of Valhalla—the battle- 
field, the deck running deep with foemen’s blood, would have been my 
appointed place of summons. The gods, who only can, will aid us yet.” 
They answered not ; for they loved their chief too well to curse him, 
even in such extremity of misery. Meanwhile, the snow gave place to 
a frost of the bitterest intensity; the last morsel of food was gone ; and, 
one by one, yet without a reproachful glance or word, Harold beheld 
his gallant’ followers expire around him, till he was left the only 
living thing in that dark and icy desert. It was, in truth, a dreadful 
doom to lingér thus alone among the dead—to gaze upon their glassy 
eyeballs and withered lips, that seemed to glare and smile in scorn !— 
many, too, still standing, as the frost had fixed them in their death-pangs, 
with the air and attitude of life !—and Harold, racked almost to madness 
by the horror of the scene, cast himself over the vessel’s side, and fled 
across those pathless wastes he knew not whither. The pangs of memory — 
returned not to the hero, till he found his headlong flight arrested sud-_ 
denly by arocky precipice that rose high into the clouds before him. In 
its front, not far above his head, there yawned a spacious cave; and, 
still seeking to escape from his own thoughts, he sprang up and entered. 
He passed a long and winding way in utter darkness ; but, at length, a faint 
light glimmered in the distance. The passage through which he moved — 

spread wider and higher as he approached, till it expanded into a vast 
illuminated hall. To a mind less torn with anguish than the hero’s, the 
spectacle of that cavern might have compensated years of toil. Far as 
the eye could reach, the soil was overspread with structures of magni- 
ficence and beauty. All that the inventive genius of man has, in ancient 
or modern times, devised—the massy pyramid—the graceful column—the 
arch, in each variety of form and ornament ;—all these were there carved 
out of solid ice, tinted with all the hues of the rainbow; and above 
floated a transparent cloud, athwart which the ever-changing forms of the 
aurora borealis played in perpetual flashes. But Harold wandered 
through this labyrinth of beauty, half-unconscious of the wonders that 
surrounded him. At length, the sound of gushing waters, so long 


1828.] Harold Harrung. 19 


unheard in these regions of frost, fell sweetly on his ear ; and, in pursuit 
of it, he entered another passage, dark and tedious as the first ; but when 
he emerged again, it was to behold a scene of wondrous change. Before 
him, in the rich soft light of evening, was spread a vast and verdant 
plain, chequered with lakes and groves ; the turf beneath his feet was 
enamelled with sweet flowers, and watered by fresh-springing fountains ; 
the delicious green of the prospect refreshed his aching eyeballs, and the 
mild warmth of the air revived his frozen limbs. “Surely,” cried the 
warrior, “I have reached Valhalla by this strange approach ; and these 
are the ever-blooming meads prepared for the repose of heroes.” Scarcely 
had he given utterance to the thought, when the voice of one unseen 
sang sweetly :— 


Oh! welcome, warrior! welcome to our land, 
From the rude perils of the unkind sea: 
Lord of the dauntless heart and matchless hand ! 
Long have we watched, long have we wished for thee. 


Unconsciously Harold wandered on until he reached a pleasant bower, 
where the trees grew ina circle around a flowery sward, and amidst them 
the vine twined its exuberant trellice-work. Here, to his amazement, he 
beheld a luxurious banquet spread; rich wine and smoking venison 
seemed to invite the wayworn wanderer to taste; and again the same 
sweet voice breathed out :— 


Harold, for thee the feast is spread; 

The deer scents high, the wine glows red: 
Taste, and famine’s pangs allay; 

Drink, and cast all cares away. 


No longer doubting that he had reached the blissful abodes of those 

departed spirits who had found favour in the eyes of Odin, the young 

hero obeyed the injunctions of his unseen guardian, though he marvelled 

that no sharers of the banquet should appear. When he had sufficiently 

gratified the wants of long-restricted nature, he felt that a delightful 
- languor stole gradually on his weary frame: the softness of his fragrant 
couch, the gentle waving of the boughs, invited to repose; and again 
the friendly voice was heard to sing :— 


a 


Rest, wanderer, rest! All nature now lies dreaming ; 
The small bird settles in its downy nest ; 
Hushed lies the deer beneath the mild moon’s beaming: 
Then rest—oh ! rest. 


Rest, wanderer, rest! The flowers are gently closing, 
As the sun sinks beyond the rosy west ; 
The groves scarce tremble in their mute reposing: 
Then rest—oh! rest. 


Rest, wanderer, rest! Old Ocean, steeped in slumbers, 
Heaves slow and regular his tranquil breast ; 

The winds chaunt lullabies in softest numbers: 

' Then rest—oh! rest. 


Long ere this strain had ceased, the delighted Harold Harrung lay 
buried in profound repose ; and the duration of his slumber was such as 
nature needed after sufferings like his. But when he roused himself at 
leugth, new prodigies burst upon his view. His resting-place was no 


20 Harold Harrung. [Juny, 


longer on the verdant sward, but on a soft and stately couch, strewed 

_ with the richest skins and sables. The apartment in which he lay far 
exceeded in magnificence aught that he before had looked on, though he 
had ere now led his daring band to spoil the fairest palaces of the south. 
Yet his eye scarcely glanced for a moment over the various splendours 
of the scene; for before him stood at length revealed the queen of all 
those fair delights which had surrounded him within the last few hours. 
Of the loftiest stature among women, but formed in the most exquisite 
proportions—beautiful as Freya herself, yet with more of majesty and 
command in her air than would become the deity of love—the mighty 
Druda was beheld by Harold with those sentiments of admiration and 
reverence, unmingled with fear, which the sea-kings of old ever felt 
toward those goddesses who deigned to cross their mortal path. Humbly, 
yet not timidly, he told his tale, and gave his thanks. But when he 
learned, from her reply, which was uttered with a dignity that scorned 
concealment, and felt no shame at such a revelation, that she—the 
mighty mistress of the northern realms, sprung from the union of the 
awful Balder with an earth-born maid—had stooped to love a mortal— 
that she had rescued him from destruction, and led him to this paradise 
of sweets, to share her love and throne—what marvel if the warrior, in 
the triumph of the moment, forgot his country, his fame, and Ulla her- 
self? 

Months rolled away ; and the brave sea-king, who had once deemed 
each moment wasted that was not spent in the foray or on the wave, still 
lingered in the thrall of the enchantress. Yet, though the beauty and 
the wisdom of Druda could well beguile the hours, he felt at length how 
irksome a life of indolence and solitude must ever be. The flowers grew 
less fragrant ; the lovely prospects lost their charms; and Harold sighed 
in secret for his bleak Norwegian hills—for the galley and the sword, 
with which his forefathers had never failed to win the pleasures denied 
by their inclement climate ;—nay, at times, when he contrasted her gentle 
smiles with the frowns of his imperious mistress, his memory would 
revert to Ulla. Yet gratitude compelled him to bury these feeelings in 
his inmost heart ; and, perchance, he might have wasted years in uncom- 
plaining durance, had not the keen eye of Druda soon marked the change 
in his demeanour. One morning, as he wandered forth alone, chance led 
him to the bower which he had first entered on his arrival in that 
enchanted land ; and in secrethe gave vent to the despondency that long 
had weighed upon his soul—“ Why—oh! why,” exclaimed the young 
hero, “ was my life preserved for this? Better it were to have died that 
inglorious death among my brave companions, than thus to linger out dull 
years of dishonourable ease, whilst my banner shall never more be dreaded 
on the sea, and the bold Norsemen have even now almost forgotten the 
name of him who was once their foremost leader, where danger was to be 
braved, or glory won!” He ceased—for a bitter laugh rang loudly in his 
ear—and, turning, he beheld the sorceress, Druda. Her countenance 
was calm, though pale ; for those distortions of passion which betray the 
anguish of mortals, when affliction falls heavily upon them, were unwor- 
thy the daughter of Balder ; yet was there something in her painful 
smile that caused the blood of the hitherto undaunted Harold to curdle 
within him.—“< Son of the sea!’ exclaimed the sorceress, in a slow and 
solemn tone, “ I have tried thee, with all thy boasted merit ; but I find 
thou art but as other men. Like them, the idle recompence of fame or 


1828.] Harold Harrung. 21 


power is dearer to thee than a woman’s constant love. When, first, for 
you she sacrifices all beside, ye vow eternal gratitude and love ; but the 
prize grows palling on the appetite ere long ; and then, for the merest 
trifle—nay, in the mere thirst of variety itself—ye leave her to pine 
without asigh. But this is weakness. Let others lament their lovers’ 
treachery: my part is to revenge. Go, then—I will aid thy flight: go 
to thy native land. Be again the leader of a robber-band—the boasted 
lord of the untamed elements. Thy friends, no doubt, will greet thee 
well, and marvel when they hear thy tale, and scoff at Druda’s weak- 
ness. Nay, perhaps, some maid, proud of her blue eyes and flaxen 
ringlets, will hail thy coming with ready smile—will scoff at the en- 
chantress, whose magic arts could not, for a few brief days, retain the 
heart she rules and moulds at will. Yet tremble, Harold !—for thou 
returnest not alone. In the battle—on the deep—at the festal meeting — 
in the bridal hour, if such shall come—lI will be near thee. Hence, then, 
wretched ingrate! Lo! with this wand I dissipate the illusions my 
senseless love had raised for thee.” She waved the figured staff that she 
held in her right hand; and, in a moment, forests, plains, and rivers 
faded from the eyes of the astonished hero. They stood upon the path- 
less fields of ice ; the bitter air benumbed his limbs; and, in the expec- 
tation that she had borne him there to perish, he turned towards her, to 
speak his defiance of the utmost her power could effect. 

She saw his intention, and interrupted him.—* No, Harold—no! To 
kill thee here were poor revenge! Begone to thy home, and her thou 
pinest for ; be again great and glorious as before ;—but, in thy hour of 
greatest bliss, expect my coming. Yet, ere thou goest, take with thee 
one gift—one token of Druda’s inextinguishable love !” She grasped his 
hand violently, and a mortal coldness thrilled through every vein.— 
« There!” she exclaimed, as she slowly loosed her hold,—“ it is done ! 
And now, for a season, fare thee well! But, remember, that no mortal 
may henceforth touch that frozen hand, and live. Stretch it not forth 
when thy friends in rapture come to greet thee ; when thy love hangs on 
_ the neck of her long lost one, twine it not in her soft flowing hair—for 
all shall die who feel its pressure—Harold of the frozen hand! once 
more farewell!” Once more she waved her wand; and, in a moment, 
the young hero stood again on the threshold of his long-abandoned 
home. 

’ When the friends of Harold Harrung learned his sudden reappearance, 
and came in throngs to welcome home their long-lost leader, they found 
a changed and moody man. His right hand ever buried in the folds of his 
mantle, his brow furrowed with an expression of settled grief, they saw 
that he no longer heard with envy the triumphs and conquests of his 
_ rivals, or felt disposed to embark in those daring enterprises by which 
he formerly eclipsed the fame of the boldest of his compeers. Alone in 
his desolate halls, to which he no longer bade his well-pleased guests, 
Haro d Harrung dwelt from day to day, till men began to deem him 
mad. Nothing less than distraction, they said, could make so brave a 
hero alike forget his glory and his love ; and they knew not what most to 
marvel at—his refusal to lead their expeditions, or his indifference to 
his betrothed bride, whom he had not visited, nor even inquired for, 
since his return. Others thought that the loss of his brave crew, who 
had all perished, as he told them, by shipwreck, preyed keenly on his 
heart, and made him unwilling any more to risk the lives. of gallant 


22 Harold Harrung. [Juxy, 


men under the guidance of so unfortunate a chief. But many days 
ery by, and still no change was observable in the demeanour of the 
ero. 

At length there came an aged man over the hills from the south, the 
father of Ulla. He had learned at last, in his distant halls, the tidings 
of Harold’s unexpected return ; and never did more welcome tidings 
reach the old man’s ear; for the giant Gruthioff, a formerly rejected 
suitor of the lovely Ulla, presuming on her lover’s lengthened absence 
and supposed death, had threatened to destroy her father’s hall, and 
seize her person, unless she instantly consented to requite his passion. 
The hoary Sweno told his tale to the silent Harold, and urged him to 
hasten and deliver his love from the violence of a detested rival. In the 
eagerness of his recital, he neglected to remark the cold and gloomy 
air of the young hero ; but, when all was told, he looked in vain for the 
glance of anger and resolved revenge which become a lover, when he 
hears that any one has dared to offer insult to his mistress. The old 
man’s blood boiled high, and he broke out into bitter reproaches,— 
«* What !” he exclaimed, “ has the bold Harold no reply to my request ? 
Has his heart grown cold, or his arm weak? Is his love too little, or his 
fear too much, that he dares not brave the wrath of Gruthioff? Thanks, 
generous warrior! high-souled lover, thanks! The despised Sweno will 
return to his halls—will lift alone his feeble arm, in defence of his 
wronged child. Weak though it be, it will be stronger than that of a 
traitor to his friend ahd love. But how—oh! how will my poor Ulla 
endure to hear that he, whom she had mourned as dead, so fondly and 
so long, lives to desert, to prove unworthy of her !” 

The unhappy warrior could restrain himself no longer. In uncon- 
trollable emotion, he cast himself at the old man’s .feet.—“ Father !” he 
cried, “‘ you have conquered. Harold cannot bear the name of coward. 
He cannot suffer her he so fondly loves to deem her affections are be- 
stowed on an undeserving caitiff. Father, I will summon all my band ; 
I will away this night, and rescue her, or die. Yet, oh! if you should 
live to curse the hour when Harold came to aid your child, remember 
by what powers you enforced his coming, and hate him not, though he 
bring desolation on thy house, and rouse the ire of a far more fearful 
enemy than Gruthioff.” 

The old man smiled through his tears, at the disastrous anticipations 
of the chief. Once delivered from the dread of Gruthioff, he saw not 
how calamity could reach him. Yet the cloud of settled grief still rested 
on the soul of Harold, as he summoned his devoted followers to prepare 
for an immediate expedition. In delight, that their brave chief had at 
length awakened from his slothful lethargy, all were soon prepared ; 
and the little band set forward at a rapid pace toward the abode of 
Sweno, which lay some score of miles toward the south. The morning 
was dawning when they reached it ; yet they came almost too late. The 
troops of Gruthioff had surrounded the castle on all sides, and were on 
the point of breaking in; they had already fired the adjacent buildings. 
Like the lightning, Harold and his band dashed from the eminence on 
which they stood. The gigantic Gruthioff called his followers to draw 
off from the attack, and form themselves into a compact body to repel 
the coming enemy. They thus afforded the new defenders of the castle 
an opportunity of entering it; but Harold, fired by the sight of his 
audacious rival, thought only of an immediate conflict. He marshalled 


1828.] Harold Harrung. 23 


his brave band in line, and prepared to give the order to set on. But 
the giant at this moment stept forth before his troops.—“ Harold Har- 
rung!” he shouted, at the full pitch of his sonorous voice, “ this is our 
quarrel ; let us try it alone. I defy thee here to mortal combat. Be 
Ulla his who conquers.” 

Burning with passion, the undaunted hero promptly acquiesced in 
the challenge of his gigantic foe. In vain Sweno and his other friends 
reminded him of the prodigious size and strength of Gruthioff, so far 
exceeding all men beside. Their remonstrances were unheard or 
unheeded ; and he rushed forward to encounter the challenger, midway 
between the hostile forces. The combat was furious and long. The acti- 
vity of Harold enabled him to avoid the deadly blows of Gruthioff, and 
the giant grew almost exhausted by his unavailing efforts. Then the bold 
sea-king ceased to act wholly on the defensive ; he began in turn to press 
hard upon his foe, and at last succeeded in wounding him severely. Then 
it was that the armour-bearer of Gruthioff, seeing the danger of his 
master, drew an arrow from his bow, and pierced Harold Harrung 
through the side. He fell instantly ; and his followers, shouting 
treachery, pressed forward to avenge him. But, ere they could reach 
the spot where he lay, Harold beheld his giant foe wave high his sword, 
and prepare to plunge it into his prostrate body. At that moment, the 
remembrance of the fatal gift of Druda flashed on his mind. Then, col- 
lecting his remaining strength, and baring his right hand, he sprang up, 
and arrested the arm of Gruthioff, in mid-descent, with a strong grasp. 
The giant stood for an instant motionless, as if struck by lightning, or 
changed to stone, and then fell dead without a groan—so suddenly had 
the spirit passed away. Harold beheld his fall, but nothing more; for 
then all perception failed him, and, when his senses returned, the fond 
arm of Ulla was supporting his neck, and he rested on a couch spread in 
her father’s hall. 

The events of the day were soon narrated. The heroic band had well 
revenged the treachery practised against their master ; scarce-one of the 

_ troops of Gruthioff had escaped alive ; and his death, as Harold found, 
_ was solely attributed to the severe wound he received during the com- 
e ieee But these tidings were scarcely uttered, ere the young hero felt 

_his weakness again return, and, for some hours more, he lay insensible to 
all around him. The wound of Harold was so dangerous as seemingly 
to baffle for a-time the few remedies of those simple times; but the 
unceasing cares of Ulla were at length crowned with the desired result, 
_ and the warrior’s health and strength rapidly returned. But he could 
not, day after day, view the lovely form of the maid bending over his 
couch, or see her anxious eye resting in eloquent tenderness on his coun- 
tenance, to trace if any expression of pain still lingered there; 

and that form, too, somewhat wasted of its graceful roundness ; and that 

eye, too, somewhat dimmed, from the effects of ceaseless watching ;—he 

could not mark all this, and not fondly, passionately love her, who had 

ce . rescued him from death. The threats of the enchantress, though not 
forgotten, he forced to bear a less terrible interpretation; and, with 
returning health, he craved of her father the precious gift of Ulla’s hand, 
and but for the deadly power with which Druda had endowed him, 
Harold had been perfectly happy. 

It was in the centre of his hall, amid a crowd of friends and vassals, 
that Sweno prepared the simple marriage-ceremony of those times. The 


24 Harold Harrung. [Juxy, 


noble Harold, with all a bridegroom’s exultation, and the trembling yet 
pleased Ulla, stood before him. 

« Son!” cried the old man, in a glad though interrupted voice, 
“stretch forth thy right hand, and take her’s, whom, all priceless as 
she is, thou well deservest. Why dost thou bury it thus in the folds of 
thy vest?” F 

«« Father, pardon me!”’ replied the youth ; “this morning, as I donned 
my marriage-garment, my blade slipped from its sheath, and cut deeply 
into my hand: the blood as yet is hardly staunched.—Nay, Ulla!” as he 
saw her countenance grow paler, “it is but a slight wound, and not 
worth thy care. Meanwhile, thou wilt not scorn to clasp this other 
hand.” 

He knelt before her as he spoke, and pressed _her’s laughingly to his 
lips ; but, as again he raised his head, he saw distinctly, at the back of 
Ulla, the enchantress Druda, standing, and pointing to her with a mock- 
ing smile. With a loud cry, he sank senseless on the ground. 

All was consternation among the crowd. They raised him, and strove 
to bare his wounded hand, deeming that loss of blood had caused his 
swoon: but it was folded in his breast with a firmness that rendered all 
their endeavours useless. The struggle, however, recalled Harold to 
life. He threw an anxious and terrified glance around him ; but nothing 
now appeared to confirm his fears. Half believing that the dreadful 
appearance was an illusion created by his fancy, he advanced to console 
the weeping Ulla. Weakness, he feigned, resulting from his long con- 
finement, had caused this sudden faintness—overpowered, as he had 
been, with excess of joy, on finding that his dear Ulla was at length his 
bride. But his still startled eye and quivering lip belied the explanation 
as he gave it ; and Sweno would willingly have deferred the celebration 
of the nuptials till a more fitting season, but that he feared the assembled 
guests might deem such delay an inhospitable pretext for avoiding the 
evening banquet. He gave command, therefore, that the festival should 
proceed. But Harold strove in vain to nerve himself as became his part 
in the ceremonies ; and he, who had risen that morning all ecstasy and 
hope, now stood the saddest and most silent man in all that thronged 
assemblage. 

Ulla, scarcely less melancholy, and agitated by a thousand undefined 
fears, shrank from his side, when she found that her fond words and 
looks seemed only to augment his despondency. Meanwhile, the ban- 
quet was set forth; the wine flowed high in a thousand goblets; and 
Sweno strove, by anxious attention to his guests, to veil the strangeness 
of his son-in-law’s deportment. By degrees, the strong wine began to 
do its office. The merriment of the revellers grew loud and violent ; 
and they crowned their full cups with oft-repeated healths to the bold 
Harold and his beauteous bride. In the midst of the loud din, Herda, 
his most favoured follower and friend, stole to the side of his chief. 

«* Why droops my lord,” whispered the faithful attendant, “ thus on 
his nuptial night? Oh! rouse thyself, bold Harold! for the eyes of 
many are upon thee in wonder and in scorn ; and jests are muttered round 
the board such as become not thy honour, nor the purity of her whom 
thou hast wedded.” 

“* Herda,”’ exclaimed the chief, as if unconscious that aught had been 
addressed to him—“ Herda, look out towards the north, and tell me 
what thou seest there.” 


1828.) Harold Harrung. 25 


He went, and soon returned.—< Nothing, my lord, but the red and 
purple meteors chasing each other athwart the cope of heaven. The night 
is still and fair. Oh! shame on this unmanly sadness! Awake! 
awake—ere your name becomes a by-word.” 

The eye of Harold flashed fiercely on his friend; but it was only for 
a moment.—* Thou art right,” my faithful Herda— thou art right; I 
will be a man, and defy fate——Ulla, dearest, to your chamber.—Come, 
friends,” he cried, advancing to the board, “ who will pledge highest to 
my toast?‘ To him who shall sail his galley farthest, and bring back 
the richest spoil from distant lands, when spring shall again smile upon 
our northern shores.-—Call Eric—Eric the bard,” he added, as with loud 
acclamations all drained their goblets to the bottom—‘ he who made the 
song of triumph what time I ravaged the wide seas of Britain.” 

The bard—an old, grey-headed man, but with an eye of fire—came 
forward at the call, and, in a deep, melodious voice, chaunted forth the 
following strains :— 


O’er the deep, o’er the deep, 
As our dragon-standards sweep, 
And our bark springs the wild waves through, 
Let the coward merchants quail, 
As in misty wreaths our sail, 
Flying on before the gale, 
Meets their view. 


Far away, far away 
Lies each guardian port or bay, 

Yet landward the breeze fairly blows ; 
And they flee; till on their track 
Fleeter comes our fierce attack ; 

Then, like hunted wolves, turn back 
On their foes. 


We have met, we have met! 
But each gallant Northman yet 
For a moment must scarce draw breath: 
Hark! bold Harold gives the word— 
Lo! he leaps the first on board, 
Waving wide his fatal sword, 
Dealing death ! 


We have won, we have won! 
Soon the desperate strife is done ; 

O’er the wreck the dark waters close ; 
The hoarse tumult of the fray , 
Into silence melts away ; 

And, like lions gorged with prey, 
We repose. 


Then around—come around ! 
Let each wine-cup high be crowned ; 
Chaunt the praise of the bold sea-king ; 
Or, in gentler accents, tell 
Of the fame of those who fell, 
_ While the dirge the wild waves swell, 
As we sing. 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 31. E 


26 Harold Harrung. (June, 


The last notes of the song, and the applauding shouts that followed it, 
-had died away, and Harold sought the bridal-chamber. There, pure 
and lovely as the moonbeams that streamed through the rude windows 
of the apartment, he found his beloved Ulla. He advanced to fold her 
in his embrance ; but, suddenly, a fearful cry rang in his ear—a shadow 
darkened in the flood of moonlight—and Druda stood before him. 

“ Child of Odin!” she exclaimed, “ behold, I break no promises.” 
—It was the same bitter voice and smile with which she had bid him 
farewell on the frozen deserts of the north ; and Harold felt that all was 
lost.—* Child of Odin!’ she went on, “ I swore to be with you in your 
marriage-hour. Lo! I am here to add to its delights! But, methinks,” 
—and she seized the half-lifeless Ulla as she spoke,—‘ methinks your 
faith this morning Was not fairly plighted.” With irresistible force, she 
dragged the right hand of the hero from his breast, and folded it in that 
of Ulla.—“< Thus—thus, fond lovers! I unite ye !” 

At the touch of his fatal hand, Ulla sank dead at her husband’s feet. 
He stood, with fixed and stony eye, incapable of speech or motion, 
gazing on that form, so beautiful in death! But the fell enchantress 
did not long permit him to remain. 

“ Away! away!” she cried; “thou canst not choose but follow 
me !” 

Unconscious and unresisting, he went forth with her from that 
chamber, and followed her quick footsteps to the shore. There a tall 
ship appeared waiting their approach ; the crew stood ready at each oar 
and sail—and strange, indeed, that crew !—for the chief beheld the eyes 
of those, whom he had deemed long dead amid the arctic frosts, gleam- 
ing on him with supernatural light. 

“ Aboard! aboard!” shouted the fiendish enchantress. A _ wild 
laugh arose from those fearful mariners, as Harold, in desperate mad- 
ness, leaped upon the deck. He was seen no more in Norway. 


OLD PICTURES. 


TuE noble and wealthy projectors and supporters of the British Insti- 
tution fancy, in the simplicity of their hearts, that, by opening every 
year a mart for the sale of a few paltry modern pictures (or pretty ones, 
as the case may be) they are promoting the interests of art to such a 
pitch, that, ere long, “your Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff,’ will 
become a dead letter. In the mean time, however, they take good care 
to confine their active patronage, for the most part, to the promoting of 
the sale of modern pictures: for as to purchasing them, that is quite 
another matter, they leave that for those patrons of art, who have 
amassed their wealth east of Temple Bar. And the reason they would 
probably give is, that, to say nothing of the various other channels into 
which a man of rank is compelled to divert his income, they already 
possess collections by the “old masters ;” and that to mix the modern 
and the ancient together, would be an act of injustice to both parties. 
The truth is, the instinct of the privileged persons in question is very 
considerably more shrewd and well-informed than their tastes ; and, in 
consequence, though they admire modern pictures, they buy only ancient 
ones. They will lay you out their five or ten thousand pounds in a year 


——— 


1828. ] Old Pictures. 37 


on works by the old masters; and then, in order to preserve, at the 
same time, their assumed characters, as patrons and protectors of living 
artists, they pay, almost without a murmur, their ten guineas a year, 
to provide a place for the exhibition and sale of the said artists’ pro- 
ductions ! 

Let it not be supposed that we are uttering the language of com- 
plaint. We have too deep a reverence for art, and too firm a belief in 
the irrepressible vitality of the principles out of which it springs, and 
upon which it rests, to suppose that it requires any thing ‘in the shape 
of private support to keep it where it is, or to lift it to where it might 
and ought to be. No private patron ever yet made a first-rate artist, or 
even helped to make one: though kings, princes, popes, and even 
ministers of state, wielding the resources, and acting in the name of a 
whole people, may have done so, and undoubtedly have. In fact, to 
speak an ungracious truth, for any private person to set himself up, or 
permit others to set him up, as a patron of the arts, is altogether an 
impertinence ; because it is altogether a pretence, which neither springs 
from, nor can lead to good. But for kings, princes, and ministers of 
state to patronize art, in their public capacities, is a different case. It 
cannot perhaps be ranked among their duties ; but it is one of the very 
few privileges of their class and calling, which they can exercise with 
honour to themselves, and with benefit to those over whom they rule. 
In fact, art is the offspring of a national call for and craving after it. 
Where that is not, art can never exist in a very high degree: and where 
that is, nothing can long repress or keep it back. 

To arrive at once at the subject which has induced us to touch upon 
this matter, the British Institution has, since its establishment, produced 
no positive effect whatever on the progress or the prospects of art in this 
country: for what no one man can stir a step towards producing, no 
association of men can arrive at—we mean where the case relates to a 
moral result. A company of private individuals may build a bridge, 
or found an hospital: because any one of them can lay down a stone 


_ towards the one, or a guinea towards the other. But a hundred or a 


thousand private patrons of art, collected into a body, and calling them- 
selves by any name they please, cannot produce a single artist, or lift 
art a single step above the level on which it has for these last hundred 
years been grovelling. A patron may make the fortune of a painter ; 
and an association of patrons may produce an exhibition of a hundred, 
or a thousand, or ten thousand pictures. But “a crowd is not com- 

y;’ and an exhibition of pictures is not art, and no more leads to 
it than proceeds from it. 

Do we hold, then, that the British Institution has done no good, and’ 
that we (the British public) had been better, or as well, without it? 
Not at all. If it had produced no other result than the exhibition of 
old pictures, now open to public inspection at its rooms in Pall Mall ; 
all the money that it has cost its aristocratic promoters, and all the jea~ 
lousies, and envies, and heart burnings, and intrigues, and what not, that 
it has, from time to time, cherished and called forth in those breasts 
(wherever they are to be found) in which there is room for nothing 
better, we should look upon as well laid out. In a word, it has, by 
means of these annual exhibitions of the élite of the works of old masters 
in the private collections of England, done more good than—than what, 
shall we say?—why, than even the Royal Academy itself has done 

E 2 


28 Old Pictures (Jury, 


harm by its exhibitions ; for we are willing to admit, that all the amount 
of mingled shame, pity, and disgust, which these last-named displays | 
of pictorial pretensions have called forth year after year for the last half 
century, added to the weight of moral misery which has sprung from 
the creation of the herd of “artists” necessary to produce these displays, 
does not perhaps equal in magnitude the permanent delight and imstruc- 
tion, and the prolific results of these, which have arisen from that admir- 
ing contemplation of old pictures, which the general public could have 
accomplished by no other means, and of which pictures, for the most part, 
they were not even aware of the existence. 

We propose, chiefly for the sake of those of our distant readers who 
may not be able to inspect these admirable productions for themselves, 
to take a hasty glance at a few of the most choice (for they are all choice) 
among those which have been selected for the exhibition just opened. 
And be it expressly undersood, that we do this in the character of 
lovers of art, merely—not as connoisseurs of it, for we profess to know 
little or nothing about it, still less as artists—for we practise it not at all. 
So that in whatever terms we may, in conformity with the critical cus- 
toms of the day, express ourselves in regard to any object of our notice, 
all that we seek and hope to do is, to convey to those at a distance 
from these objects, what we ourselves feel or think when present before 
them. ; 

Here is a collection of a hundred and ninety pictures ; every one of 
which has been placed here solely on account of its merit. Now this, 
we take it, is more than can be said with truth of any other existing 
collection, public or private. The thing never before happened, except 
in the previous collections of a similar kind at this place. And the 
consequence has been, that, taking the same number of pictures, no 
other collection that at present exists, is at once so perfect and so inte- 
resting, looking at them as a general collection, comprising all the 
schools. We shall notice the most striking, in the numerical order in 
which they are arranged. 

No.1. The Duchess of St. Croix. VannyKEe.—WNo. 2. The Spanish 
Courtesan. Muriti0o.—tThe first-named of these pictures is one of the 
most refined, elegant, and characteristic productions of the most refined 
and elegant person, in his way, that ever lived. It is a whole-length 
portrait, the size of life. The courtly lady whom it represents, is in 
the act of retiring from the open air into an apartment, which is con- 
cealed from the vulgar gaze by a rich drapery—which latter she is 
pressing aside with her exquisite hand, as she places her foot on the 
rising step by which it is approached. Her robe, which envelopes her 
whole person, excepting only her face and hands, is one great dead mass 
of black velvet, which, however, in no respect impairs the lightness of 
the whole picture, but only gives it that solidity and dignity which (in 
the eyes of this most courtly of artists) become the subject: for “with 
him a court, and its privileged denizens, were no more to be approached 
or comprehended by the vulgar, than a fortified city is by its avowed 
enemies. These latter may stand outside the fortifications if they please, 
and gaze upon the outworks ; but, so far from entering, they must not 
‘be permitted even to understand the nature of that which keeps them 
out. The whole air of this exquisite portrait is the very acmé of that 
conventional refinement which never prevailed, either before or since, 
in such perfection as during the period of this great painter of artificial 


1828.) Old Pictures. 29 


life. Perhaps the finest practical contrast that was ever presented in 
reference to matters of this kind, is to be found (by pure accident, we 
imagine) in the above-named picture, and that which hangs in imme- 
diate contact with it—< The Spanish Courtesan’—as it is somewhat 
pompously and affectedly styled in the catalogue. It is a picture (a 
portrait it must be, for nothing so absolutely true to life was ever yet 
created by the pencil) of a young woman, leaning (/olling is the word, 
but it is a vulgar one, like the thing) out of window, and smiling, 
with a sort of modest impudence, at some (supposed) passer by, in the 
street below ; while another female, much older, is half-retiring behind 
the half-open shutter, and laughing outright, but trying to stifle the 
sound of her laugh with her handkerchief. The contrast (as we have 
hinted above) between these two “ladies of easy virtue;” and she above 
them, whose “virtue,” we may be sure, whatever else it might be, was 
anything but “easy”’—between the Courtesan and the court beauty— 
is, beyond expression, interesting and instructive ; for the truth of deli- 
neation is equal in the artists—Murillo being to uncourtly nature pre- 
cisely what Vandyke was to that of the court. This exceedingly fine 
specimen of one of Murillo’s styles—and his finest—is probably a new 
importation from Spain, as it belongs to Lord Heytesbury. It is an 
admirable work, having that look and sentiment of nature about it 
which, we will venture to say, was never achieved in absolute perfection, 
in connexion with this class of subject, by any artist whatever, except 
Murillo. 

No.5. Innocent the Tenth. Veuasquez.—This is another most won- 
derful portrait. Those who would see embodied in one form the united 
spirits of popery and witchcraft, may go and gaze upon this portrait. 
We wonder how “some persons” dare to sit for their pictures: but the 
reason is, that they are as shallow and short-sighted as they think them- 
selves sagacious and profound. Above all, they are believers in maxims, 
which are as often “the foolishness of nations” as they are its “ wisdom ;” 
and there are among all nations maxims which indicate that “there is 


‘no trusting to appearances.” Now the truth is, there is no trusting to 


any thing else. He is a shrewd hand who said, that “language was 
given to man to conceal his thoughts.” And truly we have need of 
some such instrument, seeing that.that dumb orator, the face, unlike all 
other orators, always speaks the truth, whether asked or not, and never 
speaks any thing else. But let us turn our thoughts to “metal more 
attractive.” 

No. 6. Hippomanes and Atalanta. Gu1po.—No. 7. Landscape, with 
Catile and Figures. Cuavups.—The first of these is one of the most 
exquisite little gems we have ever seen. It is of miniature size, and is 
all made up of “airs and graces ;” but they are the airs and graces of 
nature, or at least of that divine mythology which grew out of a pro- 
found love for nature. What is still more remarkable in this picture: is 
the grandeur of effect which results from a steady.contemplation of it. 
In this respect, it differs scarcely at all from one of gallery.size. And 
the reason in a great measure is, that grace and expression (which are 
the essences of which this picture is composed) have nothing whatever 
to do with size. They are things which address themselves to the mind 
alone—which knows nothing of size except through the medium of the 
touch. Toa person born without the faculty of touch, the sight of a 
mountain and a mole-hill would produce much the same impression. 


30 Old Pictures. [Juxy, 


The other picture, we have named above, is nature itself: but still 
refined up to that exquisite pitch of perfection which, of its sole self, 
nature could never attain: like the “white wonder” of a court lady’s 
hand. 

No. 18. The Death of Regulus ; No. 19. Landscape, with Travellers ; 
No. 25. Landscape, with Mercury and the Woodman. Sauvaror Rosa. 
—It would be difficult to meet with, in any one collection, three so fine and 
characteristic productions of this artist, as the above-named. We greatly 
prefer either of them to the one which is better known, and which is 
also in this collection— The Job (No. 61)—The first displays, in a scene 
of many figures, that moral energy with which the soul of Salvator was 
ripe ; the second shews the uncompromising truth with which he loved 
to delineate what he actually saw; and the last presents us with a fine 
example of that wild grandeur of imagination with which (when the 
mood was on him) he could work up a scene of external nature into 
one bearing all the air of romance, without materially departing from its 
actual truth. 

No. 32 and 36. Landscape, and Sea Port. CuaupE.— This is a 
lovely pair of pictures, small and simple, but beaming and glowing with 
all the exquisite characteristics of this most refined and natural of senti- 
mentalists. They are as true as they are ideal: for, paradoxical as it may 
sound,-Claude combined in his works these seemingly opposite but really 
identical attributes. That which is ideal must necessarily be true—or 
it is nothing. The creations of Mr. Martin’s pencil—fine, and, in many 
respects, extraordinary and unrivalled as they are—are not ideal; because 
they are not true. This is their great and crying sin. They appeal to 
and delight the imagination, just as the Arabian Nights do, and on the 
same principle; but they touch not the sensibilities and the heart, as the 
last-named works do—because they have less of that which is true 
mixed up with them. The works of Claude touch us at once more nearly 
and more vividly than any, or than all these ; because they are truth 
itself. Nay, we will not shrink from saying, that, for the most part, 
they touch us more nearly and vividly than the actual scenes of exter- 
nal nature itself do, because they consist of the details of those scenes, 
arranged and selected merely, but in no other way changed, by the hand 
of perfect taste and consummate art. In short, they affect us on the 
same principle that the Venus de Medici does, which is the most ideal 
work in existence, simply because it is the most true. 

No. 33 and 35. St. Rufina and St. Justin. Murii10.—It is a pity 
to call two such charming realities as these by the name of saints. They 
are among the most brilliant single figures that we have any where 
seen of this, in some respects, most exquisite of all painters. Indeed 
they combine, so far as a single figure can, more of the two charac- 
teristic beauties of his manner than any we remember; namely, the 
touching truth of his intellectual expressions, and the airy grace, light- 
ness, and elegance of his handling. In colouring, too, they are exqui- 
sitely sweet and tender—but somewhat cold. If the student of art 
would learn what the ideal in intellectual expression is not, and what the 
same quality in colouring and handling zs, he may look at the best speci- 
mens of this class of Murillo’s works, who probably never painted a face 
that was not a copy from nature, or a cloud, a drapery that was. 

No..39. The Madonna. Sasso FERRAr0.—This may be pointed out 
as one of the most unaffected and natural productions of a school that, 


1828.] Old Pictures. 31 


-with all its merits, included but little of these two rarest and most valu- 
-able of all qualities in painting. The effeminate style of Carlo Dolce 
-and Sasso Ferrato has been thought to be well adapted at least to those 
particular subjects which they so almost invariably chose, namely, the 
Magdalens and Madonnas of holy writ. But it was not so. To deli- 
neate the true characteristics of female form and expression, under what- 
ever circumstances, requires a feeling for them any thing but feminine. 
No female hand ever painted, or ever will paint, the true character of a 
finely-endowed female face—because she cannot, in the nature of things, 
feel that character. 

At this point of the catalogue, fine things so crowd upon us, that we 
are at a loss how either to notice them or to pass them by. No. 40, is 
a Virgin and Child, by Gentio Romano, which is exquisite ; 42, a noble 
Portrait by Titian, of his own daughter ; 46, a most curious and admi- 
rable piece called the Water Seller, by Velasquez ; 47, a grand and 
striking piece of Paul Veronese’s splendid colouring—Mars and Venus ; 
49, a most lovely gem, by Garafolo, full of mingled sweetness and 
dignity ; 52, a fine Portrait of Anthony Trieste, by Vandyke ; and 
59, a curious design of Raphael’s, carried into execution by Spagno- 
letto, called an Incantation.— All these fine works we can merely com- 
mend to the spectator’s best attention, and pass on to one which has 
long been held forth as among the most extraordinary productions of 
one of the most extraordinary of Painters: we allude to 60, Vanity and 
Modesty ; Leonarvo pa Vinc1.—This artist is one who excites more 
of our love than admiration. There is a sweetness about his best things, 
which, if it redeems them from insipidity, keeps them from ascending 
into the regions of grandeur or passion. This celebrated production is 
‘known to all the world by the engravings from it ; and there is no 
denying that the picture is precisely answerable to the notion of it 
received through the medium of the burin. But it is no more than 
answerable. We are no better acquainted with it now, than we were 
when we had only seen it at second-hand: which shews that its merit 
consists in one thing merely—expression ; and this one neither very 
intelligible, nor that portion of it which is so, very appropriate. Never- 
theless, it is an exquisite work in its way ; and being so, it is idle to 
complain of it for not being something else. 

No. 63. Assumption of the Virgin. Muri1tL0.—Small as this is—amere 
miniature—we cannot help dwelling upon it for a moment, on account 
of its rare and touching beauty. It is remarkable that the freedom, 
breadth, and lightness of this lovely little gem are in no degree impaired 
by the smallness of its size. It is a miniature, with all the effect of a 
gallery picture. And what is perhaps more remarkable still, that effect 
is but little injured by the total absence of any thing like refinement; 
elegance, or even passion, in the face of the Virgin—which is that of a 

erfectly plain, and even coarse English woman. . Notwithstanding this 
(which is often a fault, as far as it goes, in Murillo’s pictures of poetical 
subjects of this nature), the whole comes upon you like a seraphic 
vision; on account of the exquisitely ideal nature of the colouring and 
the handling. 
No. 66 and 69. Beggar Boys. Munir10.—These are the two won- 
derful pictures which form part. of the Dulwich gallery. One of them 
(that in which one of the boys is munching a piece of bread) is, perhaps, 
finer than any thing of the kind in existence; Though these pictures 


32 Old Pictures. [Juxy, 


are better known than most of the celebrated ones in this country, they 
are such extraordinary productions, that we shall make no apology for 
describing them to our readers. We shall do so, however, in the words 
of a little volume, entitled “ British Galleries of Art,’—not having 
better at hand to put in their place. “'The picture upright, and not large, 
and it represents two boys,—one half-lying on the ground, and looking 
up at his companion with an intense and yet vacant expression of 
pleasure in his countenance ; while the other is standing “ munching” 
a great piece of bread that he can scarcely hold in his mouth, and 
looking sulkily down at him on the ground, as if displeased at the 
other’s pleasure. The merit of these two faces consists in the absolute, 
the undisguised and unadorned truth of their expression, and its won- 
derful force and richness ; and also in the curious characteristicness of 
it. By the truth of expression, I mean the fidelity with which the 
painter has represented what he intended to represent; and by its cha- 
racteristicness I mean the adaptation of that expression to the circum- 
stances. The persons represented are in that class and condition of 
life in which the human qualities of man scarcely develop themselves 
at all ; in which he can scarcely be regarded in any other light than the 
most sagacious of the animal tribe. Accordingly, the expression of 
these boys respectively—trich, vivid, and distinct as they are—are almost 
entirely animal. There is nothing in the least degree vulgar about 
them ; for vulgarity is a quality dependent on society ; and these have 
no share in society, and consequently are without any of its results, 
good or bad. In fact, their wants and feelings are merely animal, and 
the expressions to which these give rise are correspondent. The delight 
of the one is that of the happy colt sporting on its native common ; 
and the sulkiness of the other is that of the ill-conditioned cub growling 
over its food. ‘At the feet of the boy who is eating, stands a dog, look- 
ing up expectantly ; and there is nearly as much expression in his coun- 
tenance as in either of the others. I would not lay much stress on 
this ;—but does it not seem to have been introduced purposely, that we 


might compare the expression of this third animal with that of the two © 


others, and see that there is; and is intended to be, little difference 
between the expressions, except in degree, and that they are all alike 
animal ?—I conceive this picture to be in its way entirely faultless, and 
to have required as rare a faculty to produce it (as rare, but not as 
waluable) as perhaps any thing else in art. The companion picture, 
on nearly a similar subject, is excellent, but not to be compared with 
this.” 

74. Landscape, &c. Paut Porrer.—This is the only specimen ‘in 
the collection of Paul Potter’s rare and exquisite works ; but it is a very 
charming one. The whole fore-ground is occupied by a group of various 
cattle—cows, sheep, goats, &c. ; the expressions of which are so exqui- 
sitely true, that, with the exception of those of Cuyp, you cannot safely 
turn to any other pictures on similar subjects after them. It is like 
turning from the face of a living beauty to look upon a portrait of her ;— 
which never answers. There is something almost affecting in the look 
of the two heifers, one of which is leaning over the shoulder of the 


other,—as you may sometimes see two sweet sisters. The still life of . 


this delightful work is no less exquisite than the rest. On the left, there 
is a cottage beyond some trees ; and, on the right, a distance, such as no 
one but Paul Potter ever painted. i Raita 


' 
} 
: 


1828.] Old Pictures. 33 


© 96. A Cavalier on Horseback. Wouvermans.—There is something 
quite extraordinary in the effect of this little picture. At a little dis- 
tance you can see nothing but the cavalier and his bonny boy, passing 
_ (for they actually seem to pass) along the extreme edge of the picture in 
front, against the light grey sky. But, on looking closely, you find a 
distance that changes the whole, from a mere figure, into a perfect scene. 
Nothing can be more striking than the effect of this—especially when 
et observe the slightness and simplicity of the means which pro- 
uce it. 

' 80. A Village Feast. Tenrers.—Notwithstanding the infinite variety 
of the “ Village Feasts” of this artist, they are all (like their originals) so 
much alike—* each being another, yet the same”—that they will not 
bear describing now-a-days. The present is one of the most delightful 
and characteristic that can any where be seen. In lightness and elegance 
of truth, and sweetness of colouring, it is equal to Murillo ; and in tone 
it is clear as a bell. 

83. Cattle in a Landscape. Cuyp.—The effect of light in this admi- 
rable picture is perfect. It is not one of those exquisite effusions (so to 
speak) of this artist’s, where every thing—the clouds, the sky, the trees, 
the figures, the ground, even the stones themselves—seem saturated 
with sunshine ; but one of those in which the light seems to lie upon the 
surface of every thing, ready to disappear in a moment, on some cloud 
passing over the source of it. 

The ten pictures, from 98 to 108, will bear and repay the most minute 
examination. We have seldom, if ever, seen, within the same space, so 
many exquisite little gems. Passing them over with a mere glance, we 
hasten to that work which strikes us as being, beyond any comparison, 
the finest in this collection. Indeed, for our own parts, we are disposed 
to look upon it as the very finest production of its kind that we have ever 
beheld ; and finer in various particulars, no less than as a consistent 
whole ;—finer in conception, in design, in colouring, and, above all, in 
the intense poetical power and beauty of its general effect—We 
allude to 
/ 112. The Nursing of Hercules. Tirnrorrt.—We had previously seen 
some things by this master which indicated a very extraordinary degree 
of what may be called the poetical power of painting, but none which 
led us to look for so noble an effort of that power as the one before us. 
The fable is no doubt well known to our readers ; and we will venture to 
7 that even the imaginations which created that fable, and the host of 
others which make up the beautiful mythology of those times, never 
formed a more triumphant conception of the subject in question than the 
one which is here embodied into a visible form, answering in all respects 
to that conception. We must not venture even to begin a description of 
‘this picture, as it would lead us far beyond our limits. Indeed, if there 
were no other reasons for our silence as to its details, we should remain 
so, in despair of doing any thing like justice to our feelings respecting 
them, without incurring the charge of extravagance. We will, however, 
not shrink from saying that we think the female figure a more trium- 
phant specimen of art (as a single figure) than any thing else that we are 
acquainted with—not excepting Titian’s very best ofa similar kind, which 
form portions of the Blenheim Gallery. 

120. The Return from the Chase. Wouvermans.—This is a work 
combining, with all the ordinary qualities of Wouvermans’ style, others 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 31. F 


34 Old Pictures. [Juny, 


which we scarcely thought it possessed. We now refer chiefly to the 
landscape portion of the picture. The figures are full of delicacy and 
beauty, and, in several instances, include a very extraordinary truth of 
individual expression ; a quality not always paramount in Wouvermans’ 
figures—at least the human ones. The two that are conspicuous in this 
respect are, the blind beggar, on the right, and the boy sitting on the 
ground, on the left, and making active war on certain troublesome com- 
panions, who seem to have established colonies on various parts of his 
person. But our chief reason for noticing this picture is, the character 
of the landscape portion of it, which is of a higher class than any we 
remember to have seen in this artist’s works. There is at once a gran- 
deur and a lightness about it which remind us of Claude. There is, how- 
ever, a coldness—a want of vitality—which is injurious to the truth, no 
less than the beauty of the general effect. It is by crowding his canvass 
with figures, that Wouvermans usually contrives to hide or get over this 
defect ; and it is probable that, in the present instance, he refrained from 
doing so expressly with the view of making the landscape part the prin- 
cipal point of attraction—perceiving, no doubt, that he had succeeded in 
giving to that a character not common with him. His picture would have 
been finer, in all respects, if he had avoided this, and had filled it with 
his usual proportion of active and human interest. It would then have 
presented the rare case of a picture in which the landscape and the 
figures act mutually upon each other and upon the spectators; and the 
effect to the latter would have been increased in much more than the 
mere arithmetical proportion : for if the lover of pictures will call to mind 
his experience in these matters, he will find that, in almost every case 
where a strong impression has been produced upon him, it has resulted 
either from the landscape or the figures—scarcely ever from both united. 
The Peter Martyr of Titian—and, indeed, all Titian’s landscapes—are 
exceptions to this; and all Paul Potter’s, too, so far as relates to the 
cattle. But with these exceptions, the rule is almost universally true 
of the old masters. 

127. A Woody Scene, with Sportsmen. Hackert and VANDEVELDE, 
— This is, in it its way, a most capital production. It represents one of 
those spots of absolute seclusion which are only to be met with in the 
heart of a “ forest old ;’—lofty trees, spiring up like columns high above 
and out of the limits of the picture, and carrying the imagination with 
them, till they seem to reach a supernatural elevation: while, between 
their stems, you catch glimpses into an interminable distance, which 
answers to the imaginary height, both in extent and in vagueness. On 
the other hand, when the attention is confined to the mere literal extent 
of the scene, a directly contrary effect is produced. You feel yourself, 
for the time being, shut in from all communion but with your own 
thoughts and fancies ; and are only reminded that there is a world of 
life and light elsewhere, by the gleams of sunshine that penetrate through 
one small opening, and by the human figures that seem to have Jost (not 
found) their way into this “temple of the woods.” It may be asked; 
perhaps, whether we suppose that the painters ixtended to produce all 
these effects upon the spectator. Of this we can know nothing, and need 
care as little. It is the privilege of genius, and one of its surest cha- 
racteristics, to produce more and other effects than it seeks to produce ; 
and that the above picture is calculated to produce these which we have 
described, can scarcely be questioned, when, in point of fact, it has now 
produced them. 


1828.) Old Pictures. 35 


141. The Gallery of Teniers. TEnNreRrs.—This is one of those works 
which are worth notice more on account of their curiosity than their 
merit. There is little or no talent displayed in this picture ; but it is 
highly curious and interesting to see the mode in which an artist like 
Teniers (who, with all his wonderful merits, is as much of a mannerist 
as it is possible for a man of genius to be) has mixed up the characteristic 
qualities of his own style with that of the various other artists respec- 
tively whose productions he has here copied on a miniature scale. 

158. Holy Family, in a Landscape. Trr1an.—This is a noble excep- 
tion to what we have said in connexion with No. 120, relative to the 
almost universal practice of artists endeavouring to concentrate the 
spectator’s attention on one department or the other of their works of 
this class, instead of fairly dividing it between both. It was, generally 
speaking, a most judicious fear which made them adopt this course ; 
but it was one which Titian did not entertain, because he did not need 
to do so. He was a rare instance of the attainment of supreme excel- 
lence in these two almost opposite departments of arts: if, indeed, any 
one department of it can be said to oppose itself to any other, and if (as 
we believe) it does not require the very same kind of powers to succeed 
in each and in all ; application and practice alone determining the quantity 
of success as proportioned to the natural endowment. Rubens was the 
only other instance, among the old masters, of an artist, in the highest 
class of historical composition, producing, when he chose to attempt it, 
landscapes of a corresponding character. But even he did not unite the 
highest excellencies of the two classes of composition on one canvass—as 
Titian has done in this and many other of his works. The picture before 
us reaches to the very height of historical grandeur. The Virgin is 
seated in the centre of the fore-ground, with an air of maternal dignity 
that is sweetly tempered by the grave tenderness of her mien; Saint 
John is approaching her playfully, on the right; while Joseph seems to 
fill and inform the whole left department of the front with the fine air of 
contemplative wisdom which his look and attitude indicate. In the 
middle distance are seen shepherds with their flocks, winding away among 
the broken ground, of which all this portion of the scene is composed ; 
and the ‘hale is shut in by a majestic distance of dark rocks, and rising 
points of ground, that reach almost to the very top of the picture, leaving 
searcely any space for sky or clouds. The production is a truly fine one, 
and may vie with almost any of its class for majesty of general effect, 
Hlended with and growing out of individual truth of detail. 

Our limits remind us that we must close this notice without indulging 
ourselves in any farther descriptive detail. We most not conclude, how- 
ever, without running through the catalogue again, with the view of 
merely naming a few more of the works which merit the most particular 
attention in this exquisite collection. No. 14 is a triple portrait, by 
Titian, which is quite extraordinary for the manner in which a sort of 
type is furnished to each head, in the shape of an animal, the physiogno- 
mical features of which correspond with those of the human head above 
it. The three heads are those of Charles the Fifth, the Pope Paul, and 
Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara ; and the types of them respectively are a 
lion, a wolf, and a dog. It is impossible for any portraits to be more 
perfectly individualized than each of these are respectively ; and yet, in 
each case, the resemblance between the human and the animal is wonder- 
ful. No. 16 is a noble piece of chiaro-scuro, by Guercino ; and the design 

F 2 


36 Old Pielures: Juy, 


and expression are quite correspondent. Among the mere landscapes, 
there are several of exquisite truth and beauty, and others of wonderful 
force and spirit. All those of Ruisdael are of the first class of his works; 
there are two by Hobbema (122 and 135) that are perfect in their way ; 
Vanderneer has four night-scenes (91, 132, 150, 169) of rare merit ; and 
there is one large piece by Cuyp (145), which, if our limits would per- 
mit, we should offer a detailed description. Then here are several admi- 
rable sea-pieces by Vandervelde and Backhuysen ; and a set of five most 
astonishing sketches by Rubens (159 to 163) ; and, finally, some of those 
singular specimens of Da Hooge, which produce an effect. of reality, by 
means of light and shade, that no other artist has surpassed. 

Let us conclude our notice of these exquisite works by repeating, that, 
while the Directors of the British Institution continue to furnish us 
annually with a collection of old pictures equal in merit and value to 
these, they will have a claim upon our gratitude, which may fairly set at 
nought all the carpings of all the critics and academicians extant, on all 
their other proceedings. They may even go the length of giving an 
annual prize to Popkins, or withholding one from Hopkins, with perfect 
impunity: for we shall always be ready to insist, on their behalf, that 
nothing they can do, in reference to living artists, will be capable of 
counteracting the benefit anddelight they will thus afford us, through the 
medium of dead ones. 


A LEAF FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 


An accident that happened to me some little time ago deserves to be 
recorded in these pages. To begin with my own portrait—It is well 
known what age is attributed to me by the Register-book ; and though, 
perhaps, I may be delicate on that point, yet I will stand out against 
many good friends of mine, and declare that such an age is very manly 
and appropriate, not one whit too advanced. I have been married, and 
indeed am or may be still so. Marriage is an odd conventional treaty, 
and the less said of it the better. My wife and I went on for a short 
time in an uneasy manner ; for her temper (as I thought) was ricketty, 
and she had strange notions about living in London, and such things. 
It seems to me that I was a very compliant man in those days, and, with- 
out doubt, behaved very kindly toher. But it would not answer. She 
asked for a separate maintenance, and I granted it her. 

Whoever has once been a family man is sure to be full of crotchets as 
a bachelor. The first independence leads him into puerilities. *Gad! 
how he travels the country, and spends money without accounting for it! 
What clubs he enters! what parti-coloured clothes he wears !—My first 
act was to become a mason ; then, as an energetic man, I was elevated 
to the office of secretary to two glee, one beef-steak, three debating, and 
seven benefit societies. I chuckled through life, and believed myself one 
of the jolliest dogs in creation. But these were the freaks of a season. 
The reaction had a marvellous effect. From a gay, devil-may-care fellow, 
I fell into a stupid moroseness, attended by paroxysms of hysterical 
whims. My joviality was not cut short by gradual retrenchments, but 
at “one fell swoop.” Off went my claret surtout. Many were the retire- 
ments read by my successors in office, when poor Joshua was elected an 


1828. ] A Leaf from my Autobiography. 37 


honorary member. My diminution in all matters was great, and my 
condition was soon accounted littte better than civil death. Aye! and 
what despondency followed! what strange notions of abandonment and 
solitude! ~ As a recluse, 1 wandered through some years of my prime, 
and have only of late mixed myself with the herd of my fellow-creatures. 
Now am I constantly possessed with longings and eager wishes—I know 
not what about, but sufficiently marked to tell me that I am not a con- 
tented man. A parcel of barren tenets and foolish theories makes up 
the round of my contemplations ; and I frankly confess, that a more 
unreasonable reasonable being is not easily to be found. The want of a 
steady friend and helpmate is now as clearly felt by me as it was for- 
merly the subject of my scorn. But the word “wife” is a hedgehog 
of a thousand bristly terrors. I cannot turn it any way, but it still con- 
tinues horrible ; and yet, conscious of my necessity, I deem the world’s 
arrangement a bad one that provides no fit substitute for the ecclesiastical 
remedy. Wife !—that usurper of your thoughts, as of right ; dabbling in 
the little mysteries of your mind; and diminishing the stock of your 
own ideas, by sharing some, and appropriating others.—Wife !—with 
all the attendant increase of household linen and women servants !— 
Wife! that makes herself the substantive, while you are drawn in as a 
paltry adjective, to give her respectability and a name—fortunate if you 
do not sink down to a mere expletive !—No, no; I could not endure the 
delights of uxoriousness again. How provoking, and yet how pleasant, 

to think of the vast mass of population scattered over this green earth, 
with their different passions, tendencies, and faculties! Of all these, 
how many must there be so closely adapted to one’s-self, by so near a 
resemblance, so happy a sympathy, as to stir up every energy in one’s 
system, if by chance one or more of such brothers could be discovered. 
There are, I know, some of my fellow-men, whom, could I but meet, I 
should love for ever. My heart is attracted to an invisible corner of the 
globe—where, perhaps, in a barbarous land, lives the partner of my 
individual nature, subject to my frailties, breathing my hopes, and 
unkindly separated from me by nothing but the space between the places 
of our birth. This has been my favourite belief; and to seek from 
amongst the creatures by whom I am surrounded some one thus allied to 
me by coincidence of character, is, and long has been, the endeavour in 
which my best pleasures are centred.-Now to my story. 

It was in the Holyhead Mail that I was travelling up to town, when 
one evening, shortly after dusk, the door was opened by the guard, for 
the admission of a female passenger. The coach had been pulled up 
by the side of a respectable gateway, and two ladies, as it might be, or 
a lady and her maid, stood in consultation close by. ‘ You had better 
come in, Hannah,” said one of them, “ you'll find it very cold outside.”” 

“ If you please, Ma’am,” returned the other, “ I am afraid of being 
unwell, if I do not sit in the open air; I’d rather go outside, indeed, 
Ma’am.” 

“ Very well, then,” replied the mistress, “do as you please.” Upon 
which she called the guard, and, in answer to a question which I could 
not hear, something about “an elderly gentleman,” reached my ear, 
with a very unpleasant accent. The lady got into the coach, immersed, 
for some time, in the midst of shawls and cloaks, from which having at 
last extricated herself, she quietly subsided into a seat opposite my own. 
What devil possessed me, I can never say, but the important hour 


38 A Leaf from my Autobiography. Jury, 


seemed to have arrived. I had been for a long while ruminating alone 
in the coach, and, between sleeping and waking, had collected, in greater 
abundance and fancifulness than usual, those romantic visions which 
were become a natural part of my mind; and, without any other 
prompter than instinct, it seemed to me that this stranger was the ideal 
being I had feigned to myself, as representing in another person, the 
attributes and marks of my own character. Awkwardly at first, but 
tumultuously, and with much eloquence, as our conversation advanced, 
did I throw open the recesses of my spirit, to be recognised and reflected 
by my dear companion. She had to contend with the restrictions im- 
posed by the modesty of her sex, but I forgave them all, and saw through 
the transparent veil thus thrown over her real character. I assured, and 
I believe, convinced her, that we were made for each other ; the few 
monosyllables she uttered were perfect indexes of the truth of my state- 
ment ; and she listened to my fervid protestations with a generous silence 
that flattered my vanity. I was a happy man, I forgot the whole series 
of my past afflictions, and wrapt in the pleasure of my discovery, foresaw 
a conclusion to my life full of sentimental bliss, and real contentment.— 
What plans I formed, and what I communicated, need not now be told : 
the tender-hearted will imagine all I would divulge. The lady listened, 
and gently sighed, and suffered me to change my seat, so as to approach 
her more nearly ; and thus passed away some hours of most exquisite 
delight, of pleasure so intense as to overpower and fatigue me.—I fell 
presently asleep, with the lady by my side, perhaps overcome, like 
myself, with a gentle weariness. 

The coach stopped with a sudden jerk, and I started from my repose. 
I looked towards the window, and could discover that we had arrived at 
the town of Henley. Day had dawned, and thrifty folks were opening 
their shutters, as the town itself seemed yawning for its last time before 
the commencement of its daily occupations. Several idlers were loitering 
at the inn-door, unwashed, and stretching themselves. The guard passed 
the window, wrapped up in a night-kerchief, and blinking, with eyes 
scarce opened from their late dozing. All looked sleepy, head-achy, and 
uncleanly. Turning from this wretched prospect, I saw, for the first 
time, the lady’s hand still lodged in my own ; but—oh, horror ! what 
had never before occurred to me—it was the ominous hand, and the third 
finger, on which I observed the seal of all misery—a marriage ring! She 
was still asleep ; and, without disturbing her, I so changed my position 
as to catch a view of her features. Years had done something; but I 
could not be deceived ; the imperious expression still remained ;—it was 
my own wife ! 

I jumped from the coach, hurried into a chaise, and, during the con- 
tinuance of my journey, made oaths of eternal solitude. 


1828.] Vea ABQ 


CALAMITIES OF A CLERK; 


COMMUNICATED BY HIMSELF. 


“ By the world, I recount no fable!’—SHaKsPEARE. 


Unaccustomep as I am to public writing, and to any other arts of 
composition than those by which the phraseology of a day-book or a 
ledger is got up, I still cannot refrain from trying my pen at a piece of 
description which ought long ago to have been furnished by some of my 
equally-distressed and more gifted fellow-sufferers, the extensive class of 
persons distinguished by the name (itself, alas, most undistinguished !) 
of clerks. It is my object to recount, in my own individual, but far from 
peculiar case, some of the hardships and annoyances to which we 
prisoners of the counting-house are constantly exposed. I would ex- 
hibit to the public a bill of lading, as it were, of our heavy grievances, 
and an invoice of the amount of our complaint—such an invoice too, as 
shall not be liable to discount from being overcharged. I am encouraged in 
this task, by the hope that “ principals” may be urged to soften, in some 
degree, the rigours of employment ; though I am duly sensible that this 
hope may be fated to prove as vain as that which I once entertained, for 
six years together, of a trifling advance of salary. 

By way of being sufficiently methodical, I will go so far back as to 
state that I was born in London, of respectable parents, and a feeble 
constitution. My education, received at a well-frequented, though cheap 
academy, was rather limited in quantity, and not so well directed as it 
might have been. My father, a substantial small tradesman in the 
grocery line, and a very plain sort of man in most matters, had the mis- 
taken, but not uncommon notion, that his children should have “a 
finished education.” Mine was very soon finished, in one sense, for I was 
taken away from school at thirteen, crammed, as I was, with a chaotic 
mass of Latin accidence and syntax (which my memory and inclination 
speedily got rid of), and tolerably conversant with cyphering up to the 
rule of three inverse, besides being possessed of a smattering of bad 
French. Beyond this amount, I knew nothing: in truth, the Latin and 
French, as is usual, had absorbed by far the greater portion of the time. 
But these, if they were little understood at home, were very much 
admired ; and my father, in particular, thought me as refined as his own 
best lump sugar. The paleness of my face, and that proneness to a sitting 
posture, that I shewed in common with other boys of weak health, had 
often occasioned him jocularly to say, “ that I was cut out for a clerk ;” 
and he now seriously proceeded, but no doubt with the best intentions, to 
make me a partaker in that deplorable destiny. 

My father, among other things which he had no idea of, had none of 
“boys being idle ;’ and I was therefore hardly permitted to taste the 
sweets of that liberty, which consisted in what was called the run of the 
shop. Were I was fated to make, not a figure, but figures, in the capacity 
of junior clerk. The nature and limits of my oftice were no further 
defined than by the vague understanding that I was “to make myself 
useful.” The first week convinced me abundantly that those were not 
wanting who would make me so, whether I did it myself, or not. It will, 


40 Calamities of a Clerk. [Juty 


perhaps, convey no unlively idea of the multifarious nature of my daily 
engagements at that time, if I say that I positively cannot reckon up 
their number, in spite of the force of annoyance with which many of 
them severally impressed me. Among those which dwell most per- 
tinaciously in my remembrance, is the process of copying. It was part 
of my business to transcribe nearly all that of the house. Letters, in- 
voices, accounts current, accounts of sales, pro-formd statements, and 
many matters else, were all to be copied, and Jones (for I was familiarly 
distinguished by my surname) was alone expected to do them. I was 
thus, alternately, either a “‘ copying-machine” myself, or the animal that 
worked the machine. It should be observed also, that part of the cor- 
respondence to be copied (for our firm had an extensive foreign business 
as agents) consisted of illegible Dutch and German letters. Mr. Glad- 
win, the senior partner, wrote a hand past all understanding, but was not 
a whit the less astonished at the blunders in my conjectural transcrip- 
tions. He could not at all bring himself to imagine how so plain a thing 
as a letter of business could be mistaken. Then, as for the engagement 
of mind promoted by such a use of the pen, take the following as a 
sample :—“ Molasses are heavy ; but rums are looking up. In ashes, 
little has been done: pot are stationary, and pearl are of small value. 
Very considerable sales both of Irish and India pork are reported. In 
beef, some transactions have transpired, and bacon is much sought after. 
Butters are nominal.” The checking of calculations, as it was called, 
was another labour, that contributed materially to check my own growth. 
Every clerk in the office required his arithmetical processes to be gone 
into over again, and Jones was of course to work them out. Many a 
column of figures was my jaded eye obliged to ascend and descend half- 
a-dozen times, owing to my having made the amount greater by my own 
head-ache—and in many a subtraction did I fail, from being unable to 
take away from the operation the dizziness of my feelings. 

Such were, in part, my tribulations as an in-door clerk—but I was 
likewise at the same time an out-of-door one—because I was called 
neither. Among other perambulating pursuits of a like interest, I was 
invited to make myself the “ circulating medium” for distributing letters 
of routine among dealers and middle-men, and in general, all those mat- 
ters which might be called the “ unclaimed dividends” of employment, 
fell to my share. Was an errand to be run upon? Wasa broker to be 
gone after? Was the price given fora lot of indigo, or a parcel of 
tobacco to be got at? Was a circular to be distributed over the 
metropolis? Jones was in requisition, and Jones was expected to be 
always at hand. 

It happened to be the season of winter when I commenced my official 
martyrdom at Messrs. Gladwin and Co.’s, and my arrival there was 
marked by that of a cargo of Virginia tobacco in the London Docks, con- 
signed to their house. I was despatched accordingly to deliver the 
manifest, as it is termed, at the Excise Office and Custom House, and to 
check the weights of the several hogsheads taken at the king’s scales in 
the tobacco warehouse at the docks. In the performance of this latter 
duty, I had to stand, during every day of a tedious frosty week, from ten 
o’clock till four, on the benumbing stones, among an assemblage of black- 
guards, under the divers names of tide-surveyors, scale-men, foremen, 
and labourers, whose conversation was far too low and ribaldrous to be 
fitted for the ears of any youth decently brought up, and whose callous 


1826.] Calamities of a Clerk. 41 


jests, during their intervals of beer and cheese, were occasionally 
directed against my parchment face, or ink-tipped fingers. 
_ Whilst alluding to the London Docks, I cannot resist making a little 
digression, which may beguile for a moment both the reader’s tedium 
and my own pains of memory. Some years after the time of which I 
k, many and loud complaints were made by commercial people of 
he exorbitant shipping charges, or dues, extorted by the company owning 
those docks. One of our clerks, during a few minutes of unaccountable 
leisure, produced a scrap of counting-house wit in the following 


EPIGRAM 


ON THE LONDON DOCK COMPANY. 


“ Oh! how that name befits my composition.”—_SHAKSPEARE. 
° “ Dock Company!” choice name! and best 
: Of characteristic off-hits ! 
For merchants, by its dues opprest, 
Are dock'd of half their profits. 


But to return to my sad story. Harassing as were the details of my 
employment during the other four days of the commercial six, they were 
actually light in comparison with what I had to struggle and perspire 
through on the two foreign post-days, Tuesday and Friday. At these 
times, the Messieurs Gladwin were more than usually surly, and Mr. 
Makeweight more than usually bustling and directive ; while I, after 
such a merciless fatigue of copying by candle-light, as must have made 
me look like a false copy, as it were, of myself, was posted off to the Post 
Office, frequently at the hour of midnight, minus three minutes, which 
hree minutes were to suffice for the transit from our counting-house in 
Crutched Friars, to Lombard Street. I was thus required to unite the 

ification of running legs to that of a running hand ; and if sometimes 

[ failed to buffet through the opposing crowd before the fatal exclusive 

chime of the official dial, my return with the heap of letters was sure to 
be met with a still greater heap of reproofs. 

_ In this manner did I drudge through the first three months of my 

clerkship, being the period during which it had been arranged that I 

_ should remain “upon trial.” I had experienced it to be not only trial, 

but punishment at the same time. I had discovered that a counting- 

ew fag was far worse than a being of that syllable at school; and, 

under my persuasion of this, added to a feeling of indignation not yet 

( by the effects of office, I had well nigh resolved that my labours 

ould terminate with the above stipulated probation, and that, in going 

y, I would take care to tell Messrs. Gladwin and Co. “ my mind,” 

writing them a special letter. 


. “In ignominious terms, though clerkly couched.” 
But a hea was of another way of thinking, and nullified this inten- 
tion. 


‘ 


e had, perhaps, the largest share ever known of that persuasion 

unchangeably, by some tradespeople, that the state of a 

r 8 clerk is something of a superior order, something to be 

pee with an upward eye, as being at once important and genteel. 

had acted upon this prejudice, and was not likely to see through it 
M.M. New Series —Vou.VI. No. 31. G 


42 Calamities of a Clerk. [Juxy, 


by any light afforded by the complaints of one who had lived so few 
years in the world as myself. He was sure I should begin to taste the 
sweets of my employment by and by. He thought that “lads should 
expect to meet with a spice of difficulty, and ought not to care a fig for 
it.” Above all, he had no notion of boys being idle. I was made over, 
in continuity, to Messrs. Gladwin and Co. 

The first two years of my service were rated at nothing, though I 
was myself continually rated at a great deal. There had been a verbal 
understanding between the house and my father, to the indefinite pur- 
port, that I should receive, after the lapse of that time, a genteel salary. 
The event showed, that gentility, with Messrs. Gladwin and Co., com- 
menced at fifteen pounds a year. At least, a check for this amount 
(and J thought it a check in a double sense) was put into my hands, as 
a twelvemonth’s stipend—though I should observe that my liberal 
employers had the grace, or the policy, to call it a present, rather than a 
salary. This species of encouragement was admitted, even by pater- 
nal consent, to be somewhat in the small way: but a special arrange- 
ment, thereupon made, ensured to my exertions of the following year 
the compliment of twice the above sum; and the firm itself, of its own 
generous accord, proposed, subsequently, that my remuneration should 
take an annual ascent of ten pounds: by which example of arithmetical 
progression, I should have actually come to be in the receipt, when 
twenty-two years of age, of eighty pounds per annum. 

After an ample discharge of all the lowest functions of junior clerk, 
I was at length permitted to mount up into the situation of under book- 
keeper. In this new department, if there was less fatigue of body, there 
was far more labour of head. Those only who have practically known 
the dejection of spirit, and the general forfeiture of all healthful feeling, 
which are produced by long hours of confinement to a desk, with the 
chest narrowed forwards, and the throbbing head stooping down over 
a mass of white paper, and a labyrinth of black figures, while a dim 
and melancholy light half excludes the consciousness of day, and seems 
scarce willing to lend itself to the office it looks so sadly upon ; those 
only who have been forced to know this, can fully conceive what I now 
endured. I became a perfect martyr to the dizzing torments of day- 
book and ledger. The very habits of my occupation became a kind of 
disease. The mystical tyranny of arithmetic pursued me through every 
action and circumstance. If I sought the relief of variety and motion 
by undertaking some matter of business out of doors, the numerical 
process haunted me along the streets, and I found myself for ever 
making vain calculations, and fretting my brain with false additions, or 
multiplications without result! If I lay down at night, and my head 
exhausted itself into sleep, the phantoms of figures, preternaturally 
enlarged, and endowed with powers of movement and speech, danced 
in combinations horribly grotesque around me, and mocked me with 
threats quaint but dreary, for the presumption of endeavouring to over- 
come, singly, the force of numbers! The feebleness of my health was 
thus made worse by the strength of hypochondria, while the wonted 
paleness of my countenance was only qualified by a mixture with the 
saffron hue that is incidental to a bilious habit, and is always aggravated 
by a sedentary course of life. 
_ To such a thing as this was I reduced—with enough left of vitality 
to go on, but not enough of spirit to complain. To those who are 


1828:] Calainities of a Clerk: 43 


blessed with inexperience in these matters, it may seem extraordinary 
that “the firm” should have shewn no feeling for my infirmity. But, 
in a counting-house, health is a commodity of which the fluctuations are 
very little regarded, seeing they have no reference to a commercial 
value, and that no amount of the article admits of being carried out into 
amoney column. At least this is the case wherever commerce is pur- 
sued with the gambling excitement and sharkish avidity that stimulated 
these my principals, whom I do not accuse of wanting common huma- 
nity, when they overlooked my wretched condition, but rather of for- 
getting that virtue in the hurry of business. 

In fact, with our house (as with others too numerous to mention), the 
sole aim, intention, worth, object, nay, excuse of life, was business. The 
most ordinary requirements of nature—eating, drinking, sleeping—were 
rather connived at than recognised. For myself, my daily escape to an 
eating-house dinner appeared to be sometimes regarded as partaking of 
the idleness of a holiday; and, when business was pressing (which it 
nearly always was) the hour’s absence, which custom accords to the 
demands of the stomach, though passed amid the din and clatter, and 
vulgar vociferations of a chop-house, was grudged to me as much as if it 
had been an act of embezzlement. On such occasions, I was sure to 
hear direct observations that had been made, during the non-occupation 
of my desk, to the other clerks—such as that “Jones was of a tardiness 
that could not be endured’”—or to receive myself the indirect reproof of 
remarks about the importance of business, and the value of time. The 
proverb says, “ Time was made for slaves”—but I, though abundantly 
a slave, could never find time for half the things expected of me.. 

If the ordinary necessities of repose and food were thus hardly con- 
ceded to us by our principals, it will be easily believed that the article 
of amusement was not to be found in their code. The bare mention of 
the word would have chained their tongues with wonder, and riveted 
their eyes in fearful ecstacy. For me, the ever-soliciting round of 
London diversions was as the forbidden circle of the magician: or if I 
might be said to approach the border of it, this was but in so far as a 
few widely-distant visits to the play went—at half-price, and once, by 
way of extremity, under the fearfully-snatched excitement of half a pint 
of Cape wine. On this last occasion, I well remember that my resort to 
the theatre was for the purpose of seeing Shakspeare’s Othello, or rather 
half of it—and that I had been persuaded into the indulgence by two 
or three young men, clerks like myself, who had a sort of notion of 
Shakspeare, and used to speak of him with the respectful appellation of 
“our immortle bard.” The next day came an extra head-ache, and all 
that unsettled feeling which the unhappy are sure to experience when 
they have mixed, by accident, in a scene of splendour remote from their 
own condition. 

After this manner I slaved through the lingering bustle and dreamy 
activity of my vocation, till I had reached the possession of seventy 
pounds per annum in salary, and nothing in thanks. The continuance 
of my engagement with Messrs. Gladwin, Brothers, Son, and Make- 
weig t, seemed as fixed as the desks in their office, or even as the mul- 
tiplication table in their souls. But though my spirit had been broken 
down into the smallest fractional part, that little remnant of man did at 
length rise against the constant application of the divisor. One evening, 
after my day had been one of more than usual plodding and pen-driving, 

G 2 


44 Calamities of a Clerk. [Juxy, 


a trifling error in a balance (the result of hurry and exhaustion), pro- 
duced remarks of “This will never do”—‘ D’ye call this doing busi- 
ness ?”——and the like short sentences, ending with a murmured hint 
about “ diligence, or dismissal.’ My injured spirit for once rose supe- 
rior. I addressed to my task-masters the language of indignation, and 
took up the hat of departure. tie 

« Treason,” it is said, “ never prospers.” Rebellion does sometimes. 
This one act of defiance did more for me than seven years of service and 
submission.—Two days afterwards, I was re-engaged by Messrs. Glad- 
win and Co., at an advance in salary of fifty pounds a year. 

This incident, however, was one bright spot—one solitary ray of sun- 
shine, falling on a dark sea of general calamity. The fault was in my 
trade more than in the people that I met with. The vein that I had 
selected in the mine of fortune was a bad one. 

Suffice it to say, that I went on, but did not get forward. ‘The same 
desolate drudgery, the same heart-sickening routine, the same tedious 
bustle, the same mechanical handicraft, as it were, of the mind, still 
wrought their former effects, and made me as stupid as a chimney- 
sweeper, and dull as a November fog ; or as that inert mass of animal, 
worshipped in the city under the inexplicable name of “ a lively turtle.” 
The dependant name and office of clerk were become doubly odious to 
me, from their very necessity ; for I had now no other resource. My 
father, much against my own good-will, had sold that of his business, 
and with the produce had purchased an annuity for the support of him- 
self and my mother ; for, with regard to me, he held provision to be 
unnecessary, thinking that a clerk grew into a merchant as naturally as 
a plant into a tree, or a child into aman! At all events, as he observed, 
I “ had not been idle ;” and a person that is not idle must be doing some- 
thing for himself. To the last, he never could see the mistake he had 
committed in making me “ the thing I am.” é 

Forty years have now passed, and left me in the same forlorn condition 
—at least the only change I have experienced has consisted in “ variety 
of misery ;” for I have acquired, I scarce know how, the painful super- 
fluity of a wife and five small children. This last circumstance has 
hammered the final rivet upon my chains, and I must die in them, as I 
have lived—with this utmost hope, that my name may then be utterly 
forgotten by the few that have ever heard of it, rather than that it should 
be recorded on my tomb that I died at a certain date, and lived many 
years in the confidential service of Messrs. Griper and Mullins—or other 
firm, as per future contingence. 

In conclusion, let those who would not scorn the advice of an expe- 
rienced wretch, take my assurance that they cannot doom a child (how- 
ever arithmetical) to a worse life than that of a clerk. Let not a father, 
who has a business to give his son, force him to seek one, for the sake of 
a prejudice about superior gentility. Let every tradesman, in directing 
the pursuits of his child, prefer trade to commerce—the counter to the 
counting-house. If this recommendation be followed, the condition of a 
“ large and interesting class of sufferers” will be amended by their diminu- 
tion: their utility will then be more fully recognized by those who profit 
by it, and their claims to a living recompence established. Nothing is 
more certain, than thatthe number of our devoted tribe requires thinning 
down ; and that to promote the subtraction of clerks will be to stop the 
multiplication of misery. _ Ds 


CTech Ae ae rience owe 


1828.] nahi LONI 
A NIGHT AT SEMPIONE. 


“ Caprrau! and did he believe it?” 

« To be sure he did,” answered the French captain ; “ he loaded both 
pistols, and sate by his daughter’s bed during the whole night.” 

Nothing could exceed the merriment of the jolly little fellow, as he 
sat listening to the narrative of this excellent trick, played upon the 
Englishman. For convenience of laughter, he eased his waistcoat, put 
aside his plate of chamois, and rolling backward and forward in his chair, 
roared long and lustily. 

« Did he stay at Tourtemain, Captain ?” 

« I can’t say ;—he was making for Sempione, and had arranged to be 

here to-night ; but, by the lateness of the hour, I suppose he has given up 
his plan ; and, probably, has advanced no further than Brieg.” 
Crack! crack !—The postlilions whips sounded cheerily at a 
little distance, and wheels were heard quickly descending the hill. 
Almost immediately afterwards, a carriage drew up in front of the little 
hotel, and a loud parley was heard between the travellers and host. 

« Here, quick! Signor Benedetto !” cried the captain, whose national 
curiosity had taken him to the window.— Ma foi! how droll!” 

The little fat man waddled to his companion, and their sagacious heads 
were to be seen for some minutes close together. Mysterious words 
were evidently passing between them, and when they returned to their 
posts by the cheerful stove, the elder repressed the funny fellow’s dis- 
position to giggle by no other sign than a single “hush!” and an im- 
periously raised fore-finger. 

Then in came a tall thin Englishman, well enveloped in handker- 
chiefs and comforters, and with him a fine looking girl, who might be 
his daughter. He was in loud conversation with the landlord. 

“ No beds ?—Then what the devil shall we do ?—Can’t you knock up 
something for the young lady, think ye? I don’t care what you do 
with me.” 

« Why, Sir, every room is occupied, and unless the lady is content to 
share one with a stranger 

« No, no,”—interrupted the gentleman,—* is there no spare room with 
a sofa, now, or some such substitute ?” , 

« Our only one is this chamber, Sir, and I should scarcely like to give 
it up.” ; 

« Well, then, my love, we must go on to the next post-town—” 

“ You'll scarcely be able to do that, Sir, begging your pardon,” here 
oberved mine host, “ for Domo d’Odola is full twenty miles away, and 
it is a woful dark night.” 

“ Then we must sleep in the carriage,” replied the Englishman, with 
a wobegone expression, and the bearing of one about to be martyred. 

“Tf you'll allow me to suggest an amendment of that plan,” here 
interrupted the captain, “ it appears to me very natural and easy for 
se companion to take possession of our bed-room, and you yourself to 

satisfied with barrack quarters with us here by the fire. My friend 
joins with me in the hope that this offer may be accepted.” 

And the little man chuckled, as though the loss of his bed had been 
an approved good joke. 

ce Sy,” 9 ie | the gentleman, “ if I mistake not, I am familiar 
with that face ; and, upon a nearer view, I cannot be deceived in sup- 
posing you to be the kind counsellor of last night, by whose advice I was 

appily rescued from a serious peril. If this be so, I am already your 


46 A Night at Sempione. [Juty, 


debtor, and I should feel loth to increase the obligation by incurring a 
new favour of such magnitude.” 

- © You honour me by your recognition of me,” retorted the other ; 
“but with respect to my proposal for to-night, really it were no favour 
to grant you that which I had no wish to keep ; my comrade and myself 
are determined to relinquish our claim to the room, and if the lady does 
not accept it, I believe it will go without an occupant.” 

What more was to be said ?—All preparations were made ; the fair 
girl retired to her rest, and the three travellers remained in jolly carousal 
over some curious and well-selected wines. 

The captain was in his element. He went through most of Napoleon’s 
battles, in each of which, as it would seem by his account, he had 
received a wound. He rejoiced in the amity of the two great powers ;— 
complimented the bravery of the English,—-(whereupon the fat fellow at 
his elbow broke out into a convulsive giggle)—then spoke philosophi- 
cally respecting the divers countries he had visited, more especially the 
neighbouring parts, their productions, inhabitants, and traditions, and 
so on to a complete series of ghost stories, fables, and romantic horrors,— 
The great dog, of the true St. Bernard breed, was introduced to corrobo- 
rate some tale wherein he had been the deputy hero. The jolly little 
fellow always bore testimony to each strange narrative, buttoning up his 
waistcoat whenever he wished to look authoritative, but undoing it 
again, and indulging in a quiet grin when his evidence had been 
received. 

The poor listener to these marvels grew more and more bewildered. 
He was a nervous man, never before so far from his native land, and 
painfully credulous of all the rumours, authenticate or not, which 
reached his ear. His long visage grew rueful, and. his cups were tossed 
off with a violence that seemed half crazy. But what evidently irritated 
him beyond endurance, was the mal-d-propos chorus of the little fat man, 
who wound up every recital with an inhuman grin, as if the terrors and 
disasters related were of the very kind to render him facetious. This 
was the unkindest cut of all ;—and he looked at the Signor Benedetto’s 
goodly paunch, distended jaws, and sleek visage, as manifestations of the 
Evil One. 

* 2 * * * * * 

I cannot say how long this continued, nor what the exact hour was 
when mine host suddenly entered, and with a miserable countenance 
faltered out, that the gentleman’s daughter had left the inn. 

« Left the inn !—How ?— Where ?”—ejaculated he, and with the word 
darted-from the apartment, and hurried to the chamber allotted to his 
daughter. .There—woful man !—there lay some of her garments as put 
aside by her hours ago ;—the bed was ruffled and indented, as if by the 
sleeper,—but the lady was assuredly flown, and no man could say 
whither. The distracted parent rushed from the lonely room, and in an 
instant had returned to that in which he had been previously sitting. 
There, as before, appeared the jolly fat man, and his cheeks seemed 
rounder than ever, as with his old diabolical grin he pointed to a vacant 
chair which had been so lately occupied by the loquacious captain. He’ 
too had decamped! What a train of surmises arose in the father’s 
mind at that moment! In vain did he inquire and entreat his jocund 
enemy that he would assist him in his search, and satisfy him in his 
suspicions.—No answer, but a horse laugh !—Seizing his hat, he hurried 
from the inn, and gaining a comparatively high post, called loudly for 


1828.] A Night at Sempione. 47 


his daughter. Again and again her name was echoed from a thousand 
crags, as, in a state of almost distraction, he wandered from one height to 
another in idle pursuit. At last, something like a response was audible 
at a distance ;—he listened, and a strong gust brought the sound more 
distinctly to his ear !—it was the hated laugh of the jester. 

The snow lay thickly on the ground, and as he went onward, he knew 
not whither, his way was suddenly crossed by the huge St. Bernard dog, 
dragging by the mouth some undistinguished object. He stopped, and 
with the sagacity peculiar to his species, let fall at the Englishman’s feet 
the burthen, that proved, on inspection, to be a shawl worn in travelling 
by his beloved child!—The animal then ran off, followed by the dis- 
tracted father, until, at a short distance above the road-way, it stopped 
at a gap in the snow. ‘There lay a human creature, and the parent’s 
hopes and fears seemed about to have a common realization.— But no !— 
it was his unwearied persecutor with that eternal laughter,—ensconced 
in his cold bed, but apparently well satisfied with it, so that he might torture 
his victim by a new occasion for merriment. No word uttered he, no 
natural sound ; but deliberately raising himself from his resting place, 
all whitened with snow, and shivering with Alpine frost,—he pointed to 
a particular spot on the line of road,—still grinning with unabated zeal, 
and relaxing not one whit, until the thin tall Englishman, obeying his 
mute command, looked in the direction of his out-stretched finger.— 
Good saints !—What saw he there >—His sweet daughter, like a maniac, 
running at full speed down the descent hand in hand with the instructive 
captain, now too clearly the source of this so great calamity. Quickly 
sped the agonized father ;—though the guilty couple passed on with the 
speed of the roebuck, he failed not in his hot pursuit. It seemed that 
no mortal might keep up that rapid course, so fleetly did he follow where 
they led the way. And all the while, with a rapidity incredible in one 
so roundly shaped, did the little fat man hang on the skirts of the 
pursuer, the last, indeed, in this awful chase, but not a jot the least 
capable of sustaining it: for, ever and anon, he cheered himself with 
loud and dissonant laughter, and his lungs had lost no tittle of their 
strength or endurance.——And down they went, over the bridges of 
Lowibach and Kronbach; they heeded not the roar of the Trissinone, 
nor the foaming waters of the Diverio. They flew through the deep 
grottoes excavated in the overhanging rock ;—paused not at Gonos, at 
St. Marco, or Irella.. Onward, still onward, till they reached the bridge 
of Crevola, at the farther side of which stood the objects of pursuit ; 
who, as if at length over-wearied, seemed there to await the approach of 
the agonized old man. He was now on the centre of the bridge, and 
beside him was the fat fellow, still laughing with might and main.—Now 
will he overtake the abandoned girl,—now will his fatigues be recom- 
penced !—But no !—his foot slipped, he fell prone to the earth, and the 
jolly round man, halloing with ecstatic glee, pushed him over the verge 
of the bridge. He was borne downward by the cataract, and, as he was 
whirled along, he kicked the spray above and around him in a million 
showers. Still he heard the merry laugh of his evil genius, and it~ 
seemed a funeral dirge, for death was now at hand. A projecting 
branch bent over the cataract in its course ;—with a last violent effort 
he grasped at it ;—and in the act jerked off the red cotton night-cap of 
his neighbour in the arm-chair ! 

army he must have taken too heavy a supper, that he had such 
fearful dreams ! ; ivan 


ee See JULY; 


AFFLICTION: A SKETCH FROM LIFE. 


“ Le premier sentiment qui m’a fait vivre, est concentré dans mon ceenr. I] s’y réveille au moment 
qu’il n’est plus a craindre ; il me soutient quand mes forces m’abandonnent: il me ranime quand je 
me meurs.’”—RovussEAv. 


Sue looked a being of unearthly mould, 

A thing superior to the frowns of fate ; 

But never did my wondering eyes behold 

A maid so fair, so wholly desolate ; 

Yet was she once a child of high estate, 

Untouched of sorrow, till its stormy water 

Swept o’er her with annihilating weight, 

And ’mid surrounding cloud and tempest brought her : 
A wreck to ruin’s shore—earth’s sweetest, loveliest daughter! . 


Dark was her eye, as heaven, when gathering thunder 

Comes slowly travelling up the muffled sky, 

And pitying strangers viewed with awe and wonder . 

Its glance of still expressive misery: | 

Her cheek was pale, her brow serene and high, 

Her look distraught, and in her liveliest tone | 

Breathed the low, pensive music of a sigh :— . 

Oh! woman’s fond and breaking heart alone, 
That holiest shrine of love, can breathe such plaintive moan. 


Oft when the spirit of departed light 

Waned in eve’s shadowy chambers, she would lean 

Upon the pulseless bosom of the night, 

Sorrow’s meek image ; or at morn be seen 

Pacing with leaden steps the fresh cool green 

Of mead and dell ; or when, at midnight hour, 

The eyes of heaven looked forth with glance serene— 

Or when the storm swept by on wing of power— 
Mute—mindless—would she view star flash and thunder lower. 


She was the child of nature: earth, sea, sky, 

Mountain and cataract, thymy hill and dale, 

Possessed (when thought returned) in her young eye 

A nameless magic ; for in Elle’s low vale 

Her heart first listened to a lover's tale : 

’T was there—ere yet in May’s capricious eve 

Her wanderer had unfurled his fatal sail— 

Love taught her fond, unpractised heart to grieve, | 
And with boon nature’s charms his wildest spells to weave. 


But she is gone: unknown from life she passed, 
Like a poor exile from his native home ; 
No mother mourned her loss, when downward cast 
The chill dust rattled on her virgin tomb: 
Alone she lived—alone within the gloom 
Of death she slumbers—never more to prove 
How Fate’s sure canker dims the rising bloom 
Of young Affection, never more to rove 
A wanderer through the bleak and stormy world of love. 


But oft at eve, when day is in the west, 
And lingering winds o’er mead and moorland die, 
Strange sounds come stealing from her place of rest, 
And sink into the heart, like woman’s sigh: 
The twittering thrush, the cuckoo wild and shy, 
The matin lark, the music-laden rill, 
Pour on the night their funeral minstrelsy 
O’er her who sleeps, while all around is still— 

Her last, long, dreamless sleep, beside Llansaddon hill. 


ee ee 


1828.] f 49 j 


THE MYSTERIOUS TAILOR: 
A ROMANCE OF HIGH HOLBORN. 


In the composition of fictitious narrative, no matter whether the inci- 
dents referred to, be historical or purely legendary, the novelist has an 
almost infinite latitude of character and circumstance allowed him. His 
events need only be possible to enable them to pass muster ; their proba- 
bility, as a matter of course, may be departed from, or adhered to, just 
as it may happen to suit the whim of the moment. With real life it is 
different: the writer is there hemmed in within the pale of a limited 
truth ; and if he wander but one inch either beside or beyond it, he 
does so to the peril of his reputation. Nor is this his only difficulty. 
His circumstances must not merely be probable, but natural—not those 
which might by a remote contingency occur, but those which actually 
have occurred ; otherwise, he is designated a romancer, and refused his 
credentials as an illustrator of life and manners. In fact, in nine cases 
out of ten, readers will only believe just so much as they themselves can 
know, feel, and satisfactorily swear to. Your untravelled citizen, with 
whom a trip to Manchester or Glasgow is a matter for serious medita- 
tion, will not hesitate an instant to impeach the veracity of a Bruce or a 
Belzoni: he has seen some little of the world himself (this is a common 
phrase with such sceptics)—why then should he swallow, unanalyzed, 
the impossibilities of a mere traveller? On the same liberal principle, 
the phlegmatic and common-minded will take upon them to dispute 
feelings and incidents recorded by the susceptible and the imaginative: 
such casuists never once deign to look into the metaphysics of the 
question: it seems altogether to have escaped their sagacity, that the 
varieties of human nature, its ramifications of character and sentiment, 
are endless ; that what is poetry and feeling with one person, is nonsense 
and puerility with another ; and that the very two individuals whom a 
fancied congeniality of mind and manner have bound together in strictest 
friendship, are yet wide as the poles asunder, with a thousand petty 
points of difference, each daily and hourly coming into unpleasant, 
though scarcely perhaps perceptible, collision with the other. At the 
hazard of being tried, and of course convicted, by the ordeal of such 
readers as I have just described, yet, at the same time, with a proud reli- 
ance on the fact that “ truth is strange, stranger than fiction,” I presume 
to relate the following real occurrence : events, infinitely more probable, 
have yet not had the same truth to recommend them, the same solid 
basis on which to build up their statements, the same But enough of 
this: it is time, without farther exordium, to commence my narra- 
tive. 

It came to pass that, towards the close of 1826, I found occasion to 
change my tailor, and by chance, or the recommendation of friends—I 
cannot now remember which—applied to one who vegetated in that par- 
ticular region of the metropolis where the rivers of Museum Street and 
Drury Lane (to adopt the language of metaphor) flow into and form the 
capacious estuary of High Holborn. Whoever has sailed along, or cast 
anchor in this confluence, must have seen the individual I allude to. He 
sits—I should perhaps say sate, inasmuch as he is since defunct—bolt 
upright, with a pen behind his ear, in the centre of a dingy, spectral- 
looking shop, quaintly hung round with cloths, of divers forms and pat~ 

M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.31. H 


50 The Mysterious Tailor : [Juny, 


terns, in every stage of existence—from the first crude conception of the 
incipient surtout or pantaloons, down to the last glorious touch that 
immortalizes the artist. His figure is slim and undersized ; his cheeks 
sallow, with two furrows on each side his nose, filled not unfrequently 
with snuff; his eyes project like lobsters’, and. cast their shifting 
glances about with a vague sort of mysterious intelligence; and his 
voice—his startling, solemn, unearthly voice—seems hoarse with sepul- 
chral vapours, and puts forth its tones like the sighing of the wind 
among tombs. With regard to his dress, it is in admirable keeping 
‘ with his countenance. He wears a black coat, fashioned in the mould 
of other times, with large cloth buttons and flowing skirts ; drab inex- 
pressibles, fastened at the knee with brass buckles ; gaiters, which, reach- 
ing no higher than the calf of the leg, set up independent claims to 
eccentricity and exact consideration on their own account; creaking, 
square-toed shoes ; and a hat, broad in front, pinched up at the sides, 
verging to an angle behind, and worn close over the forehead, with the 
lower part resting on the nose. His manner is equally peculiar: it can- 
not be called vulgar, nor yet genteel—for it is too passive for the one, 
and too pompous for the other; it forms, say, a sort of compromise 
between the two, with a slight infusion of pedantry that greatly adds to 
its effect. Altogether, the being I describe is one who, under any cirs 
cumstances, would stand a fair chance of attracting notice ; but this not 
so much from any one prominent peculiarity, as from a general unifor- 
mity in face, figure, and dress: in short, from that harmonious compound 
of quiet reserve, and pertinacity, which forms the finished original. 

On reaching this oddity’s abode, I at once proceeded to business ; and 
was promised, in reply, the execution of my order on the customary 
terms of credit. Thus far is strictly natural. The clothes came home, 
and so, with admirable punctuality, did the bill; but the death of a 
valued friend having withdrawn me, soon afterwards, from London, six 
months élapsed ; at the expiration of which time I was refreshed, as 
agreed on, by a pecuniary application from my tailor. Perhaps I should 
here mention, to the better understanding of my tale, that I am a medi- 
cal practitioner, of somewhat nervous temperament, derived partly from 
inheritance, and partly from an inveterate indulgence of the imagina- 
tion. My income, too—which seldom or never, encumbers a surgeon 
who has-not yet done walking the hospitals—is limited, like the range 
of my Lord Londonderry’s eloquence, and, at this present period, was 
so far contracted as to keep me in continual suspense. In this predica- 
ment, my tailor’s memorandum was any thing but satisfactory. I wrote 
accordingly to entreat his forbearance for six months longer, and, as I 
received no reply, concluded that all was satisfactorily arranged. Un- 
luckily, however, as I was strolling, about a month afterwards, along 
the Strand, I chanced to stumble up against him. ‘The shock seemed 
equally unexpected on both sides ; but my tailor (as being a dun) was 
the first to recover self-possession ; and, with a long preliminary hem !— 
a mute but expressive compound of remonstrance, apology, and. reso- 
lution—opened his fire as follows :— 

“ T believe, Sir, you name is D Py 

“ T believe it is, Sir.” 

« Well, then, Mr. D. , touching that litttle account between us, I 
have to request, Sir, that-——” 


(1828.] a Romance of High Holborn. 51 


«© Very good ; nothing can be more reasonable ; wait the appointed 
time, and you shall have all.” 

This answer served, in some degree, to appease him: no, not exactly 
to appease him, because that would imply previous excitement, and he 
was invariably imperturbable in manner; it satisfied him, however, 
for the present, and he forthwith walked away, casting on me that 
equivocal sort of look with which Ajax turned from Ulysses, or Dido from 
/Eneas, in the Shades. When a man, says some sage, is laden with 
severe afflictions, he has at least the satisfaction of reflecting that inferior 
ones are all forgotten: so that, viewed in this light, one first-rate - 
grievance may be looked on as the luckiest thing in the world ; for not 
only does it annihilate a score of petty annoyances, but, by affording the 
mind a dignified pretence for grumbling, vastly elevates it in its own 
esteem, and improves its powers of endurance. With regard to myself, 
I am what Terence would call a Heautontimoreumenos; 7. e. a self-tor- 
mentor. When nothing of moment oppresses me, I ingeniously find 
food for vexation in trifles, and could no more exist without a grievance 
than others without hope. It will, therefore, be conceded that my tailor, 
in the absence of some graver misery, now began to grow upon my 
affections as an annoyance. My debt, indeed, with him was a positive 
affliction—one that could only be settled by as positive a remedy ; but 
this, from one cause or another, I was at present unable to perform. 

A lapse of a few weeks ensued, during which I heard nothing farther 
from my persecutor ; when, one dark November evening—one of those 
peculiarly English evenings, full of fog and gloom, when the half-frozen 
sleet, joined in its descent by gutters from the house-tops, comes 
driving full in your face, blinding you to all external objects—on 
one of these blessed evenings, on my road to Camden Town, I chanced 
to miss my way, and was compelled, notwithstanding a certain shyness 
towards strangers, to ask my direction of the first respectable person I 
should meet. Many passed me by, but none sufficiently prepossessing ; 
when, on turning down some nameless street that leads to Tottenham 
Court Road, I chanced to come behind a staid-looking gentleman, 
accoutred in a dark brown coat, with an umbrella—the cotton of which 
had shrunk half-way up the whalebone—held obliquely over his head. 
Hastily stepping up to him,—*“ Pray, Sir,” said I, “ could you be kind 
enough to direct me to Place, Camden Town ?” 

The unknown thus addressed made the slightest possible inclination 
towards me ; and then, in an under tone,—“ I believe, Sir, your name 
is D Qs 
_ Ipaused: a vague sort of recollection came over me. Could it be ?>— 
no, surely not! And yet the voice—the manner—the—the 
_ My suspicions were soon converted into certainty, when the stranger, 
with his own peculiar expression, quietly broke forth a second time 
with—* Touching that little account——” 

This was enough: it was more than enough—it was vexatiously super 
fluous. To be dunned for a debt, at the very time when the nerves 
could best dispense with the application ; to be recalled back to the vul- 
garities of existence, at that precise moment when the imagination was 
most abstracted from all commercial common-places ; to be stopped by 
a tailor (and such a tailor !), when the mind was dreaming of a mistress 
the bare idea was intolerable! So I thought ; and, without farther 
explanation, hurried precipitately e¥ the spot, nor ever once paused 

H 


52 The Mysterious Tailor : [Juy, 


till far removed from the husky tones of that sepulchral voice which 
had once before so highly excited my annoyance. 

It was somewhere about this time that my friend C , of Covent 
Garden — pitying my generally secluded mode of life— offered me 
tickets for one of Mr. Champaigne Wright's masquerades. As this 
is a species of amusement totally foreign to what has been usually 
considered the staple of English character—an amusement wherein 
extremes meet; where the melancholy Jaques jostles the merry Fal- 
staff; where patricians league with plebeians ; where rowés consort on 
equal terms with their own tradesmen; where pimps and parasites, 
authors and actors, play the fool, each to the best of his ability ; where 
the flashing countenance, rounded bust, and full undulating form of 
some entrancing beauty, decked out in all the witcheries of art, breathe 
a hot scorching spirit into the veins, that literally sets the blood on 
fire ; where the very air itself is love, a wandering, subtle, searching, 
and invisible love, whose voice speaks in music, and melts in the 
heart silently and sunnily, as eave-drops in the day-beam ; where wit, 
fancy, passion, and ostentation, mobility -in robes, nobility in rags, 
pursue the novice at each step: as this is a species of amuse- 
ment wherein all such quaint contrarieties are sure to be combined, I 
resolved for once to mingle with the motley herd; so forthwith set out, 
disguised as a domino, for the scene of entertainment. A few minutes 
after my arrival, the stage began to fill; and what with the lights and 
the dresses—the music—the heated atmosphere—and the heterogeneous 
variety of characters, who flitted past me like dreams—my fancy 
expanded, my shyness wore away, and was succeeded by insufferable 
impudence. While thus excited, my eyes were suddenly directed 
towards the figure of a Nun, shrouded from head to foot in a long black 
veil, who. as C assured me, had been staring at me attentively for 
some time. What could this import? Admiration, doubtless, on the 
part of the fair gazer. So I thought; and, fired with champaigne and 
sentiment, hastened towards the spot where she stood. Alas! it was too 
late. The unknown had gone—eloped—evaporated ! Here was a situa- 
tion for a gentleman! Luckily, my disappointment was not of long dura- 
tion ; for, on turning my eyes towards the stage-door, I caught a second 
glimpse of the Nun, wedged fast between two apoplectic Ariels.. In an 
instant I was by her side ; my eyes rivetted on her mask with that expres- 
sion of peculiar intensity which is said to characterize the lover. We 
were at this time alone, in a remote quarter of the stage. I seized the 
opportunity, and, grasping my companion’s hand vigorously, but with 
perfect gentility, whispered in her ear a few brief sentences, which I 
cannot here repeat, but which I distinctly remember were amorous, touch- 
ing, and persuasive. An awful pause ensued, at the expiration of which 
time I resumed my pleadings. I painted in the most feeling terms my 
anxiety to behold a countenance, which I felt convinced must be lovely 
—or at least to hear a voice, which fancy persuaded me must breathe 
the spirit of sensibility itself. Strange to tell, I received not the slight+ 
est answer! A third time I renewed my supplications. I besought—I 
adjured—I prayed—but for one word, one little word, if it merely 
meant nothing ; adding (and IJ think with singular felicity), that even 
nothing was something to a lover. Still no reply!» My feelings now 
began to be wrought to desperation—my lip quivered—the devil was 
fast rising within me. The unknown evidently saw my agitation: her 


; 
: 


1828.] a Romance of High Holborn. 53 


gentle heart was touched ; and, after fumbling about for some time, as 
if feeling for some precious document, she thrust a paper confusedly, 
yet significantly, into my hands, and disappeared in the thick of the 
assembly. For an instant—so unexpected was this act—I stood like 
one bewildered ; but, soon recovering my self-possession, moved direct 
towards the chandelier, with a view to peruse an epistle expressive of 
woman’s fondest love. As with glistening eyes I proceeded to tear open 
the billet, a flood of transporting thoughts swept over me. I fancied 
that I was on the eve of acquaintance with ; but, judge my 
astonishment, when, instead of the expected document, the key to such 
transporting bliss, I read, engraved in large German text, on a dirty 
square card, embossed at the edge with flowers, the revolting, business- 


like address of 
Gr. Thomas PMi—e, 
Tailor, 
116, Wigh Wolborn. 


The reader, if he possess sensibility, will naturally enough conclude 
that I did not remain long in the scene of this extraordinary adventure. 
I retired, in fact, the very first opportunity, cogitating deeply on my 
road home, and not without certain superstitious misgivings on the more 
than singularity that had thus a third time thrown me into the arms of 
this most accursed creditor. It so happened that, the next day, I dined 
with C——. Of course the masquerade, and with that the tailor, were 
the first topics of conversation between us. Both allowed that the cir- 
cumstances respecting his late appearance were uncommon ; but there, 
with my friend, the matter ended: with me it was a more enduring 
subject for reflection; and, after a night kept up till a late hour over 
a bowl of C ’s most faultless punch, I set out, moody and appre- 
hensive, to my humble abode. By this time it was past three o’clock : 
the streets were nearly all deserted ; the lamps looked dim and dis- 
consolate ; and nothing disturbed the general stillness but now and then 
the distant rattling of a hackney-coach, the squall of some enamoured 
cat from the house-tops, or the sleepy growl of the watch-dog, as he 
shifted from side to side, under the influence of a dyspeptic imagination. 
While thoughtfully plodding onwards, a sudden noise from the Holborn 
end of Drury Lane took my attention: it evidently proceeded from a 
row—a systematic, scientific row ; and, indeed, as I drew near the scene 
of action, I could distinctly hear the watchman’s oaths blending in deep 
chorus with the treble of some dozen or two valorous exquisites. I 
have often observed that, when a man is just touched with drink—that 
is to say, when he is as drunk as any gentleman could reasonably desire 
to be—he experiences—no matter how orderly when sober—peculiar 
satisfaction from a fight. A genius for war rises within him—the God of 
battles inspires his fist! Such was precisely my case. I felt certain 
rising abstract ideas of pugnacity, and conceived myself bound to indulge 
them on the first head and shoulders I should meet. This spirit brought 
me at once into the thick of the fight, and, before I was well aware of my 
proximity, I found myself fast anchored alongside a veteran watchman, 
with a pigtail and half a nose. The conflict now commenced in good 
earnest: there were few or no attempts at favouritism ; the blows of one 
friend told equally well on the scull of another ; watchmen assaulted 
watchmen with a zeal respectable for its sincerity ;. and, indeed, had 


54 The Mysterious Tailor : [Juy, 


these last been any thing more than a bundle of old coats and oaths, they 
would most undoubtedly have drubbed each other into a better world. 
After a lively and well-sustained affair of about twenty minutes, a squa- 
dron of auxiliary watchmen arrived, and, with some difficulty, depo- 
sited us all safely in the watch-house. And here the very first person 
that met my gaze—seated, with due regard to dignity, in an arm-chair, 
a pair of spectacles on his nose, a glass of brandy-and-water by his side, 
and a newspaper, redolent of cheese, before him—was the constable of 
the night—the nun of the masquerade—the Mysterious Tailor of High 
Holborn! The wretch’s eyes gleamed with a savage but subdued joy 
at the recognition ; a low, chuckling laugh escaped him ; while his 
dull countenance, made doubly revolting by the dim light of the watch- 
house, fell, fixed and scowling, upon me, as he pointed towards the 
spot where I stood.—“ Dobson,” he exclaimed ; and, at the word, forth 
stepped the owner of this melodious appellative, with “this here 
man.” Luckily, before he could finish his charge, a five-shilling-piece, 
which I thrust into his unsuspecting palm, created a diversion among 
the watchmen in my behalf; under favour of which, while my arch 
enemy was adjusting his books, I contrived to escape from his detested 
presence. 

It happened that about a month subsequent to this last rencontre, cir- 
cumstances led me to Boulogne, whither I arrived, late in the evening, 
by the steam-boat. On being directed to the best English hotel im 
that truly social Anglo-Gallic little town, I chanced to find in. the coffee 
room an old crony, whom I had known years since at Cambridge, and 
who had just arrived from Switzerland, on a speculation connected 
with some vineyards. There is nothing that more keenly calls forth 
the lurking humanities of the heart, than such a sudden rekindling of 
early sympathies, after time, absence, and continued commerce with 
the world, have conspired to dim, if not to extinguish, them alto- 
gether. It is like a sunny genial morning, bursting forth in the midst 
of winter: we feel that it is shadowy, evanescent; that it is born and 
dies with the day, and relish it with proportionate gusto. I had a 
thousand questions to ask my friend, a thousand memories to disinter 
from their graves in my heart, past follies to re-enact, past scenes to re-+ 
people. We began with our school-days, pursued the subject to Cam- 
bridge, carried it back again to Reading, and thence traced it through 
all its windings, now in sunshine, now in gloom, till the canvass of our 
recollection was fairly filled with portraits. In this way, time, unper- 
ceived, slipped on ; noon deepened into evening, evening blackened into 
midnight, yet nothing but our wine was exhausted. And this last 
possessed a flavour that I never before experienced ; it was a sentiment 
in itself, a fine mellow sentiment, which fell upon my heart like rain on 
some parched and stunted meadow. Once or twice—so busily absorbed. 
were we in wine and chit-chat—the waiter came in, apparently to snuff 
the candles, but in reality, to hasten our retreat: the disappearance too, 
of the different persons from the coffee-room, who dropped off by twos 
and threes, told us that we were encroaching on the morning, yet stilk 
we stuck to our box “ like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved.” At last, after 
a long evening spent in the freest and most social converse, my friend 
quitted the coffee-room, while I—imitating, as I went, the cireumlocutory 
windings of the Meander—proceeded to my allotted chamber. Unfortu- 
nately, on reaching the head of the first stair-case, where two opposite 


Pe 


1828.) a Romance of High Holborn. 55 


doors presented themselves, I opened (as a matter of course) the wrong 
one, which led me into a spacious apartment, in which were placed two 
fat full-grown beds. My lanthorn happening to go out at the moment, I 
was compelled to forego all further scrutiny, so without more ado, flung 
off my clothes, and dived, at one dexterous plunge, right into the centre 
of the nearest vacant bed. In an instant I was fast asleep: my imagina- 
tion, oppressed with the day’s events, had become fairly exhausted, and 
now lay chained down in that heavy, dreamless sleep, which none but 
fatigued travellers can appreciate. Towards day-break, I was roused by 
a peculiar long-drawn snore, proceeding from the next bed. The 
music, though deep, was gusty, vulgar, and ludicrous, like a west wind 
whistling through a wash-house. I should know it among a thousand 
snores. At first I took no notice of this diversified sternutation, but as 
it deepened every moment in energy, terminating in something like a 
groan, I was compelled to pay it the homage of my admiration and 
astonishment. This attention, however, soon flagged: in a few minutes 
I was a second time asleep, nor did I again awake till the morning was 
far advanced. At this eventful juncture, while casting my eyes round 
the room with all the voluptuous indolence of a jaded traveller, they 
suddenly chanced to fall on a gaunt, spectral figure, undressed, un- 
washed, unshaved, decked out in a red worsted night-cap, its left cheek 
swollen, as if with cold or tooth-ache, and seated bolt upright in the very 
next bed, scarce six inches off my nose. And this figure was but I 
need add no more: the reader must by this time have fully anticipated 
my discovery. 

That night I started from Bologne. I could no more have endured to 
stop there, conscious that the town contained my persecutor, than I could 
have flown. Accordingly, after a hurried breakfast, I proceeded to 
arrange what little business I had to transact ; and this completed, away 
I posted to the well-known shop of Monsieur , dentist, perruquier, 
and general agent to the steam packet company. Fortunately the little 
man was at home, and received me with his usual courtesy. He was 
very, very sorry, that he could not stay to converse with me, but a patient 
in the inner parlour required his immediate attendance ; he must there- 
fore I entreated him not to apologize : my business was simple, it 
was merely to ascertain at what hour the first packet sailed ; and having 
so said, and received a satisfactory reply, I prepared to quit the shop, 
when just as I was turning round to shut’ the door, I caught a glimpse 
through the half-closed curtains that shaded the inner room, of a cheek 
and one eye. The cheek was swollen, and a solitary patch of snuff rested, 
like a fly, upon its surface ——It was the Mysterious Tailor : he had come 
in to have his tooth pulled out. 

Notwithstanding my anxiety to quit Bologne, it was evening before I 
was on board the packet, nor did I feel myself at ease, until the heights 
had dwindled to a speck, and the loud carols of the fishermen returning 
home from their day’s sport, had sunk into a faint undistinguished 
whisper. Our vessel’s course for the first hour or so was delightful: the 
sailors laughed and sung, the passengers—most of whom were in the 
eabin—occupied their leisure with cards, scandal, and bad puns ; and I, 
with one or two others, amused myself with watching the shifting sunset, 
as it threw its long pensile hues across a sea as glassy as marble. It is 
pleasant, stretched at one’s ease on deck, to see the swell left in the 
vessel’s wake, glittering like ‘studded silver in the twilight ; to hear the 


56 The Mysterious Tailor : [Juy, 


lazy flapping to and fro of the undecided sail, and mark the descending 
shadows as momently they vary their aspects, changing, first from a dull 
grey to a darker brown, thence deepening into a more sombre leaden 
tint, till at last one uniform pall of frightful raven blackness drops down 
upon the horizon, blotting out earth, sea, and sky. Towards night, the 
weather, which had hitherto proved so serene, began to fluctuate; the 
wind shifted, and gradually a heavy swell came rolling in from the north- 
east towards us. Asthe hour advanced, a storm seemed advancing with 
it: the sea-gull flew lower, and described narrower circles round our 
vessel; the gale rose and fell, the porpoises—those sea-aldermen— 
frolicked about in shoals ; and a hundred other symptoms appeared, the 
least of which was fully sufficient to certify the coming on of a tre- 
mendous hurricane. Our Captain, however—a bronzed, pinched-up little 
fellow, whom a series of north-westers seemed to have dried to a 
mummy—put a good face on the matter, and our mate whistled bluffly, 
though I could not help fancying that his whistle had something forced 
about it. As for the passengers, luckily they were for the most part ill ; 
but those who, like myself, could still keep the deck, seemed labouring 
with awkward anticipations. Among them was a smart, dapper Under- 
taker from Tooley-street, whose chief dread arose from an apprehension 
of being entombed uncoffined in the sea. He could not conceive the 
idea of being disposed of so summarily, without mutes or mourners, 
black gloves, or crape hat-bands: it disturbed his sense of “ the fitness 
of things,” and was worse, he said, than being buried in a cross-road. 
There was a lady too—evidently a citizen’s wife—who just as an 
enormous wave was sweeping heavily across the deck, rejected the 
proffered help of a stranger who stood near her, because she had not 
been properly introduced to him. Alas, for human nature! vain, per~ 
plexing, and inconsistent to the last. ; 

We had by this time been tossing about upwards of four hours, yet 
despite the storm, which increased every moment in energy, our vessel 
bore up well, labouring and pitching frightfully to be sure, but as yet 
uninjured in sail, mast, or hull. As for her course, it was—so the mate 
assured me—a moral impossible to say which way we were bound, 
whether for a trip to Spain, Holland, or Van Dieman’s Land ; it might 
be one, it might be t’other.” Scarcely had he uttered these words, when’ 
a Jong rolling sea came sweeping on in hungry grandeur towards us, and 
at one rush tore open the ship’s gun-wale, which now, completely at 
the mercy of the wave, went staggering, drunken and blindfold, through 
the surge. From this fatal moment the sailors were kept constantly at 
the pumps, although so instantaneous was the rush of water into the hold, 
that they did little or no good: there seemed, in fact, not the ghost of a 
chance left us; even the mate had ceased whistling, and the Captain’s 
eaths began to assume the nature of a compromise between penitence 
and hardihood. The reader may here wish to know, if at least my 
narrative have so far interested him, how I bore myself on this trying 
occasion. Strange to say, instead of apprehension, I experienéed the 
intensest excitement. The sense of danger was swallowed up in a vivid’ 
relish of the poetry with which the elements of tempest are replete. I 
gazed up towards the clouds, between which a red moon now and then’ 
looked out, with awe, certainly not dread ; they resembled, methought, 
things of meaning, instinct with life and consciousness ; spirits of another® 
world, whose voice was the wind howling its malignant music triumph- 


1828.] A Romance of High Holborn. 57 


antly amid tempest and ruin. Sometimes, when during partial clearings 
off, a few faint stars would smilingly peep forth, I gave them credit for 
their good intentions ; they looked mild, pitying, philosophical, and cons 
trasted well with the capricious bluster of that big Irish bully, the hur- 
ricane. But even this last had a few redeeming traits of humanity about 
him. His voice would take at intervals a touching elevated tone, and 
come sighing and wailing from distance across the water, solemn as an 
anthem, mournful as a wind-struck harp. And then the clouds—the 
ever-shifting silver-skirted clouds—the very slightest glance of the moon 
would suffice wholly to change their aspect. If before they resembled 
spirits, they would now assume a wilder character. Vast armies would 
seem deploying, file after file, in all the emblazoned panoply of triumph, 
with banners streaming and trumpets sounding, along the sky; an 
instant—and palaces, temples and colonnades, built after the most fantastic 
patterns of architecture, here broken into jagged ruins, there trim and 
shapely to the eye, and lit up with glittering transparencies, would rear their 
stately fronts instead: and these again would be succeeded by volcanos; 
spouting forth smoke and fire, cataracts sending up on all sides immense 
volumes of gaudy moonlit spray, together with a hundred similar at+ 
mospheric phenomena, so rapid and fertile, yet defineable in their com- 
binations, that an excited fancy might almost believe them real. 

It was now midnight, deep, awful midnight ; the few remaining pas- 
sengers had left the deck and retreated into a bed which they shared in 
common with the salt water. The Captain stood, like one bewildered, 
beside the helm, while I lay stretched along the forecastle, watching, as 
well as I could, the tremendous rushing of the waves. It was, indeed, a 
magnificent sight; one after another hurried by, swelling, gamboling; 
and interwoven each with each, like immense knotted ‘serpents: at one 
moment all the water of the world seemed gathered into a single billow ; 
then a pause would ensue—a sudden, mysterious pause—then the wind 
would call indignantly, as it were, upon the wave, urging it once more 
to action; then the thunder would crash above our heads like the con- 
vulsive groans of some dying giant ; and then, to wind up the whole, 
strange meteoric splendours would flash around us, resolved, that not one 
single horror should escape unnoticed. It was during a partial hush of 
the storm, when the wind, as if out of breath, was still, that a shifting 
light attached to some moving body, came bearing down full upon us. 

« This is an ugly night, Sir,” said the Captain, who now, for the first 
time, found words, “ yet methinks I see a sail a-head.” : 
_ © Surely not,” I replied, “ no earthly vessel but our own can live on 
such a sea.” 
__Scarcely had the words escaped me, when “helm’s a lee!’ was 
: meres out in a loud emphatic tone, something between rage and 

ight. [ 
_ The Captain strove to turn his helm, but in vain, the rudder had 
lost all power. At this instant, a rushing sound swept past us, and the 

_ two ships came in direct contact with each other. The crash was tre+ 
mendous: down with a dizzy spinning motion went the strange vessel ; 
one yell—but one shrill piercing yell, which is ever sounding in my ears, 
ensued—a pause, and all was over. 

. My heart died within me at that cry ; an icy shudder crept through 

me, every hair of my head seemed endowed with separate; vitality. To 
M.M. New Series —Vow. VI. No. 31. I 


, 


58 Lhe Mysterious Tailor : [Juxy, 


go down into the tomb—and such a tomb !—unwept, unknown, the very 
lights from the English coast still discernible in distance, yet not a friend 
to hold forth aid; the idea was inexpressibly awful. Just at this crisis, 
while grasping the bannister with weak hands, I lay faint and hope- 
less on the deck, I fancied I saw a dark figure crawling up the cabin- 
steps towards me. [I listened ; the sound drew near, the form advanced, 
already it touched that part of the stair-case to which I clung. Was it 
the phantom of one of those wretches who had just met death ? Had it 
come fresh from eternity, the taint of recent earth yet hanging about it, 
to warn me of my own departure? A sudden vivid flash enabled me to 
dispel all doubt ; the dull grey eye, and thin furrowed form, were not to 
be so mistaken ; the voice too—but why prolong the mystery? it was my 
old unforgotten persecutor, the Mysterious Tailor of High Holborn. 
What followed I know not: overpowered by previous excitement, and 
the visitation of this infernal phantom, my brain spun round—my heart 
ticked audibly like a clock—my tongue glued to my mouth—I sank 
senseless at the cabin door. 

On recovering from my stupor, I found myself with a physician and 
two apothecaries beside me, in bed at the George Inn, Ramsgate. I had 
been, it seems, for two whole days delirious, during which pregnant 
interval I had lived over again all the horrors of the preceding hours. 
The wind sang in my ears, the phantom forms of the unburied flitted pale 
and ghastly before my eyes. I fancied that I was still on the sea ; that 
the massive copper-coloured clouds which hovered scarcely a yard over- 
head, were suddenly transformed into uncouth shapes, who glared at me 
from between saffron chinks, made by the scudding wrack ; that the 
waters teemed with life, cold, slimy, preternatural things of life ; that their 
eyes after assuming a variety of awful expressions, settled down into that 
dull frozen character, and their voices into that low, sepulchral, indefin- 
able tone, which marked the Mysterious Tailor. This wretch was the 
Abaddon of my dreamy Pandemonium. He was ever before me: he lent 
an added splendour to the day, and deepened the midnight gloom. On 
the heights of Boulogne I saw him ; far away over the foaming waters he 
floated still and lifeless beside me, his eye never once off my face, his 
voice never silent in my ear. He was the shadow that threw forward 
its blighting darap upon my head ; the mute, expressive, eternal curse 
beneath which my mind sickened and died. This, the reader will say, 
was mere madness, the fever of a distempered fancy. Alas! mad— 
frantic though I was, dead to all external common places around me, I 
was sensitively alive to suffering. I was bled, blistered, physicked, 
reduced almost to a skeleton ; yet even this, so far from assuaging, only 
changed the character of my dreams. Before, I was familiar with 
horror ; my fancy now took a more melancholy east. I roved on sum- 
mer evenings beside the still waters of my native Towy, when the sheep- 
bell was tinkling, and the rich glowing purple light was momently fading 
off the sky. I heard the voices of birds in the woods, the ploughman’s 
whistle, the sweet distant village chimes, and the loud laugh from the 
thronged ale-house. While mellowed, as it were, into peace, by the 
witching influence of the hour, a strange shadow thrown suddenly from 
some gigantic form behind me, would let fall its chill gloom upon my 
head—a low voice would breathe in my ear—a dull heavy dead eye— 
Ais eye—would catch my averted glance. Once, in particular, I was 


1828.] a Romance of High Holborn. 59 


seated on a new-made grave in church-yard, speculating on the 
nature of the clay that mouldered beneath—my feelings softened by the 
sunny gleams that every now and then shot through the old stained 
church-windows upon the fresh turned-up sod—when suddenly the 
earth beneath me yawned wide asunder, and disclosed an open coffin, in 
which, shrouded in its half-rotted grave-clothes, lay the blue sapless fes- 
tering form of him, my undying, omnipotent, and unearthly Tormentor. 

My tale would scarcely have an end, were I to repeat but the one 
half of what during two brief days (two centuries in suffering) I expe- 
rienced from this derangement of the nervous system. My readers may 
fancy that I have exaggerated my state of mind: far from it, I have 
purposely softened down the more distressing particulars, apprehensive 
if not of being discredited, at least of incurring ridicule. Towards the 
close of the third day my fever began to abate, I became more sobered 
in my turn of thought, could contrive to answer questions, and listen 
with tolerable composure to my landlord’s details of my miraculous 
preservation. The storm was slowly rolling off my mind, but the swell 
was still left behind it. The fourth day found me so far recovered, that 
I was enabled to quit my chamber, sit beside an open window, 
and derive amusement from the uncouth appearance of a Dutch crew, 
whose brig was lying at anchor in the harbour. From this time forward, 
every hour brought fresh accession to my strength, until at the expir2- . 
tion of the tenth day—so sudden is recovery in cases of violent fever 
when once the crisis is passed—I was sufficiently restored to take my 
place by a night-coach for London. The first few stages I endured 
tolerably well, notwithstanding that I had somewhat rashly ventured 
upon an outside place; but as midnight drew on, the wind became so 
piercingly keen, accompanied every now and then by a squally shower 
of sleet, that I was glad to bargain for an inside birth. By good 
luck, there was just room enough left for one, which I instantly 
appropriated, in spite of sundry hints hemmed forth by a crusty old 
gentlemen, that the coach was full already. Perhaps there is no situ- 
ation in which the peculiar surliness of the English character—a sur- 
liness not originating in the heart, but simply the result of a certain 
innate stiffness of manner, which John Bull can no more help than 
a lobster can help turning red when boiled—perhaps, I repeat, there 
is no situation in which this national mannerism is so fully developed 
as in travelling. Every individual is then on the quz vive; he calls to 
mind all the strange stories of swindling and trickery, with which the 
newspapers, from time to time, have furnished him, and is sure to 
fancy his nearest neighbour a rogue. The very circumstance of being 
from home keeps his distrust more keenly on the fret; he feels that 
he is abroad among strangers, with none to preserve him but himself: 
and eyen the ordinary courtesies which travellers instinctively pay to one 
another, are mixed up in his jaundiced imagination with ideas of impos- 
ture and duplicity. It may be inferred from this cursory hint, that I 
took my place in the coach not a little to the dissatisfaction of those 
already seated there. Not a word was spoken for miles: for the cir- 
cumstance of its being dark increased the distrust of all, and, in the firm 
conviction that I was an adventurer, they had already, I make no doubt, 
buttoned up their pockets, and diligently adjusted their watch-chains. 
In a short time, this reserve wore away ; an adroit common-place upon 


12 


60 The Mysterious Tailor: [Juxy, 


the weather put by one individual to his next neighbour, brought on 
a doleful history of the latter’s recent attack of gout ; this branched 
off to anecdotes of dyspepsia and indigestion, which in turn gave- 
place to an animated discussion on the nervous system. From this 
moment the conversation became general. Each individual had some 
invalid story to relate, and I too so far forgot my usual taciturnity 
as to indulge my hearers with a detail of my late indisposition—of 
its origin in the Mysterious Tailor—of the wretch’s inconceivable 
persecution—of the fiendish peculiarities of his appearance— of his 
astonishing ubiquity, and lastly, of my conviction that he was either 
more or less than man. Scarcely had the very uncourteous laugh- 
ter that accompanied this narrative concluded, when a low, inter- 
mittent snore, proceeding from a person close at my elbow, challenged 
my most serious notice. The sound was peculiar—original—unearthly 
—and reminded me of the same music which had so harrowed my 
nerves at Bologne. Yet it could not surely be he—he, the very 
thoughts of whom now sent a thrill through every vein. Oh, no! it 
must be some one else—there were other harmonious sternutators beside 
him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in the three king- 
doms. While I thus argued the matter, silently yet suspiciously, 
a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach windows, faintly 
. lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which gave a very ominous 
turn to my reflections. In due time this light became more vivid; and 
beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair of eyes—then two sallow 
juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a projecting chin ; and lastly, 
the entire figure of the Mysterious Tailor himself, whose head, it seems, 
had hitherto been folded, bird-like, upon his breast, grew into atrocious 
distinctness, while from the depths of the creature’s throat came forth 
the strangely-solemn whisper, “touching that little account.” For this 
once, indignation got the better of affright. “Go where I will,” I 
exclaimed, passionately interrupting him, “I find I cannot avoid you, 
you have a supernatural gift of omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal 
I will now grapple with you ;” and accordingly snatching at that 
obnoxious feature which, like the tail of the rattle-snake, had twice 
warned me of its master’s fatal presence, I grasped it with such zealous 
good will, that had it been of mortal manfacture it must assuredly have 
come off in my hands. Aroused by the laughter of my fellow passens 
gers, the coachman—who was just preparing to mount, after having 
changed horses at Dartford—abruptly opened the door, on which I as 
abruptly jumped out ; and after paying my fare the whole way to town, 
and casting on the fiend a look of “inextinguishable hatred,” made an 
instant retreat into the inn. About the middle of the next day I reached 
London, and without a moment’s pause hurried to the ledgings of my 
before-mentioned friend C Luckily he was at home, but started 
at the strange forlorn figure that presented itself. And well indeed he 
might. My eye-balls were glazed and bloody, my cheeks white as a 
shroud, my mouth a-jar, my lips blue and quivering. ‘ For God’s sake, 
C ;’ I began, vouchsafing no further explanation, “lend me—(E 
have specified the sum)—or I am ruined; that infernal, inconceivable 
Tailor has——’ C smilingly interrupted me by an instant compliance 
with my demand; on which, without a moment’s delay, I bounded off, 
breathless and. semi-frantic, towards my arch fiend’s- Pandemonium -at 


ee 


<A Zp pt a Nai a tS 


A ERE ee 


AY 
| 


1828.] a Romance of High Holborn. 61 


High Holborn. I cannot—cannot say what I felt as I crossed over 
from Drury Lane towards his den, more particularly when, on en- 
tering, I beheld the demon himself behind his counter—calm, move- 
less, and sepulchral, as if nothing of moment had occurred ; as if he 
“were an every day dun, or I an every day debtor. The instant he 
espied me, a sardonic smile, together with that appalling dissyllable, 
“touching” (which I never to this day hear, see, or write without a 
shudder) escaped him; but before he could close his oration, I had 
approached, trembling with rage and reverence, towards him, and, 
thrusting forth the exact sum, was rushing from his presence, when he 
beckoned me back for a receipt. A receipt, and from himtoo! It was 
like taking a receipt for one’s soul from Satan! ! 

The reader will doubtless conclude that, now at least, having satisfac- 
torily settled his demands, I had done with my Tormentor for ever. He 
will also (and naturally enough) infer, that my mind would resume its 
former comparative tranquillity, or if still hankering after a grievance, 
would find some fresher subject ; that, in short, I should apply once again 
to my long neglected medical pursuits, and become, what is biblically 
termed, “anew man.” These inferences are in part correct. I followed 
up my vocation with an energy strangely contrasted with my recent indif- 
ference, was early and late in the schools, and for three months pursued 
this course with such ardour, that my adventures with the Mysterious 
Tailor, though not forgotten, were yet gradually losing their once 
powerful hold on my imagination. This was precisely the state of 
my feelings, when early one autumnal morning, just seven months 
from the date of my last visit to High Holborn, I chanced to be turn- 
ing down Saint Giles’s Church, on my way to Hospital. It was 
one of those still depressing days, clouded, and with a regular and 
heavily blowing wind, when the mind, taking its tone from the season, 
feels a load thrown upon its energies, which it in vain attempts to shake 
off. I had nothing to render me more than usually pensive ; no new 
vexations, no sudden pecuniary embarrassments ; yet it so happened, 
that on this particular morning I felt a weight at my heart, and a cloud 
on my brain, for which I could in no way account. As I passed along 
Broad Street, I made one or two bold attempts to rally. I stared inqui- 
Sitively at the different passers by, endeavouring, by a snatch at the 
expression of their faces, to speculate on the turn of their minds, and the 
nature of their occupations ; I then began to whistle and hum some 
lively air, at the same time twirling my glove with affected unconcern ; 
but nothing would do; every exertion I made to appear cheerful, not 
only found no answering sympathy from within, but even exaggerated 

_ by contrast my despondency. In this condition I reached Saint Giles’s 
_ Church. A crowd was assembled at the gate opposite its entrance, and 
presently the long surly toll of the death-bell—that solemn and oracu- 
memento—announced that a funeral was on the eve of taking place. 

I have often had occasion to admire the extreme business-like regu- 
larity with which these ceremonies are conducted in England. Each 
individual in the procession has his own particular allowance of sorrow 
assigned him. ‘The first mourning coach is dedicated to overpowering 
grief, the second to a more qualified tribulation, the third to a decent 
regret, the fourth, &c., to an amiable indifference. This duly appor- 
tioned woe is adhered to with unswerving scrupulosity. The last coach 


62 The Mysterious Tailor : [Juty, 


would scorn to trespass on the province of the first; and it would deeply 
affront the sensibilities of the second, were it to find its affliction rivalled 
by the ambitious agonies of the third. The very horses partake abun- 
dantly of this distinction. Those attached to the leading vehicle are 
rendered, through an apt process of starvation, accomplished models of 
suffering, while the remainder, according to their rank in the procession, 
may be excused if they trespass a little upon obesity, provided they do 
not make too ostentatious a display. These ideas suggested themselves 
to my mind as the funeral halted at the entrance gate, where the coffin 
was taken from the hearse, and thence borne into the chancel. This 
ceremony concluded, the procession again set forth towards the home 
appointed for the departed in a remote quarter of the church-yard. 
And now the interest began in reality to deepen. As the necessary 
preparations were making for lowering the coffin into earth, the 
mourners—even those who had hitherto looked on unmoved—pressed 
gradually nearer, and with a momentary show of interest, to the grave. 
Such is the ennobling character of death. It lulls the storm of passion, 
mellows the roughness of hatred, sweetens the bitterness of scorn, and 
even hushes the deep mutterings of envy. No bad feeling can thrive 
within its awful precincts, for it is a charmed and holy atmosphere, 
a Mausoleum of benevolence, in which every hostile passion is 
entombed. 

The preparations were by this time concluded, and nothing now 
remained but the last summons of the sexton. At this juncture, 
while the coffin was being lowered into its resting place, my eyes, acci- 
dentally, it may be said, but in reality by some fatal instinct, fell full 
upon the lid, on which I instantly recognised a name, long and fearfully 
known to me—the name of the Mysterious Tailor of High Holborn. 
Oh, how many thrilling recollections did this one name recal? The 
rencontre in the streets of London—the scene at the masquerade—the 
meeting at Boulogne—the storm—the shipwreck—the sinking vessel— 
the appearance at that moment of the man himself—the subsequent 
visions of mingled fever and insanity: all, all now swept across 
my mind, as for the last time I gazed on the remains of him who 
was powerless henceforth for ever. In a few minutes one little span 
of earth would keep down that strange form which seemed once 
endowed with ubiquity. That wild unearthly voice was mute ; that 
wandering glance was fixed; a seal was set upon those lips which 
eternity itself could not remove. Yes, my Tormentor—my mysterious— 
omnipresent Tormentor was indeed gone ; and in that one word, how 
much of vengeance was forgotten! I was roused from this reverie by 
the hollow sound of the clay as it fell dull and heavy on the coffin-lid. 
The poor sleeper beneath could not hear it, it is true; his slumber, 
henceforth, was sound; the full tide of human population pressing fast 
beside the spot where he lay buried, should never wake him more: no 
human sorrow should rack his breast, no dream disturb his repose ; yet 
cold, changed, and senseless as he was, the first sound of the falling clods 
jarred strange and harsh upon my ear, as if it must perforce awake 
him. In this feverish state of mind I quitted the church-yard, and, on 
my road home, passed by the shop where I had first met with the 
deceased. It was altered—strangely altered—to my mind, revoltingly 
so. Its quaint antique character, its dingy spectral look were gone, and 


ee a 


1628.] a Romance of High Holborn. 63 


there was even a studied air of cheerfulness about it, as if the present 
proprietor were anxious to obliterate every association, however slight, 
that might possibly remind him of the past. The former owner had but 
just passed out, his ashes were scarcely cold, and already his name was 
on the wane. Yet this is human nature. It cannot, and, indeed, it is 
fit that it should not dwell for ever with the past: events are on the 
march, and the mind, side by side, must march with them. How con- 
fined, how contemptible a space do we, who are every thing in our own 
eyes, occupy in the mighty universe around us. We die, and self-love 
persuades us, that the eyes of the world are fixed on our parting 
moments, when, in truth, even our next door neighbour is indifferent. 
So trifling, in fact, is the gap caused by our absence in society, that there 
needs no patriotic Curtius to leap into it ; it closes without a miracle the 
instant it is made, and none but a disinterested Undertaker knows or cares 
for whom tolls our passing bell. 


THE CONVENT OF CATANIA. 


“I thought thy bride bed to have deck’d, sweet maid, 


* And not have strew’d thy grave.” 
Hamlet. 


Tue stranger who, for the first time, visits that district of Sicily, of 
which Catania is the principal town, will find as much to delight him in 
the ruins of art, as in the freshness and luxuriance of nature. An Eden in 
all but its insecurity ; the base of Etna is beautified by flowers of every 
hue, and forest-trees of all climates ; the hamlets that peep out from the 
clusters of rich wood, give to that prospect a liveliness which more 
populous tracts of level scenery can never attain ; andthe Arcadian look 
and dresses of the peasantry, complete the picture, which might have 
served for the model of a poet’s fairy-land. But the fertile beauty of 
St. Agata, or Tremisteri, moved not my wonder more strongly than an 
object of a very different nature, which used to greet me on my rambles 
with the solemnity of a spectre. It was a ruin—not a storied pile, with 
venerable ivy, and columns of scrupulous architecture—a place of no 
primeval note or superstition, but a confused mass of fallen walls, and 
unsightly fragments, which, at no distant period, seemed to have been 
the prey of a dreadful conflagration. Around me were scattered the 
blackened stones and crumbling timbers, and here and there, an orna- 
mented frieze or other gorgeous relic that seemed to have belonged to an 
edifice sacred to some uses of the Catholic Church. I wandered, with- 
‘out knowing why, for hours, amid this desolation, and its image haunted 
my mind, and would not be driven away from it. 

Thou art gone from this world of sorrow, old Carmelo,* my merry 


* Carmelo Puglisi, host of the hotel, called the Elephant, at Catania, remembered the 
ascent of Etna, by Brydone, in 1770. He was a fine old man, and had a budget of anec- 
: historical, and local, that, when opened, rendered his conversation the pleasantest 
thing in the world. On future occasions, the same source may possibly be used for simi- 
tar draughts of traditional anecdote. TI need not add, that the main event of this little tale 
is strictly, or rather, historically, true. 


64 The Convent of Catania. [Juxy; 


host! I may not hear that garrulous tongue of thine again ; thy custo- 
mary seat is vacant; but I remember well the accents and purport of 
thy voice, and in no matter more faithfully than when our converse was 
about this tenantless old ruin. How thy lip quivered to tell its history, 
and the eye not dimmed by seventy winters, lost something of its bright- 
ness, when so sad a tale was to be recounted. If an interval of some 
half dozen years, and the treachery of all human recollections, be not too 
severely estimated, I may, even now, be able to present a detail of those 
occurrences, which were so eloquently described by thee, to a listener 
neither uninterested nor forgetful. 

In the vicinity of Catania, where the links of family descent are pre- 
served with such jealous care, there existed no prouder or more noble 
house than that of the Alessi. The old count, in whom were now vested 
all the hereditary dignities of his race, felt for his daughter Rosina, a 
love deeper and more solicitous than might have been expected from the 
sternness of his general character. But her mother, with a dying injunc- 
tion, charged him to be gentle as herself to the deserted girl ; and in that 
hour, when all his manly spirit was broken, these words wound them- 
selves around his heart, beloved as the earthly farewell of his dear com- 
panion, and sacred as the counsel of one so soon to be divine. 

And for Rosina, did she not merit all the tenderness that the most 
affectionate parent could bestow? What eye was brighter, whose smile 
could return a readier expression of love, than that of his only daughter ? 
She was the most “ gracious creature born ;”—with all the light-hearted 
innocence and prattle of a mere child—matured by the first dawnings of 
womanhood. Grave, or gay, according to her mood, disguising nothing, 
affecting nothing, but by her father’s side ever to be found, like a ray of 
sunshine in his path. It was beautiful to see the fair thing with all her 
gentleness and feminine timidity, contrasted with the rugged old soldier, 
whose frowns, multiplied by long trials in a world he hated, were 
scarcely ever softened by aught else around him. He had a son—not 
such a one asa father’s hopes had pourtrayed—and Rosina was the only 
staff of his declining years. 

It happened that a young Neapolitan was at this time a visitor on their 
island. He came with no passports of admission into the principal fami- 
lies, and was, therefore, held as an adventurer, or one of doubtful blood, 
He had wandered over the beautiful scenes of Sicily, and by chance 
encountered, in one of the most lovely of them all, that innocent girl, 
who had hitherto known nothing of life but its smiles. It were needless 
to recount by what accidents they met again, and by what expedients 
they afterwards repeated their interviews ; still more needless would it — 
be to say how the stranger at first amused, then attracted the companion — 
of many concealed meetings, which were concealed, not from any fear on 
her part, but because he so desired it, and the experience of young love 
soon showed them that these stolen moments were the “ sweeter for the 
« theft.” The light-hearted girl lost something of her natural deport- 
ment ; her mood was not so variable, nor her step so light as formerly. 
In her solitude, she mused or looked on all things wistfully. With her 
father she had lost the quick speech, and listening look, of former days, 
and she, who had been as the shadow of river-trees, thrown upon the 
water, ever moving, and restless, and uncertain, but still the image and - 
companion of her sturdy sire, was now become solitary, and abstracted, 
and fixed, as though her young spirit had. been already blighted. 


1828.] The Convent of Catania. 65 


The old man watched this decay, and a sigh, or an unusual tremor of 
voice, was all the counsel he could give. He felt that his own support 
was gone, but he checked not the strong impulses that led away from 
him the fond heart of his daughter. It was a severe pang that accom- 
panied the dismissal of his proud plans, and interested hopes. He could 
not see his child taken from him without a selfish sense of sorrow ; but 
that her love should be given to an unknown foreigner, looked upon 
with suspicion, and credited as one of gentle birth, only on the faith of 
his unsupported word, this was the woe that struck hardest on his 
heart ; and when he affianced her to young Montalto, the prejudices of 
an old patrician lingered long after the regrets of a desolate and lonely 
father. They were affianced ; but one necessary preliminary was yet to 
be accomplished. The heir of the Conte d’Alessi had not hitherto been 
acquainted with the occurrences of his own family, and his presence, 
from a distant part of the island, was required before the ceremony of 
his sister’s nuptials. A messenger was despatched, and the summonses 
were answered in an uncourteous strain by the dissolute young noble- 
man: who, while expressing his disapproval of the alliance, intimated 
that his reasons were more than he could state, otherwise, than, as he 
intended, by a personal conference. In a few days he arrived, but 
positively refused to see the stranger to whom he so mysteriously ob- 
jected. He conversed with his father in an unintelligible manner, but 
gave glimpses of a serious meaning, in the half-imputations he threw out 
against Montalto. Still, no entreaty or remonstrance, of the old man 
could gain from him an explicit accusation. The charge, incoherent 
and left to his conjecture, conjured up a thousand phantoms before his 
eyes; he feared he knew not what; his dear daughter might be the 
prey of a criminal or a dishonoured outcast ;—there might be the brand 
of public guilt, or personal shame, on this young foreigner. He appealed, 
he implored his son, to reveal what he had to disclose ; but no answer 
came, but in dark looks and equivocal hints. 
It was during one of these conferences that the object of suspicion, by 
accident, found his way into the apartment of the count. He entered, 
ignorant of the purpose and parties of the conversation ; but his eyes no 
sooner fell on the countenance.of one of these, than a change, violent and 
terrible, conyulsed his features. The placid expression of the young 
lover was agitated with all the passions of astonishment and rage: his 
_ eye beamed with fury, and as the colour deserted his cheek, it was with 
an papnese of deadly purpose that he uttered his first words. 

_ “Villain,” he exclaimed, “ thou tremendous villain! art thou come at 
ast to satisfy me? Thank God for this!” 
_ He paused—but the eye of the young count fell, and no answer came 
rom him, as his father, with vain earnestness, sought for an explanation 

8 strange address. 
_ “Wretch !” continued Montalto, “would you ask him to confess his 
; villainy—to convict himself? No, no: he has not that honesty ; one thing 
' I entreat to know, by what base acts he wormed himself here. Oh! 
trust him not with the confidence of a moment. I know too hor- 

_ ibly how he will betray it. Yet, once again, I ask, how came the 
_ monster here ?” 

_ “ Are you mad, Montalto?” answered the old count. ‘“ Would you, 

by this paroxysm, attempt to change my whole nature? would you, by 
_ your wild speech, strive to overcome the warm feelings of a father ?” 

M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.31. K 


66 The Convent of Catania. [Juxy, 


«A father !” shrieked the other ; “ Gracious Heaven! forbid it !—It 
cannot be that one so vile has sprung from that noble root—Oh! no, 
I have mistaken your words—say not you are his father.” 

« And, wherefore not, Montalto >—What madness urges you to these 
excesses >” The voice of the other was checked ; he softened the vio- 
lence of his look, and after a pause, proceeded in a milder tone. 

«« Sir, you have known me long enough to be assured that I am not _ 
wantonly disturbing your quiet ; it was not with any foresight of this 
catastrophe that I came hither ;—I could not guess that this man called 
you by the honored title of Parent.—I can hardly now believe it:— 
but my words have awakened your fears, and I cannot rest without 
satisfying them.” He stopped, and for a moment appeared to undergo 
a conflict of various emotions; then directing his gaze fixedly to the 
quailing countenance of the young Alessi, he continued in these solemn 
words— 

« Eurico, your own conscience written on that cheek, will tell father 
better than my words, that I have not been raving.—<s I look at you 
now, I cannot recognize the courtly and accomplished noblemen, to 
whom a seat at my paternal table was offered with all the frankness of 
unsuspecting hearts, and disgraced by ingratitude, blacker than malice 
could have painted. The result of our hospitality is known in the 
country which I left despairing, and the infamy which you threw on 
the fair sister of my heart, has been followed by the dispersion and 
wretchedness of our whole house. You left her in the hour of seduc- 
tion, afraid to meet the resentment you had earned. But the remem- 
brance of the hateful time is strongly enough perpetuated by the tears 
of an undone family ; and your escape from retribution is not now 
effected. You will understand me.” 

These words, uttered in a deep tone of subdued emotion, will indicate 
sufficiently some of those circumstances that were the forerunners of 
this tale. The young Alessi had betrayed the daughter of a Neapolitan 
noble; and, to the baseness of a seducer, united also the meanness of 
a coward. He fled from the scene of his guilty pleasure, and was 
overtaken in Sicily by Montalto; who, partly from a desire to wipe 


away the local associations of personal and family sorrows, partly in — 


the faint hope of meeting with the author of them, had wandered from 
his home, without a companion, without a plan.—-These words may also 
lead to a surmise of many consequent events. The distraction of the 
old count, the hesitation and subterfuges of his son, were but natural 
issues of so unexpected a disclosure. By the latter, no species of vin-. 
dication could be urged ; and he stood before his father as a man guilty 
of all that he would have imputed to the injured Montalto, had his 
boldness been equal to his deceit. 

And, for Rosina, what was the sorrow which this event entailed >— 
Her young heart still beat high with the expanding hopes of her be- 
trothal ; her brow was not overcast with any new care—she heard not 
the history of her brother’s disgrace ; and when he departed from his 
home, sufficient was the slight pretext used to account for his untimely 
disappearance. With a burning heart, Montalto let him go, doubting, 
in pain and perplexity, whether the revenge he had so long coveted was 
not too precious to be lost, though he thereby remained master of ano~ 


ther jewel, and respected, as his duty bade him, the parental intercession 
of the Conte d’Alessi. 


; 


a 


1828.] The Convent of Catania. 67 


Four days had elapsed, and Rosina was attending one of the ceremo-« 
nies of her religion, in the principal church of Catania. Her eyes were 
bent on the ground during the holy service of Vespers, and the obscure 
light seareely marked out a little roll of paper that had fallen, she knew 
not how, at her feet. She was on the point of rising from her devo- 
tions, when the object first caught her attention. She gently took it 
up, and, to her surprise, found it directed to herself. It was opened 

“and perused without loss of a moment ; the contents were these: “ If 
you are wise, warn Montalto against disaster ; let him be wary, and act 
in nothing without feresight and preparation ;—there is some one at 
his elbow.” The girl started, and reperused the paper ; her senses 
almost forsook her, as the apprehension of an unknown danger floated 
before her,—she looked fearfully about her, and hurried homewards 
with a wildness of step and look, that were strange to her graceful 
demeanour. That night she slept, not as she had done, but her dreams 
were disturbed and fantastic; and she arose from her feverish couch, 
not the airy and happy creature who had always blest her father’s eye 
with a brightness more cheerful than that of the sunny morn. The 
morning came, and the customary hour of meeting Montalto; but he 
tarried longer than usual. Time passes heavily in the solitude of young 

‘lovers ; but Rosina started as the mid-day bells rang out their peal, and 
an apprehension of some mischance flashed upon her mind at the in- 
stant. She connected his delay with the warning of the little note,— 
and with an anxious voice, she begged her father that some messenger 
might be dispatched to see what hindered the young Montalto, that he 
came not, as was his custom. The old man smiled and comforted her 
fears, which yet he thought not utterly groundless, and lost no time in 
complying with her wishes. Alas! what was the result !—The mes- 
senger returned, but no answer could he give to their inquiries. Mon- 
talto liad been absent from his lodging during the night, and had not 

; since been heard of. His apartment was left in disorder, and no 
clothing or other part of its furniture removed. He had been expected, 
and watched for from the hour of midnight, but no tidings of him had 
reached them. Who shall describe the agony of the young girl, who 
became now too well convinced of the truth of the secret counsel? 
What cries of anguish, what natural laments fell from her in that 
moment of suspense, deepened almost into the horror of certainty. 
___ _Im vain were the sympathy of the father and admonition of friends 
.applied to mitigate her grief. Each hour, as it brought a sort of con- 
ation of her fears, left her more determined in her conviction—more 
complete in her despair. Montalto came not again, and all his virtue, 
and beauty, and manly attractions had passed away, none could tell 
where ; and only were recorded in the gossip of busy bodies, and in 
‘the heart of a fond girl, where they were embalmed as in a faithful 
_ sepulchre. 
_ Yet the course of her pious tears was destined to be checked. It was 
s _ about a month after this occurrence that a letter was put into her hands, 
__ whose superscription seemed to be written in familiar characters, which 
~ only her fears would have distrusted. It was from the beloved Mon- 
 talto,—he was yet alive! She hurried through the contents, with a 
heaving bosom, and brightened countenance ; and with an inarticulate 
burst of joy; fell into her father’s arms, exhausted and senseless. Th 
happy communication was to the following effect :— 
K 2 


r 


E 


68 The Convent of Catania. [Juxy, 


On the last night of their meeting, which her forebodings had pro- 
tracted beyond the usual hour, Montalto had returned by the customary 
road to the house of his lodging. In a solitary place, he was suddenly 
surprised by the appearance of disguised men, who, rushing from their 
concealment, deprived him of the means of defence, pinioned, and 
blindfolded him. He was raised into a sort of litter, to which he was 
fastened, and thus conveyed along until he heard the roar of the sea 
waves, and found himself deposited in an open boat. Here one of 
the party, after giving some orders, left his companions, and, in the 
feigned tones, he could recognize the hated voice of his enemy—the 
young Alessi. They presently made sail, and having restored to him 
the use of his limbs and relieved him from the bandage thrown over his 
eyes, he was enabled to discover that they were coasting in a northerly 
direction, though for what purpose he could not gather. The crew 
consisted of six men, rough and hard-featured mariners, who replied to 
his interrogations with sullen brevity, and seemed to be acting under 
the orders of one whose mien might, indeed, be distinguished from that 
of his companions ; but was, nevertheless, such as could only belong to 
a person of subordinate rank. During the night they kept close into 
shore ; but with the first beams of morning, pushed farther out to sea 
without materially verging from their former course. The next night 
they glided through the straights of Messina, and made for the island 
of Stromboli. It was a placid and delicious scene ; the wind just verging 
onward the little bark without motion or irregularity : Montalto lay on 
the deck, but uncertainty of his fate prevented slumber ; around him 
were grouped the forms of the lusty mariners, perfecting the allotted 
sleep which yet remained to them before the more active season of day- 
light ;—only the helmsman continued at his ordinary work, and the one 
seamen, to whom the direction of the vessel was entrusted. The deep 
meditations of Montalto were arrested by the approach of this officer. 
He came near, and without noise, requested him to move to the fore 
part of the deck, as he had something of importance to communicate. 
His injunction was obeyed. In a moment they were to be seen in the 
glorious light of that Southern Morn, side by side, as if in conversation. 
The sea-captain, in a quick low tone, might be heard recounting his 
secrets, and the breathless interest of his hearer might prove that it was 
no common subject of confidence. Ever and anon the eyes of the nar- 
rator turned anxiously around to catch the first movements of a dis- 
turbed sleeper, or prevent the curiosity of the steersman at his post. 
The tale he teld was strange. He had been the chosen servant of the 
young Alessi for some years; he had aided him in his enterprizes, he 
had shared in his counsels. At Catania, he had learnt the story of 
Montalto, and—he knew not why, his pity had been moved. From the 
first threat of danger, whispered by his master, he had resolved to 
betriend the destined victim. His intimation to Rosina, at her prayers, 
had failed; and the evil which could not be prevented, he had now 
determined to remedy. To him was entrusted the guidance of the 
present scheme. None else knew the object or system of his measures. 
His orders were to despatch or get rid of their prisoner in any way 
that might be most convenient ; but he defied the wicked:command, and 
was resolved to save him. They could not return to Sicily, for his re- 
appearance would be the signal for the most atrocious acts of barbarous 
revenge. Neither could they long be absent, for already had sufficient 


1828.] The Convent of Catania. 69 


time elapsed for the execution of his master’s orders, and suspicion 
would be excited by their long continuance at sea. All he could do 
would be to land his prisoner on some point of the continent, and leave 
him with a recommendation to make the best of his way to Naples. 
His only condition was, that an immediate return to Catania would not 
for a moment be contemplated by him, as he valued the life of his 
benefactor. : 

This was the substance of his disclosure. Montalto, in mute gratitude, 
heard the extraordinary tale, and without evincing any change of 
deportment, watched with impatience the progress of the vessel as it 
changed once more its course in an easterly direction, and favoured 
by the wind, at last safely reached the headland on which rises the 
town of Argentina. In the interval between the above conversation and 
their arrival in the harbour, all his efforts had been applied to liberate 
Antonio, the servant of Alessi, from the thraldom of his villany. His 
endeavours proved successful. When he quitted the boat, he went 
not alone, but was accompanied by his preserver. The next in com- 
mand was charged with the safe conduct of the vessel to Catania, as 
though this had been part of a premeditated plan. And as they took their 
leave of Argentina, on the road to Naples, they could discern the white 
sail of their bark filling with the side wind and pursuing its silent way 
towards the south. Montalto’s letter was despatched from his father’s 
palace. He had entreated for permission and means to return imme- 


. diately to his love, but the old nobleman doubtfully listened, and required 


_—— 


s 


: 


that his son should serve one campaign in the wars of his country before 
his benediction could be gained for the nuptials. To this parental wish 
he had reluctantly acceded. He should for a short time, in obedience to 
his father, deviate from the path of his inclination ; but he owed some- 
thing as an equivalent for the heart which she had given to him, and his 
laurels, could he win any, might in some sort be a compensation. 
_ This was the substance of that letter which gave a revival to the hopes 
and animation to the fading beauty of Rosina. We will leave her for a 
while, and observe the proceedings of young Alessi after the night when 
he carried off Montalto. In concealment he still lurked about the neigh- 
bourhood of his father’s house, anxiously awaiting the return of his boat, 
and the announcement of his enemy’s destruction. The boat came— 
Antonio’s place was filled by another—and to their master’s almost 
delirious questions, the unwelcome answer was given, which assured him 
of all that he now for the first time forboded. His wicked mind was 
instantly agitated with schemes of fresh revenge. He despatched con- 
fidential agents to track the movements and communicate all the actions 
of Montalto; he learnt his present occupation, and in a spite that seemed 
to have no premeditated plan, he circulated, through various channels, 
a rumour that Montalto, upon the first collision with the foe, had fallen 
in the field. This, corroborated by the assent of many hired witnesses, 
did not fail to reach the ears of Rosina. Disbelief, shadowed sometimes 
with a fear of its authenticity, caused in her mind a, conflict of the most 
opposite and terrible emotions. But conviction was at length urged 
oer her, by the receipt of a despatch purporting to be from the father 
Montalto, in which all particulars of his son’s death were painfully 
detailed. For a time the poor girl’s agony broke forth in paroxysms 
which seemed to convulse her whole system. She was wild, tumultous, 
and wayward in her grief. She refused the solace of friends, she listened 


70 The Convent of Catania. [Jury, 


to no alleviation of her calamity. She was “like sweet bells jingled 
harsh and out of tune,” and never did it appear that their order and 
beauty could come again. Oh! how dreadful was the violence of her 
sorrow, which seemed a thing strange to one of such gentleness. Her 
songs which she had sung to him were forgotten, or only remembered 
in fragments to add intensity to her suffering. The ringlets of which 
the fairest lay, as she supposed, upon his clay-cold heart, now fell un- 
arrayed upon her shoulders. Weeping, and recounting the valour and 
attraction of him whom she could see no more, up and down the lonely 
corridors she wandered like a ghost—in vain appealed to, in vain 
hindered. 

But this season passed away ; and when the voice of the thunder- 
clap no longer rang in her ears, but was remembered only in a serener 
moment, the sorrow which had been almost frenzy, was tempered to an 
honourable regret. Her eye had lost its brilliancy, and she cared not 
for the world ;—for it was a desert to her, though all its sweetness, and 
grandeur, and eternal beauty were there, and only one of the countless 
ereatures gone from its surface. 

But her dejection was equable and rational ; and it was from a settled 
purpose, rather than at the impulse of an uncertain fancy, that she 
resolved to abandon her home and kindred, and in perpetual seclusion 
give to her God that broken heart which might have been too much 
given to a mortal being. She took the veil, and in the convent of which 
I spoke at the opening of this paper, was enrolled a member of the 
holy sisterhood. 

Time passed on; the Neapolitan warfare suffered a pause, and in the 
interval Montalto lost no time in returning to Catania. Upon his 
arrival, what was his dismay and astonishment, when informed of his 
supposed death, and the effect it had produced in the life of poor 
Rosina? 

Uncertain what steps to pursue eventually, it was his first natural 
impulse to inform her of his safety, and still enduring attachment. In 
an evil hour the announcement of this unexpected news visited her in 
her solitude. In an evil hour the chords of her mind were once more 
unstrung, and the harmonies newly heard were turned into dissonance. 
The sorrows of the past came upon her afresh, but under another aspect. 
Fer she had estranged herself from her love, and by her own act had 
effected that sad reverse, that horrible privation, which had been more 
tolerable, whatever else had been the cause.—What remedy now re- 
mained? With all its original force the tide of her love rolled in its 
former channels ; and the infirmity of human resolution could not now 
withstand the strength of the current. Her spirit was weaned from her 
holy occupations. Sickened with her garb, her daily duties, her associates, 
her very thoughts, she longed to cast off the self-imposed thraldom. 
Never to the eye of enthusiastic childhood, did the distant hill-tops gleam 
with suchabeauty as now that she contemplated them—alove-sick prisoner. 
The hopeless schemes of relief, which such a condition suggested, were 
all that now remained for her meditation and her solace. To abandon 
her rigid profession was impossible: to desert it and escape, seemed 
more practicable. By day, as she gazed through the grated windows at 
the fair prospect before and around her, this was the vision which came 
with every object and beautified the whole. By night, it filled the long 
interval between her faint slumbers ;—and as she slept, the more obscure 


oe a fe * 


1828.] The Convent of Catania. 7% 


and rude conceptions, still occupied her fancy with the same theme, 
the same never varied purpose. It was, perhaps, in a midnight hour 
that the dreadful project was formed, which surely must have been the 
last resource of the despairing maid, when, by constant agitation, the 
turbulence of her spirit had become a sort of phrenzy. Then it was 
that her reckless and determined love found itself a way; and by an 
effort more appalling, perhaps, than any that history can furnish, grasped 
at the attainment of its coveted end. Without admitting into her counsel 
one of all those on whose fidelity she might have reposed, the measures 
for this awful expedient were deliberately concerted. She planned, she 
determined, she prepared it in secrecy and alone. 

It was in the mid-watches of the night, that the sisters were aroused 
from their rest by the cry of “ Fire!” from some one hurrying along 
the dormitories. It was Rosina who urged them to fly—it was Rosina 
who discovered the danger—it was Rosina who plotted the conflagration! 
The flames were rushing wildly and high up the outer walls of the 


; building, but she would not yet retire. From cell to cell, she went 


quickly along, calling on all to escape, yet not daring to think of her 
own safety until assured that no living creature could be left in peril. 
She went like a beneficent being, amid the havoc and ruin that she had 
achieved. Not yet would she desert the dangerous place, for she 
shuddered to think there might still be some one whose blood, if shed, 
would fall so surely on herself. At last the huge edifice was deserted 
and voiceless, and secure of the preservation of her innocent associates, 
she passed along the passages and apartments, now almost undistinguish- 
able. As she went, the sheets of fire flashed hotly and fiercely around 
her. The heat became more intense, the hideous enemy approached her, 
and half enveloped in flame she fled precipitately, but too late, from the 
tottering ruin. Overtaken in her flight, she yet had strength and sur- 
viving consciousness to move in the predetermined track, and when the 
morning dawned it showed her lying a disfigured corpse under the 
doorway of her beloved Montalto. 

The fragments of that ruin are thy epitaph, poor maiden. And the 
story which I have here recounted, better told to many a group of 
islanders, not by gossip mothers, but by the general voice of tradition, 
fails not, upon each recital, to honour thy memory with the tears of the 
tender and the compassionate. 

FEVAH. 


Do gene [Jury, 


THE KING OF ARRAGON’S LAMENT FOR HIS BROTHER.* 


«Tf I could see him, it were well with me!'—Co/eridge’s Wallenstein. 


Tuere were lights and sounds of revelling in the vanquished city’s halls, 

As by night the feast of victory was held within its walls; 

And the conquerors filled the wine-cup high, after years of bright blood shed: 
But their Lord, the King of Arragon, ‘midst the triumph, wailed the dead. 


He looked down from the fortress won, on the tents and towers below, 
The moon-lit sea, the torch-lit streets—and a gloom came o’er his brow : 
The voice of thousands floated up, with the horn and cymbals’ tone ; 
But his heart, ’midst that proud music, felt more utterly alone. 


And he cried, “ Thou art mine, fair city! thou city of the sea! 

But, oh! what portion of delight is mine at last in thee? 

—TI am lonely midst thy palaces, while the glad waves past them roll, 
And the soft breath of thine orange-bowers is mournful to my soul. 


“© My brother! oh! my brother! thou art gone, the true and brave, 

And the haughty joy of victory hath died upon thy grave: 

There are many round my throne to stand, and to march where I lead on ; 
There was one to love me in the world—my brother! thou art gone! 


“ Tn the desert, in the battle, in the ocean-tempest’s wrath, 

We stood together, side by side ; one hope was our’s—one path: 

Thou hast wrapt me in thy soldier’s cloak, thou hast fenced me with thy breast ; 
Thou hast watched beside my couch of pain—oh! bravest heart, and best! 


“JT see the festive lights around—o’er a dull sad world they shine ; 
I hear the voice of victory—my Pedro! where is thine ? 

The only voice in whose kind tone my spirit found reply !— 

Oh! brother! I have bought too dear this hollow pageantry ! 


“ T have hosts, and gallant fleets, to spread my glory and my sway, 
And chiefs to lead them fearlessly—my friend hath passed away ! 
For the kindly look, the word of cheer, my heart may thirst in vain, 
And the face that was as light to mine—it cannot come again! 


“© T have made thy blood, thy faithful blood, the offering for a crown ; 
With love, which earth bestows not twice, I have purchased cold renown: 
How often will my weary heart ’midst the sounds of triumph die, 

When I think of thee, my brother! thou flower of chivalry! 


“ T am lonely—I am lonely! this rest is ev’n as death! 

Let me hear again the ringing spears, and the battle-trumpet’s breath ; 
Let me see the fiery charger’s foam, and the royal banner wave— 

But where art thou, my brother >—where ?—in thy low and early grave!” 


And louder swelled the songs of joy through that victorious night, 

And faster flowed the red wine forth, by the stars’ and torches’ light ; 

But low and deep, amidst the mirth, was heard the conqueror’s moan— 

“ My brother! oh! my brother! best and bravest! thou art gone!” —- FF. -H. 


* The grief of Ferdinand, King of Arragon, for the loss of his brother, Don Pedro, 
who was killed during the siege of Naples, is affectingly described by the historian 
Mariana. It is also the subject of one of the old Spanish ballads, in Lockhart’s beautiful 
eollection. 


| 
| 
| 


1828.] L 


Ca 


MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN, 


A Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, 
§c., by the Rev. F. V. J. Arundell, 
British Chaplain -at Smyrna; 1828.— 
The Seven Churches of Asia—to the an- 
gels of which—that is, according to the 
interpretation which has, we believe, al- 
ways been admitted, the chiefs or bishops— 
especial messages were addressed in the 
Apocalypse—have at all times drawn the 
attention of ecclesiastical readers, and such 
as looked in their subsequent history for the 
completion of what they understood to be 
prophecies. From the establishments of the 
Levant Company at Constantinople and 
Smyrna, the latter the seat of one of the seven 
churches, opportunities in abundance have 
been offered to the chaplains and consuls of 
visiting those places ; nor have such oppor- 
tunities been neglected. The earliest visit, 
of which we have any account, was Dr. 
Smith's, the chaplain at Constantinople, in 
1671, who mentions that, a few years be- 
fore, some gentlemen from Smyrna had been 
the first who made the journey. This Dr. 
Smith seems to have had the credit of dis- 
covering Thyatira and Laodicea. In 1678, 
Sir Paul Ricaut, a consul, well known by 
his work on the Greek and Armenian 
Churches, and his Survey of the Turkish 
Empire—visited the Seven Churchess, if 
we are still to call them seven, when three 
of them are no longer in existence—in com- 
pany with Dr. John Luke; and, like Dr. 
Smith, lays claim to the discovery of Thya- 
tira and Laodicea. In 1699, Edmund Chis- 
hall, the author of Antiquitates Asiatice, 
and chaplain at Smyma, visited Ephesus, 
Sardis, and Thyatira, but did not publish 
his observations. In 1702, Sir William 
Sherard, consul at Smyrna, accompanied by 
the chaplain and others, made a tour to some 
or all of them, and his account also is still 
in MS. In 1740, Pococke visited three of 
them. In 1775, Dr. Chandler published 
his travels in Asia Minor, and describes all 
but Pergamus and Thyatira. Since the 


_ days of Chandler, Dr. Dallaway, chaplain 


and physician to the embassy at Constan- 
tinople, has described Smyrna, Ephesus, 
and Pergamus ; and so lately as 1817, the 
Rey. H. Lindsey examined the whole, and 
published the results in the Missionary Re- 
gister; and now, finally, Mr. Arundell, the 
chaplain of Smyrna, has also visited the 
whole, and, in the volume before us, has, 
with the aid of very liberal borrowing from 
his precursors, given us a full account—not 
yery luminous certainly—of the existing 
state of six of them—for, curiously enough, 
residing at Smyrna as he did, he has for- 
gotten what was close at hand. 

Before westate the present condition of these 
churches, ~~ of them, we must have a word 
or two on the messages in the Apocalypse. 
~ ¥n these addresses, which she eral was 

M.M. New Series.—Vou.VI. No, 31. 


commanded to make, St. John is usually 
understood to have given utterance to pro- 
phecies ; and the writer before us, though 
he does not dwell much upon the matter, 
takes the same view, and occasionally starts 
an evidence of fulfilment. Yet, to an unpreju- 
diced reader—to one, we mean, who trusts. 
to the convictions ofhis own understanding, 
on what comes fairly within its cognizance 
—the addresses—distinctly made to the 
angels—the chiefs, or bishops, as we said— 
consist of commendations for particular 
qualities and conduct, and of censures for 
particular errors and neglects—with corre- 
sponding encouragements and warnings. 
They have not at all the characters of pro- 
phecies, but are plainly authoritative mes- 
sages respecting the official conduct of su- 
perintendents, who are addressed as per- 
sons responsible for the practices of those 
who are under their guidance and care. 
Of the actual history of these conspicuous 
persons we know nothing; but the absence 
of such information is of the less import- 
ance, as the declarations are all conditional, 
and so cannot, in the strict sense, be re- 
garded as prophecies, for the fulfilment of 
which we look with confidence. And to 
apply these messages to the after ages of 
the church, seems quite gratuitous ; for the 
offences charged concern the conduct of par- 
ticular “officers” towards particular per- 
sons; and it must be the very extreme of 
improbability to suppose that a succession of 
officers, in the same station, should have 
precisely the same qualities, and act in pre- 
cisely the same manner towards a succession 
of individuals entertaining successively the 
same sentiments. Besides, facts do not 
correspond; though the chief of Laodicea 
was the worst of the seven—“ neither hot 
nor cold”——and met with the sharpest re- 
proofs and the severest threats, and Lao« 
dicea, it may be said, lies accordingly ut- 
terly in ruins—yet so, we may add, does 
Ephesus, whose chief, though he had fallen 
from his “first love” —which probably means 
that he had disregarded the orders of the 
apostle—the first converter—yet had ree 
sisted the seductions of false teachers—had 
hated the Nicolaitanes—had laboured—and 
fainted not. And even Thyatira, whose 
chief, though censured for suffering the wo- 
man Jezebel to seduce Christ’s servants, is 
distinctly attested to have had works—cha- 
rity, faith, and patience—and, moreover, 
that the last were better than the first—that 
is, he had been good, and was now better— 
even Thyatira, though still existing in com- 
paratively considerable numbers, is in a 
state far too deplorable to correspond with 
the strong expressions of triumph in the 
message. ‘The truth apparently is, the ad- 
dresses apply to the chiefs, and by impli- 
cation, and, once or twice, expressly, to their 


74 


respective congregations ; but we have not 
the necessary history to illustrate the re- 
sults: and they in reality are entitled to no 
more particular interest now-a-days than 
any other of the ruined towns around them 
—where Christianity was once equally in 
honour. 

To take a glance at these Churches.— 
What is the state of Epuresus? “ I was 
at Ephesus in January 1824,” says Mr. 
Arundell, speaking of a previous visit— 
“the desolation was complete; a Turk, 
whose shed we occupied, his Arab servant, 
and a single Greek, composed the entire 
population — some Turcomans excepted, 
whose black tents were pitched among the 
ruins.””—E/phesus experienced the same 
fortunes with Smyrna, and was seized upon 
by a Turkish pirate towards the end of the 
eleventh century, who was in his turn de- 
feated by John Ducas, the commander of the 
Emperor Alexis. In 1306, it suffered from 
the Grand Duke Roger’s exactions, and, two 
years afterwards, surrendered to the Sul- 
tan Saysan, who removed most of the in- 
habitants to Tyrizum, where they were 
massacred ; and its history from that time 
has merged in that of its neighbour Aiasaluk, 

Laopicra.—This once very extensive 
place still shews the ruins of three theatres 
and a circus, in the hollows of which are 
‘Turcoman huts and tents—but no Chris- 
tians. This town was in 1097 in possession 
of the Turks, and recovered by Ducas; but 
fell again into their hands; and though, 
in 1255, it was again given up to the 
Greeks on the appearance of the Tartars, 
they could not defend it, and it reverted 
finally to the Turks. The destruction of 
Laodicea is partly attributable, probably, 
to a volcanic eruption—a fact, which the 
author apparently considers as verifying the 
language of the Apocalypse—“ because thou 
art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I 
will spue thee out of my mouth.” 

PHILADELPHIA.—This is still a popu- 
lous place, consisting of 3,000 houses oc- 
cupied by Turks, and 300 by Greeks. Ac- 
cording to the bishop’s account, there are 
twenty-five churches, but only five have 
service, once a week. Mr. Arundell at- 
tended him to the church service, and 
“could not help,” he says, “ shedding 
tears, at contrasting the unmeaning mum- 
mery with the pure worship of primitive 
times, which probably had been offered on 
the very site of the present church.” <A 
single pillar, evidently belonging to a much 
earlier structure, reminded him of the pro- 
phecy, and the reward of victory promised 
to the faithful member of the church of 
Philadelphia,—“ He that overcometh will 
I make a pillar in the temple of my God, 
and he shall no more go out,”’ &c. Phila- 
delphia submitted to Bajazet in 1391; and 
among the Greek colonies and ~churches 
of Asia, in the Janguage of Gibbon, “it is 
still erect—a column in a scene of ruins.” 


Monthly Revien of Literature, 


[Jury, 


Sarpis.—A few mud huts, inhabited 
by Turkish herdsmen, and a miller or two, 
contain the whole of the present population. 
The only members of the Greek church of 
Sardis are two Greek servants belonging to 
the Turkish miller—and “ how little ope- 
rative,”’ adds the author, “ the spirit of 
primitive Christianity is on one, at least, of 
these men, will be subsequently shewn’’— 
in the refusal of an act of common cour- 
tesy, readily performed by a Turk. 

TuyaTira.— This is a large place, 
“ and abounds,” says Mr. Arundell, “ with 
shops of every description. The popula- 
tion is estimated at 300 Greek houses (the 
papas told us 500), 30 Armenian, and 
1,000 Turkish, nine mosques, one Arme- 
nian and one Greek church.” He visited 
the latter—it was a wretchedly poor place, 
and so much under the level of the church- 
yard, as to require five steps to descend 
into it. The priest told him, that the 
bishop of Ephesus was the diocesan of 
Thyatira. ‘‘ We intended,” adds Mr. A., 
“ to give him a testament, but he seemed 
so insensible of its worth, that we reserved 
it, as it was our only remaining one, and 
bestowed it afterwards much better.” 

PEeRGAMus is also a populous place, 
underrated at 15,000; fifteen hundred of 
them Greeks, who have one church—a 
miserable shed, covered with earth. On 
one side of it a priest kept a little school 
of thirty scholars. “I gave him a testa- 
ment,’’ says Mr. A. “ The contrast between 
the magnificent remains of the church of 
St. John, which lay beneath, and this its 
poor representative, is as striking as be- 
tween the poverty of the present state of 
religion among the modern Greeks, and 
the rich abundance of gospel light which 
once shone within the walls of the Agios 
Theologus.” 


The Croppy, by the O’Hara Family. 
3 vols. 12mo. ; 1828. —Every body who 
is acquainted with the productions of the 
O’Hara family, knows the writer can make 
a readable book, and knows, moreover, 
what he has to expect—an illustration of 
some period of Irish history, by one who 
thoroughly understands the subject. In 
this respect the reader will meet with no 
disappointment. The story belongs to the 
days of the rebellion of 1798, and embraces 
the chief events of the short struggle in 
Wexford ; but as to the title, The Orange- 
man would have been as appropriate as the 
Croppy : for, though one of the leading per- 
sonages joins the Croppies, another, and the 
principal one, is of the yeomanry ; and the 
interest of the tale depends not at all on the 
political motives of any of the agents. 

Miss Hartley is the heiress of Sir Thomas 
Hartley, and the object of admiration and 
pursuit to Mr. Henry Talbot and Sir Wm. 
Judkin, both of them gentlemen of the 
neighbourhood. Mr. Henry Talbot had 


‘ 
t 
i 
A 


. 


1828.] 


been a friend of the family, and the com- 
panion of Miss Hartley from childhood ; 
Sir William was a new man, succeeding, 
unexpectedly, to a dilapidated property— 
who, by the beauty of his person, and the 
brilliancy of his accomplishments, speedily 
succeeded in supplanting the old admirer— 
aman of plainer, though not homely, qua- 
lities. Before, however, confessing the soft 
preference, the lady wishes to consult an 
early school friend—a correspondent and 
confidante—on the propriety of this very 
questionable transfer of her affections. That 
young lady, after a long delay—which does 
not, it seems, tempt Miss Hartley to decide 
for herself—announces her intention to pay 
a personal visit. To Miss H.’s surprise— 
she had not seen her since she left school 
—she comes a perfectly changed being— 
pale, stern, uncommunicative, and, when 
opposed; vehement and peremptory. She 
will tell but little of her own story; but, in 
general terms, she had been—nay, was still, 
madly in love—had been duped and de- 
serted ; and, railing against the perfidy of 
men, she warns her young friend to return 
to her first love; and then takes her leave 
‘abruptly, leaving behind her an impression 
of her being a little cracked. During the 
young lady’s visit, Sir Wm. Judkin is ab- 
Sent, but on her departure he re-appears on 
the scene—is extremely assiduous in prose- 
cuting his courtship ;. and in no long time, 
in spite of all efforts on the part of Mr. 
Henry Talbot to recover his lost ground, 
obtains from the unreluctant girl a confes- 
sion of mutual affection. The wedding day 
is named—though a distant one, for family 
reasons—and, in the meanwhile, from here 
and there a hint with respect to Sir William 
and his motives, and some unaccountable 
conduct on the part of Mr. Henry Talbot, 
‘particularly an cbvious connexion with one 
Rattling Bill, a rogue and a fortune teller, 
and an active agent through the whole story, 
_the reader becomes a good deal perplexed, 
which is the honest man of the two, and, of 
course, which of the parties is finally to be 
the happy man. 
The day of marriage—distant as it was— 
_at last, as even distant days will, approaches ; 
and poor Mr. Henry Talbot, for whom, as 
somewhat the lowliest, we novel readers are 
naturally the most interested, becoming 
desperate, forces an interview, and, when 
_the inflexible, and somewhat unmaidenly 
hauteur of the young lady refuses to listen, 
driven suddenly beyond his purpose, an- 
nounces to her astounded ear, that Sir Wil- 
_liam is already a married man. Not con- 
tent with this, he colleagues with the scamp, 
Rattling Bill, and engages him, with some 
of his comrades, to seize Sir William Jud- 
kin, and carry him that very night, whither 
we know not. Seized accordingly he is ; 
but, luckily for him, he is released by the 
_#ppearance of Father Rourke, subsequently 


Domestic and Foreign. 


75 


a well-known rebel leader, who lays about 
him right and left, and routs the captors. 
Indignant at these outrages, the young 
lady’s father is resolved to bring Master 
Talbot to book, and, accordingly, as a ma- 
gistrate, summons him to appear before 
himself, and a neighbouring magistrate, 
Captain Whaley, and make good his charge 
against Sir Wm. Judkin. The next day 
the parties assemble; and Mr. Talbot, on 
being asked for his proofs, alleges that he 
had been, by circumstances, precipitated 
into the charge prematurely, and was not 
at present prepared to substantiate it—but 
acknowledging that the person from whom 
he received the intelligence was producible, 
Mr. T. is compelled to produce him. This 
personage proves to be Rattling Bill, who 
impudently and flatly denies haying ever 
made any such communication; and Mr. 
Talbot, to his great mortification, is made 
to appear a palpable calumniator. This 
charge dismissed, Sir William, who recog- 
nized Rattling Bill as the aggressor in the 
attack on his person the previous evening, 
charges him with the assault; and Bill, 
without denying it, conducts himself with 
great insolence—so much so, that Captain 
Whaley, who is a very loyal man, and a 
low man withal—and a yeomanry officer as 
well as a magistrate—orders out the ¢éri- 
angles, and proposes to give him a touch of 
the cat to begin with—martial law being 
just then legal, and very much in fashion 
with a certain description of magistrates. 
Things thus growing serious, Rattling Bill 
requests a private audience from Captain 
Whaley, and, making him understand that 
he is a government spy, though notoriously 
associating with Croppies, he insinuates that 
Sir Thomas and Sir William are both of them 
no better themselves than Croppies ; and, in- 
deed, Sir Thomas’s known popularity was, 
with Captain Whaley, a confirmation of the 
charge, though no overt act, nor indeed any 
act of his, ought justly to have exposed him 
to suspicions of disloyalty. On Captain 
Whaley’s reappearance in the hall of jus- 
tice, he announces, very superciliously, his 
intention to dismiss the case—expressing 
his conviction that Rattling Bill had com- 
mitted no offence, and advising Sir Thomas 
and Sir William to look to themselves. 
Rattling Bill, to make good his ground 
with Captain Whaley, had informed him of 
a large body of pikes, at a blacksmith’s, in 
Sir Thomas’s village; and, accordingly, 
that very night, with a party of yeomanry, 
he proceeds to the search ; and, in the style 
of the times, sets fire to the smith’s house 
and forge, seizes the natives, flogs one, and 
whisks another up a sign-post and then lets 
him down again, more than half strangled, 
to undergo interrogatories. The villagers, 
just in time, had got scent of their coming, 
and, for the most part, had withdrawn to 
the neighbouring heights, with their leader, 


76 
the smith—who from that position beholds 
the flames consume his property, and hears 
the shrieks of a female, and sees the unhap- 
py man run up the sign-post—his own wife 
and son—and swears to take a bloody re- 
venge—an oath which he fearfully keeps. 

The next morning—the wedding day— 
‘the miserable and enraged villagers and 
neighbourhood assemble, and proceed to Sir 
Thomas’s, and insist upon his being their 
leader—in execution of their revenge; and 
not without extreme difficulty, after distri- 
buting refreshments among them in honour 
of his daughter’s wedding, does he persuade 
‘them to desist. From him, however, they 
march forthwith to Captain Whaley’s, and 
‘set fire to his house ; and, in consequence, 
within an hour or two, arrives a troop of 
yeomanry, commanded by Mr. Henry Tal- 
bot, to arrest Sir Thomas and his new son- 
in-law, on a charge of high treason, and, in 
Spite of Miss Hartley’s interposal and agon- 
izing entreaties, he carries them both off to 
Enniscorthy. That very afternoon sits a 
court-martial, presided by one to whom Sir 
Thomas had given offence; and circum- 
stances telling decisively against him, he is 
ordered for immediate execution ; and exe- 
euted he appears to be that very night, and 
under the Captain Talbot's special superin- 
tendence. 

As speedily as possible Miss Hartley, or 
rather Lady Judkin, for the marriage ser- 
vice had passed, pursues her father and 
husband to Enniscorthy, and is refused ad- 
mittance to the gaol by Talbot himself, the 
commanding officer. In a few hours, how- 
ever, at an inn, she is visited by a woman, 
with great mystery, and receives from her 
a letter in her father’s hand-writing, bid- 
ding her confide in the bearer, and accom- 
pany her that night to meet himself some 
miles from the town. To this she consents, 
joins her supposed father—who seems to be 
Captain Talbot himself—and with him ar- 
rives at a country house, which proves to be 
Captain Talbot’s—where her companion 
leaves her. From this place, as soon as she 
discovers its owner, she escapes, and takes 
refuge in the town of Ross. 

In the meanwhile, Sir William Judkin 
‘escapes from prison, by the same agency as 
Sir Thomas; and being led to believe that 
his bride must be at Wexford, he hurries 
thither, and arrives just in time to take part 
with the rebels, and forces Wexford to sur- 
render to the insurgents. Here, however, 
he finds her not; and Talbot is his next 
object. He had been captured, and carried 
to the rebel encampment on Vinegar Hill. 
Thither, also, flies Sir William, and, on his 
arrival, finds the old smith in the act of 
passing sentence on the prisoners, and among 
the first is Talbot himself. Sir W., as a 
rebel commander, demands Talbot to be 
given up to his own revenge, and, after 
some demur on the part of the smith, who 
has “stomach for them all,” he is given up 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[JuLy 


—his hands bound with a rope, and the end 
of it put into Sir William’s. - A scene of 
passion and sternness follows ; but just as 
Sir William is about to inflict the final 
stroke on his defenceless victim, comes a 
resene, and he is himself bound in his turn. 
Escaping again, after some interval, he 
rushes down to Ross, and in the street, and 
under the very eye of his bride, who is leok- 
ing from a window, is he encountered by 
the fiery Talbot, and in the encounter is left 
for dead, trampled upon by horses, and con- 
founded with the dead. 


From these heaps of dead he is however 
extracted, still breathing, by,the mysterious 
woman, who had appeared to Miss Hartley, 
as her father’s messenger, and she directs 
him to be conveyed to the dripping vaults 
of the neighbouring abbey. From thence 
—the town being on fire—she flies to Tal- 
bot, and bids him rescue Miss Hartley from 
the flames. With the ardour and devotion 
of love he plunges in, and, at the extreme 
of peril, saves her from destruction. Mat- 
ters now draw to a conclusion—the strange 
woman re-appears, and presents herself to 
Miss Hartley, as her old school acquaint- 
ance—as the victim ef Sir William’s seduc- 
tion and desertion, who had been the death 
of her child and her mother, and had thrown 
herself, senseless, by a blow on the head 
from him, into the water. Miss Hartley 
discredits the story, and, in consequence, 
is by her friend forced to the church-yard, 
where a scene of horrible conception is ex- 
hibited—but which finally convinces her of 
the depravity of Sir William, whose last 
breath is drawn in her presence. While 
still in the church-yard comes Miss Hart- 
ley’s father, as large as life, who assures her 
that Falbot has been their common pre- 
server—his from death, and her’s from con- 
tamination and misery. In due time Tal- 
bot is re-introduced, &c. 


India; or Facts to Itlustrate the Cha- 
racter and Condition of the Natives, by 
R. Rickards, Esq. ; 1828.—Mr. Rickards 
is an advocate for the extension of free-trade 
to India, and of course opposed to the prin- 
ciples, if not to the existence, of the Com- 
pany’s government. The Company aver 
that all is best as it is—that, such are the 
immovable prejudices, and immutable ha- 
bits of the country, no government but their 
own—so steady—so parental—so conciliat- 
ing and considerate—could produce so many 
advantages to the natives—and that, in pro- 
portion as their own monopoly has been in- 
vaded, have the happiness and the pros- 
perity of India deteriorated. ‘‘ This,”’ says 
Mr. Rickards, “is all idle and interested 
talk—the Company encourage misrepresen- 
tations for the especial object of maintaining 
their own usurpings ;’’ and these misrepre- 
sentations he accordingly resolves, one by 


-one, and piece-meal, and thus most effec- 


tually, to expose. 


1828] 


The country was once prosperous, in a 
very high degree, under its native govern- 
ments, and the observance of its own cus- 
toms—which the Company deny not; but, 
in the teeth of this implied confession, they 
quote the irreversible state of castes and 
customs, as the source of the existing and 
augmenting poverty of the country. The 
actual misery is also not denied ; “ but the 
cause,” say the Company, “resides not in 
the want of good management on our part, 
but in the obstinate inflexibility of the na- 
tives in adhering to customs, which check 
and interfere with the career and progress 
of improvement.” Mr. Rickards proposes 
to tear off the mask ; and, under the appre- 
hension that he may not be able to make 
a large book of a readable kind, and rather, 
perhaps, in the expectation that several lit- 
tle books stand a better chance of being 
read than one bouncing volume, he under- 
takes to discuss, separately and successively, 
the following topics :— 

1. The castes of India, and the alleged 
simplicity and immutability of Hindoo 
habits. 

2. The condition of the natives under 
former governments. 

3. The revenue systems under the Com- 
pany’s government, as tending to perpetuate 
the degraded condition of the natives. 

4, The Company’s trade, and its results 
in a financial point of view. 

5. The reform of administration in India, 
as regards the present system both at home 
and abroad. 

The fasciculus before us embraces the 
castes of India, and the alleged simplicity 
and immutability of Hindoo habits, and 
shews, beyond farther dispute, that the 
notion of the existence of four exclusive 
castes is mere imagination—or to be found 
merely in books—and scarcely there ;—that 
the laws of nature—love—hatred—envy— 
ambition—power—have every where broken 
in upon these institutions of art and artifice ; 
»—that this matter of castes sits compara- 
tively loose upon Hindoos, and openings are 
found for passing from one to the other ;— 
-and that, at all events, fifteen out of the 
eighty millions of India are not in the 

_ slightest degree influenced by them. Then, 
again, with respect to the vegetable diet of 
the Hindoos, Mr. Rickards shews, equally 
satisfactorily, that their poverty, not their will 
consents to this diet, and that, with the ex- 
‘ception of cow-beef, and that confined to 
one portion only of one caste, fish, flesh, 
and fowl are greedily devoured, whenever 
they can be got at; and that the wealthier 
classes of society suffer no restraints what- 
ever upon the indulgence of their appetites. 
And, again, as to European accommoda- 
tions and European manufactures, so far 
from Indians opposing ‘their introduction, 
they eagerly adopt and use them, and would 
do so more and more, if more were within 
their reach. This is. decisively contirmed 


s 


Domestic and Foreign. 


77 


by broad facts, since the telaxation ‘of the 
Company’s monopoly in 1813. The Com- 
pany then said, “such is the pertinacity 
with which Hindoos cling to their own pro- 
ductions, that there is positively no room for 
the importation of more European goods ;” 
but the fact is, that the private trade to 
India more than doubles the whole of the 
Company’s trade to India, and China to 
boot—a pretty satisfactory proof of the grow- 
ing acceptablenes of European commodities 
in India. 


Mr. R. has abundantly confirmed his own 
positions, built on his own long experience, 
by extracts from Bishop Heber’s very valu- 
able work on India, recently published in 
two quarto volumes. 


Ephemerides, or Occasional Poems, by 
Thomas Pringle ; 1828.—Among the mul- 
titude of small volumes, ofsmall poems, this 
at least deserves to be distinguished from 
the common herd. It is obviously the pro- 
duction of a person of considerable cultiva- 
tion and taste—presenting, to be sure, no 
very decisive proofs of original genius or 
fertile fancy, but indications in abundance 
of deep and right feelings—warm sympa- 
thies for the oppressed, and generous indig- 
nation against oppressors. The volume 
consists of poems written chiefly in Scotland, 
and published years ago; the principal of 
which is the Autumnal Excursion, which 
will remind the reader of some of Scott’s 
most felicitous turns, written too about the 
time when Sir Walter’s poetical energies 
were in their fullest activity ;—not that we are 
very great admirers of that great man’s muse ; 
but many are: and we must think Mr. 
Pringle’s effort entitled to a similar kind 
of admiration. The rest of the volume is 
made up with some few pieces, for the most 
part in the sonnet shape, suggested by cir- 
cumstances that pressed upon his observation 
in far different scenes—the settlements of the 
Cape where the author has resided some 
years as an agricultural colonist, and, for any 
thing that appears, may do so still. Fol- 
lowing these sonnets are some notes relative 
to the conduct of the recent government of 
the Cape towards the Caffer, Bushman, and 


‘Hottentot, which will furnish some intel- 


ligence not generally known, with akindling 
of indignation, that such oppressions have 
been sanctioned by English authorities. The 
sound sense and right judgment of the 
writer—quite free from all cant—entitle the 
following testimony he bears to the mis- 
sionaries to a respectful hearing—though 
unconnected with the poetry :— 


Of the missionary settlements in South Africa, 
generally, [have only room to observe, that, after 
having repeatedly visited most of these within the 
Cape Colony, and carefully watched their pro- 
yress for several years, | have no hesitation in 
asserting, that it is at those institutions alone 
that any effectual means have been adopted to 
improve the condition of the Aboriginal inhabi- 


78 Monthly Review of Literature, 


tants—to sh«l‘er them from oppression —or to 
rescue them from debasement. The meritorious 
exertions of the Moravians are well known; but 
itis at Bethelsdorp and Theopolis in particular 
(institutions of the London Missionary Society) 
that the Hottentot race have, during the last few 
years, made the most surprising adyances;.and 
this, too, while these missions were exposed to the 
incessant persecution, not merely of the proyin- 
cial functionaries, but of the colonial government 
itself. Ifthe native tribes of South Africa are so 
fortunate as ultimately to escape the fate of the 
Aborigines of America and of the West Indies, 
their redemption may be fairly ascribed to the 
Christian Missionaries. 


It is but fair, however, to give a specimen 
of the writer’s versification at the Cape :— 


The Bushman sleeps within his black brow’d den 

In the lone wilderness: around him lie 

His wife and little ones, unfearingly— 

For they are far away from “Christian men.” 

No herds, loud lowing, call him down the glen; 

He fears no foe but famine; and may try 

To wear away the hot noon slumberingly ; 

Then rise to search for roots—and dance again, 

But he shall dance no more! His secret lair, 

Surrounded, ech»esto the thundering gun, 

And the wild shriek of anguish and despair! 

He dies—yet, ere life’s ebbing sands are run, 

Leaves to his sons a curse, should they be friends 

With the proud Christian race—“ for they are 
fiends.” 


Oppression! I have seen thee, face to face, 

And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow; 

But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now, 

For dread to prouder feelings doth give place 

Of deep abhorrence! Scorning the disgrace 

Of slavish knees, that near thy footstool bow, 

1 also kneel—but with far other yow 

Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base: 

I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing 
veins, 

Still to oppose and thwart with heart and hand 

Thy brutalizing sway—till Afric’s chains 

Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescned land— 

‘Trampling Oppression and his iron rod ; 

Such is the vow I take—So help me, God! 


The History of the Church of Christ, by 
the Rev. I. Scott. Vol. 2. Part I.; 1828. 
—This work was taken up by Mr. Scott, of 
St. Mary’s, Hull, a son of the well-known 
and well-respected Bible Scott, for the pur- 
pose of prosecuting what had been originally 
undertaken by Joseph Milner, of Hull, and 
continued by his brother, Dean Milner; and 
a volume before this, which we noticed on 
its appearance, has already amply proved 
him to be a very competent collaborateur— 
influenced by the same spirit—the same 
industry—the same undeyiating pursuit “of 
what appears to him truth in facts and in 
doctrines. Our readers are aware that the 
history has the name of evangelical fastened 
upon it ; but the prime object of its origina- 
tor was to trace the existence of what is 
termed by him the True Church, through 
the darkest periods of the Catholic and 
Papal dominion, The broad distinction 


[Jury, 


between Catholic and Protestant lies be- 
tween merit and no merit, in a theological 
sense, between reliance for salvation upon 
self, in conjunction with the Saviour and 
the Saints, and reliance upon the Saviour 
alone—the virtue of this last reliance con- 
sisting in its sincerity, and shewn, so far as 
it is shewn at all, by moral obedience. A 
church, professing these Protestant senti- 
ments, under whatever appellations, ‘has al- 
ways existed—and Milner’s object was, as 
we said, to trace its history. 

Mr. Scott’s former volume presented the 
History of the Lutheran Church, to the 
death of its founder, in 1546; and in this, 
the first portion of a second volume, the 
same history is brought down to 1555, the 
period when Charles, deserted, and duped, 
and baffled by his best and strongest ally, 
Maurice of Saxony —and in despair of 
breaking the resolute spirit of the Pro- 
testants in their just struggle for indepen- 
dence of worship—finally gave up the vain 
attempt to force men’s thoughts to run 
evenly in a mould of his own making— 
gave up, what he could no longer withhold, 
free and full toleration to the professors of 
the Augsburg Confession. As collateral, 
but by no means unconnected matters, the 
remainder of the book is occupied with the 
rest of Melancthon’s story to his death, in 
1560—including a review of his principal 
works, the result, obviously, of a careful 
perusal, and not taken, as has been done a 
thousand. times, on trust and in succession; 
and this is followed by a survey of the chief 
points in the progress of the Council of 


_ Trent, from 1545 to 1563. The remain- 


ing portion of the volume is intended to 
comprise the History of the Swiss Refor- 
mation. 

Received implicitly as Dr. Robertson’s 
very graceful narrative every where is, 
Mr. Scott has justly thought it a matter of 
importance to correct his misrepresenta- 
tions. It would be no difficult matter to 
show that Dr. Robertson’s acquaintance 
with the writings of the main agents of the 
Reformation was very slight ; his researches 
embraced little of the elements of history ; 
he tock them up very much in the lump, 
where he found them made up to his hand, 
and into histories; he consulted, for the 
most part, not the original authorities, but 
the reporters of such authorities, who had 
themselves no doubt drawn upon them— 
but then this was taking things at second 
hand, and was nothing but a judgment of 
the judgments of others, who might them- 
selves have been deeply mistaken. Dr. 
Robertson was, besides, more of an histo- 
rian than a theologian; the matter with 
which Luther’s and Melancthon’s nume- 
rous volumes are filled, was, we take it, 
little to his taste, and, of course, his study 
of them would be hasty and imperfect—and 
blunders were thus inevitable. - 

But his blunders are not.confined to mat- 


i, 


i ee 


1828.) 


ters of doctrine, or the peculiar sentiments 
of individuals on particular topics—in mat- 
ters that, if they come not more within his 
province, were at least of more congenial 
pursuit, they not unfrequently occur. To 
take an instance or two. There exists in- 
disputable evidence to shew that the city of 
Strasburg co-operated zealously and cordial- 
ly with the Smalcaldic members—for when 
the Emperor, insidiously separating their 
cause from that of the princes of the Smal- 
caldic League, represented these princes as 
conspirators against the liberties of Ger- 
many, and called upon the city to join him 
against the traitors as common enemies ; 
the senate boldly defended the loyal cha- 
racter of these princes, and, in the most 
earnest language of entreaty, implored him 
to pause before he involved in the horrors 
of war, &c. Yet Strasburg is represented, 
by Dr. Robertson, as yielding a prompt and 
weak submission—though the contrary fact 
be indisputable, and findable even in Slei- 
dan, one of his own quoted authorities. 

Again, with respect to Maurice of Saxony, 
Dr. Robertson represents him as not hesi- 
tating one moment about establishing in 
his dominions the form of doctrine and 
worship commanded by Charles’s Interim ; 
and assembling the states of Saxony at 
Leipsic, expressly to lay before them rea- 
sons which made conformity necessary, and 
to make their obedience a voluntary deed 
of their own. Now the fact appears to be, 
that Maurice, notwithstanding his: general 
subserviency to Charles, never gave an un- 
conditional assent to the Interim, and cer- 
tainly never established it in Saxony—on 
the contrary, he stated expressly to the 
Emperor that he could not enforce it con- 
sistently with his engagements to his sub- 
jects, and, moreover, pleaded the Emperor’s 
own promises relative to the matter; and 
though, undoubtedly, in the assembly of the 
States, a formulary was agreed upon, drawn 
up in an accommodating spirit, it was very 
far indeed from going the full length of the 
Interim. 

_In the same paragraph, Dr. Robertson 
makes Melancthon concur with this Leip- 
sic formulary ; though indeed with a de- 
gree of pertinacity, quite unusual with 
that gentle, but not unfirm, reformer, he 
refused to keep any terms at all with the 
Interim. Neither Sleidan, nor Mosheim, 
to both of whom Dr. R. refers as authori- 
ties, bear him out in his statement. From 
the first, Melancthon denounced the formu- 

as an “infatuated project,’? which 
would multiply rather than heal divisions ; 
and such, and so vehement, was his opposi- 
tion, that the Emperor commanded him to 
be seized, and delivered up as an enemy of 
the public peace; and he escaped only by 
the connivance of Maurice. 

_ Poor Melancthon has been equally un- 
fairly dealt with by Mosheim and his tran- 
slator. Both of them, taking up with a 


Domestic and Foreign. 79 


notion that Melancthon was of a feeble and 
yielding spirit, and knowing that certain 
matters were conceded by him as indifferent, 
have carelessly represented him as giv- 
ing up, as such, the great doctrine of Lu. 


’ ther, and, indeed, of Protestantism—justi- 


fication by faith alone—the necessity of 
good works to eternal salvation—the num- 
ber of sacraments, &c.;-—when the fact is 
just the contrary, from Melancthon’s own 
repeated declarations, not only before Lu- 
ther’s death, but often to the latest period 
of his own life. Nor is there any ground 
for the hasty statement, that no sooner was 
the restraint of Luther’s presence removed, 
than Melancthon expressed a decided dis- 
agreement with his master. Both Mosheim 
and Maclaine, again, in spite of the plainest 
facts, represent him as the prime counsellor 
and agent in every thing relating to the 
Interim. 


We have before alluded to Strasburg. 
The city was compelled to submit to the 
Emperor’s authority, a month before the 
decisive battle of Mahlburg, which broke 
up the Smalcaldic Confederacy; but they 
still resisted, and not wholly without suc- 
cess, the imposition of the Interim—en- 
treating the Emperor, in language worth 
remembering, ‘not to compel them to say 
with their mouths what their hearts did not 
think.” “ How infatuated,” remarks Mr. 
Scott upon the occasion—“ how infatuated 
the mind which can pursue so worthless an 
object at such an immense expense; and 
how detestably cruel and diabolical to exact 
this of our fellow men, in despite of all the 
arguments and entreaties they can use, when, 
to their own apprehension at least, their 
everlasting welfare depends upon their re- 
fusal, and when no rational being, however 
strong his own persuasion on the other side, 
can ever imagine it possible that their sal- 
vation should be promoted by, ach a con- 
strained and merely external compliance as 
he can exact.” 


We must find room for Mr. Scott’s de- 
fence of Melancthon—concurring as, upon 
some acquaintance with the subject, we do 
very heartily. 


My impression is, that the fault of Melancthon’s 
character was not, as it is commonly supposed to 
have been, timidity—at least in the sense of a 
hesitation to avow his sentiments, or a dread of 
personal danger—for many facts demonstrate his 
bold disregard eyen of life itself in the cause 
which he had undertaken; but rather a morbid 
fear of deciding amiss—a fastidiousness which 
could never satisfy itself—together with such an 
excessive and, considering in whose hands the 
direction of the affairs of the church is really 
placed, such a superfluous anxiety for its peace 
and unity, as sometimes endangered his making 
undue sacrifices for this all but invaluable object. 
Yet, ifany imagine that it was at alla part o¢ 
his plan to compromise disputed points by the 
use of ambiguous terms, which each party might 
construe in its own fayour, [ can only observe, 


80 Monthly Review of Literature, 


that there is no practice against which he more 
frequently and more strongly protests, 


Tales of the West, by the Author of 
Travels in the East.” 2 vols. ; 1828.— 
As tales, there is a singular lack of interest 
in them—they are mere incidents. Trust- 
ing for effect to descriptions of physical and 
moral nature, the writer seems to have 
thought any thing would do for the staple 
of the argument, and, accordingly, any 
thing is made to do. The stories—such as 
they are—are framed, for the most part, not 
on the laws of life, or even of romance, but 
effects follow causes according to any fanci- 
ful concatenation, likely to produce unex- 
pected results. Nor, again, has the style 
and structure of the language any thing at 
all natural or effective about it, but quite 
the contrary—it is all heavy and wearisome 
—a luckless imitation of Wilson, with little 
of the professor’s depth of feeling glowing 
through the thick obscure of the wordy 
covering. Every scene and circumstance is 
wire-drawn, till the thread of the verbosity 
will not bear the weight of another hair 
— giving the promise of circumstantiality, 
without its reality; and we assure the writer, 
who is probably capable of better things, 
that in spite of all the curious and pain- 
ful labour he has spent upon his tales, two- 
thirds of the elaborations will never be read 
by any human being whose sentiments are 
worth a rush. Readers, though, now-a-days, 
stories they will have, require energies, not 
sentiments—skilful combinations of facts, 
and not bootless broodings upon nothing. 
The green of the turf, too, and the blue of 
the sky —the country, with its ups and 
downs, and turnings and windings — its 
abundance and its sterilities—its ruins and 
its relics—scenery, in short, of any kind, 
however brilliant and true—will not com- 
pensate for the absence of life and activity— 
the want of interests that touch the heart 
and command the understanding, 

The West means Cornwall and the Scilly 
Isies ; and miners, smugglers, and wreckers 
mingle in every story ; and descriptions of 
the country abound—with sufficient accuracy 
no doubt ; but of Cornish peculiarities and 
customs, ancient or modern, the supply is 
More scanty than we were led by the pre- 
face to expect. 

The volumes contain seyen tales—the first, 
called “‘ The Valley of the Lizard,” the hero 
of which isasmuggler, whose vessel was taken 
by a revenue cutter. He himself escapes, 
though left for dead, and, flying to Ameri- 
can coasts, turns pirate—meets with a beau- 
tiful Spanish girl—steels her from her home 
—grows weary of her—withers her by neg. 
lect—roams again a little—tires at last even 
of roaming—returns to his native village— 
buys a farm and cultivates it—marries a 
young woman of the village—begets sons 
and daughters— and settles, most unac- 
countably, into a grave personage, with a 
family about him, and thinks of the past 


[J ULY; 


—his lawless life and ardent love—as a 
dream. 

“The Miner” is simply the tale of two bro- 
thers, sons of a Cornish ’squire, left, by their 
father’s improvidence, to the labour of their 
own hands. Though brought up to no- 
thing but hunting and sporting, they turn 
miners, set sedulously to work, and, after a 
series of ill luck, get into the right “ vein,” 
and prosper. One of them falls down a 
shaft, and is crushed to atoms; the other 
pursues the steady tenor of his way, grows 
rich, re-buys the family estate, and dies in 
the hall of his fathers—the cynosure of his 
hopes and labours. 

“The Exile” is, again, a Cornish miner— 
who, for some reason or other goes to sea— 
is taken by an Algerine—sold—works in his 
master’s garden, and is observed by the 
daughter, who falls forthwith in love with 
him, and will marry him. He is divided 
between his love of liberty and the sense 
of his religious obligations—hesitates, but 
yields—renounces his faith, and marries, 
and is happy, and rarely visited with the 
prickings of remorse. After some years, 
the lady dying, he grows comfortless, and 
thinks of Cornwall again—till at last he 
resolves to return to his country and Chris- 
tianity. He accordingly returns home, 
with property enough to get his comforts 
about him, and repents at leisure. It was 
long, it seems, before his spirit was com- 
pletely lulled to rest; but his sufferings 
appear never to have been very acute, or 
indeed to have given him any serious un- 
easiness—for he delighted to dwell upon the 
scenes of prosperity and conjugal felicity he 
had experienced at Algiers—his penitence, 
nevertheless, the author tells us, was deep 
and permanent, and not unavailing. 

“The Legend of Pacorra’’ is alonger story,. 
and, in proportion, wearisome. The period 
of the tale is the reign of Henry the Eighth; 
the scene near a monastery, which is broken 
up by Henry’s rapacity. The daughter of 
one Cornish family, and the son of another, 
are attached to each other; the son has a 
leaning to the new doctrines. The mother 
of the lady is an Italian, whose thoughts, 
naturally enough, turn devotedly to her na- 
tive country, and, though kind hearted and 
accomplished, she is a bigot in her religion, 
and discourages the connexion. By and 
by, an Italian, in the garb of a monk, is 
wrecked on the coast, and carried to the 
lady’s residence. With the hot blood of 
his native clime, he had murdered a rival, 
and had taken refuge in an English mo- 
nastery ; and was returning to Italy, after 
the ruin of the monastery, when the vessel 
was wrecked. The youth, with no more of 
the monk than the cowl, quickly falls in 
love with the young lady, discloses his pas- 
sion, and is haughtily and resentfully re- 
pulsed. He detects the young lady’s pen- 
chant for the Protestant youth; the rivals 
meet occasionally, and scowl at each other, 


4 
= 


: 


1828.] 


and snap and spar, but all with the tongue 
—till once, when all three were together, 
stung by the young Protestant’s reproaches, 
the Italian plucked a dagger from his breast 
—the very dagger with which he had stab- 
bed his former rival, and which he wore 
next his heart in token of repentance—and 
rushing towards him, plunged it deep into 
the bosom of the lady, who had thrown her- 
self between them. 

“ Wesley and his Disciple’’ is well told, 
and the best of the volumes. The disciple 
was a Cornish miner, of a fervid tempera- 
ment and enthusiastic spirit. Under Wes- 
ley’s guidance, he becomes a_ powerful 
preacher, and itinerates the country, till, 
meeting with a wealthy widow, he marries ; 
and in the enjoyment of his wealth, not- 
withstanding the remindings and reproofs 
of Wesley, he relaxes in his profession and 
his preaching. The wife dies. Though 
neyer attached to her while living, he dwells 
fondly on her memory; and, to dissipate his 
sorrows, and find employment, he goes, not 
apreaching again, but, of all places in the 
world, to the West Indies; and after wan- 
dering two or three years over the blue 
mountains of Jamaica, and roaming among 
the huts of the negroes, he takes a passage 
in a merchantman for Ireland. There he 
meets with a lady, whose attractions fairly 
fascinate him; she was a Catholic —the 
fact startles him—but obstacles vanish be- 
fore his ardour, and his passion must be 
indulged. She was young and gay, and 
married obviously for an establishment ; she 
was extravagant, and he gives way to her 
wishes, to the serious dilapidation of his 
property; she finally elopes with an ad- 
mirer, and the husband’s ruin quickly fol- 
lows. Duped in his fondest affections, and 
broken in fortune, he grew daily more care- 
less—was drawn into dissipation—gambled 
—drank, till he was left without a shilling, 
and then his thoughts turned to Wesley 
and his native village. Before he reached 
it, he sank on the ground—fatigued, ex- 
hausted, care-worn—when Wesley passed in 
jhis carriage. ‘ My father, my father,” 
exclaimed the unhappy man, “the chariot 
of Israel and the horsemen thereof.”” Wes- 
ley recognised him, sprang from the car- 
Tiage, threw his arms round him ut. 

red no reproaches—and, soothing, nim, 
pe to take care of him. But too 

isappointment had broken His heart, 
and his death soon followed. 

“St. Martin’s Isle’’—one of the Scilly 
Islands. Here a colonel and his daughter 
settle and farm, why or wherefore appears 
hot. The only acquaintance they form is the 

fresh caught from the Welsh hills, 

0 knows of course little of the living 
world, but capable, nevertheless, of preach- 
about vices and virtues, as he finds them 

in books. He, of course, loves the young 
lady, but she returns not the favour; he 
rescues her also from drowning, but she is 

—M.M. New Serics.—Vou.VI. No. 31, 


Domestic and Foreign. 


81 


still only grateful. By and by comes a gay 
and accomplished person, who was a mer- 
chant, it seems, and had brought his ship 
into the harbour for repairs; he forms an 
acquaintance with the lady—mutual attach- 
ment follows, and marriage is to take place 
on his return from the voyage. The ship’s 
repairs are at length finished; and he sets 
sail: but scarcely out of the harbour, and 
he is overtaken by a French privateer, 
fights bravely, and the last shot of the ene- 
my sweeps away both his thighs. He is 
brought back to the Isle; the lady’s affec- 
tion is proof—she nurses—cures—we do 
not mean she replaces the lost limbs—mar- 
ries ; and the curate—he, too, triumphs, for, 
tortured by jealousy, he struggles with the 
fiend—combats, and conquers. 

“ The Power of Affection” shews a sailor, 
who, being slighted by the girl he dearly 
loves, resolves to throw himself from a pre- 
cipice—makes a bad leap, falls on the rough 
points of a rock, and breaks almost every 
limb—but survives. At first the fond and 
repentant girl testifies the warmest attach- 
ment, but the despairing hero mends slowly 
—and is a cripple for ever s—she finds another 
and a sounder lover, and he dies to prove 
the strength and pertinacity of affection— 
or the severity of his fall. 


Notions of the Americans, picked up by 
@ Travelling Bachelor. 2 vols. 8vo. ; 1828, 
—We have read these yolumes with the most 
unmingled satisfaction, and earnestly recom- 
mend them to all who have been gathéting 
their “ Notions of ae Americans,”’ without 
opportunities of cérrecting them by more 
competent authorities, from the tours and tra- 
vels that have for the last ten or dozen years 
been floating in our literary atmosphere. 
Generally, the\authors of these publications 
have themselves been uneducated and un- 
licked persons, and mixing, as they must 
have done, with men of their own class and 
habits—their introductions could of course 
be to no others—and filled with strange 
fancies of American equality, they have 
given of the Americans an impression of 
pervading, and intolerable and irreclaim- 
able coarseness and vulgarity. The dis- 
tinctions of politicat and social relations 
were beyond ther detection. The same 
political rights seem to them to establish the 
same social intercourse—as if in such a com= 
bination of circumstances, the educated and 
uneducated, the refined and unrefined, the 
rich and the poor, must, necessarily, mingle 
pell-mell in blissful confusion. The very 
able and effective volumes before us will 
leave a far different impression upon the 
reader, accompanied with a conviction of 
the writer’s superior information, and supe- 
rior title to confidence, and confirmed, too, 
in the long run, by the eternal principles of 
human feelings, and human motives. The 
writer, with a want of sound discretion, 
wi was little to be expected from him— 

1 


- 82 


though done, no doubt, to obviate a natural 
prejudice—assumes the character of an Eu- 
ropean ; but he is himself American, and 
no other indeed than Cooper, the well- 
known national novelist of America —a 
man, whose reputation, in his particular 
department, is, or ought to be second only 
to Sir Walter Scott’s—able both to see, 
combine, and describe. 

The work partakes but little of the form 
ofatonr. The author lands at New York, 
as an European, as we have said—in fact, 
he was returning to his country after a long 
residence on the continent of Europe—and 
from New York, as a central point, he 
makes excursions into the states, north and 
east, south and west, and communicates the 
results, not the details of his observations. 
The facts are all, no doubt, of the most ac- 
curate character, and will go far to remove 
misconceptions. The book is, upon the 
whole, too discussive—the common Charyb- 
dis to the Scylla, on which the journalist is 
apt to wreck his vessel; but he is full, with 
something to say always to the purpose. 
The author reached New York on the very 
‘day of La Fayette’s arrival, and numerous 
particulars are scattered over the volumes of 
the reception which the veteran soldier and 
statesman met with from all classes, in the 
general and deep but quiet enthusiasm, 
which became the gravity of the occasion, 
and the good sense-of the people—all the 
theatrical was on the side of the old French- 
man. The whole affair was left to the spon- 
taneous feelings of the country—the govern- 
ment did nothing but despatch a frigate for 
him—but every where—and he visited al- 
most every state—he was received with a 
respect at once so fervid, so impressive, and 
so patriarchal, as nothing in modern times 
can parallel. The accommodations afforded 
him were of the completest kind, and nei- 
ther himself nor his suite were suffered to 
be at the smallest expense. The states 
finally voted him a grant of land and 
200,000 dollars. 

The peculiarities of the American cha- 
racter are to be sought for mainly in the 
eastern and middle states, and evidently the 
author is better acquainted with these than 
with the southern and western ones. The 
state of society is very different, as might be 
anticipated, in the slave and non-slave states. 
In the northern states it is that intelligence, 
religion, order, frugality, and even liberty, 
have taken the deepest root; nor will the 
southern states, Mr. Cooper assures us, deny 
these distinctions, though they may think 
them balanced by their own superior taste 
and manners. The reader must expect— 
though the south is not neglected—to find 
the estimate of the American character, 
built chiefly in the north and east states, 
precisely those parts with which Europeans 
are likely to have most intercourse—and to 
which the observation of our own tourists 
have been mainly confined. 

The notions of equality, which, in our 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


‘(Juny, 


ignorance, we suppose to originate in de- 
mocrati¢ institutions — the tendency of 
which is very decidedly to elevate the whole, 
rather than to level any—is very deservedly 
ridiculed. There are “ grades”? in Ameri- 
can society in abundance, of nice shades 
too. Every man, above the poorest ranks, 
is eligible to the state legislatures, and even 
to the congress, and men of humble for- 
tunes and undisciplined manners are some- 
times elected ; but, generally, as might be 
expected, the superior classes are chosen. 
But this distinction gives no precedence in 
society-- which depends mainly on fortune, 
education and manners. ‘The different 
castes or sets in society —particularly in 
the larger towns, as New York, which is a 
sort of metropolis—are as distinctly defined, 
and their limits as strictly observed as in 
even our own aristocratic country. Nobody 
thinks of crossing them till circumstances 
invite or entitle him. An innkeeper or a 
tradesman may be a member of congress, 
but he would no more expect to be admitted 
within the pale of certain circles than our 
own linen-drapers of Bond-street to the 
exclusions of Grosvenor-square. The 
“*squire”’ and his tailor may meet at the 
drawing-rooms of the president’s lady, but 
the tailor is not a step nearer the interior of 
the rich man’s residence. 

Still the feeling of equality, in a public 
and political sense, has a marked influence 
upon society as to manners—shewn chiefly 
in the repression of that disposition to in- 
solence, which superiority usually gives. 
There is universally a delicacy and mutual 
consideration in all classes—a sense of the 
existence of rights which are not to be in- 
vaded or slighted, which produces the es- 
sence of politeness and civilization, though 
it may not infallibly command the signs of 
it. The feeling is general of the sove- 
reignty of the law, which rings in the ear— 
“ this man is as much entitled to considera- 
tion as myself;’’ and the good sense of the 
people is equally ready to suggest—“ If I 
am civil, others will be so to me.”? With 
these convictions, the signs and shows of 
polished manners are less frequent, from the — 
very consciousness that the essence of them 
as we said, is in active operation. As to © 
women, if they knew when they were well 
off, as no doubt they do, America, Mr. 
Cooper says, is their “paradise.” The at- 
tentions they receive are not so much per- 
haps the result of admiration, ardent or — 
affected, as of considerate humanity—but — 
they are uniform and universal—the maid — 
as well as the mistress is secure of them. — 
No women work in the field. be 

The distinguishing source of American — 
manners lies in the ‘simplicity of common 
sense.” ‘The American may be considered 
as almost exempt from prejudice. First or — 
last, he is sure to ask—of what usé is this ? 
Why keep up the practice of that? And 
the result appears in the renunciation of the 
externals of vanity, and personal impor- 


1828.] 


tance. He is content with the realities of 
power. Liveries, though never frequent, 
are now scarcely used at all, where coach- 
men and footmen are multiplied fifty fold. 
Armorial bearings are almost wholly aban- 
doned—even on hatchments and tombs. It 
is become a mark of bon ton to discard 
things of this kind. In the same manner, 
the use of military titles, except that of 
general, once so common, is growing un- 
fashionable—as also the distinctions of ‘“ho- 
nourable’’ and “ excellency.’? The whole 
country, in short, is getting more purely 
democratical in appearance at least—the ten- 
dency is all that way. Parade is discon- 
tinued; the lawyer can plead without a 
wig—though the judge still wraps his dig- 
nity in a silk gown; neither the president, 
nor any member of the cabinet, or the con- 
gress wears the slightest mark of distinction. 
The Order of Cincinnatus, attempted some 
years ago to be established by the military, 
has yanished before the ridicule it excited. 
The influence of education, talents, money, 
and even birth exists—very much as with 
us—only modified, and in some degree cur- 
tailed. It is fortunate in America, as well 
as elsewhere, to be the child of a worthy, or 
even of an affluent parent. But public 
rights, and through them private manners, 
are all, more than in any country in the 
world, founded on common sense. Adams, 
the present president, when secretary of state, 
published a pamphlet on some questions 
of etiquette, connected, however, chiefly 
with matters of official intercourse, for which 
he was a good deal quizzed, though the 
very quizzers were ready to adopt the very 
thing they laughed at. But here appears 
the common sense of the country—what- 
ever is conyenient in the way of ceremony, 
they readily adopt, but are little disposed to 
make trifles matters of serious discussion. 
The Americans are charged with cold- 
ness—particularly the women; but this is 
only towards strangers. Compared with 
other women, they are simple and direct ; 
they do not understand the French, or even 
the English complimentary and exaggerat- 
_ ing style; and such addresses throw them 
back upon their reserve—yet the manner is 
_ more strictly subdued than cold. They are 
_ =—when that reserve wears off—as lively, but 
never as frivolous, as our own fashionables, 
and always more frank and cordial. 
On the constitution, principles, and prac- 
tice of the government, Mr. Cooper will 
furnish ample details—with full statistical 
tion of all kinds. Of American 
e, the author speaks, as he is, like 
1 man of sense. Materials are wanting. 
f ¢ are no annals for the historian, says 
he; no follies (beyond the most vulgar and 
common-place) for the satirist; no man- 
ners for the dramatist ; no obscure fictions 
for the writer of romance; no gross and 
hardy offences against decorum for the mo- 
alist ; nor any of the rich artificial auxili- 
aries for poetry. I'he experience of amonth, 


Domestic and Foreign. 


83 


he adds, is sufficient to shew any observant 
man the falsity of the position—that the 
society and institutions are, or ought to be, 
favourable to novelties and variety. They 
are too much alike, and too much like what 
common sense tells them they ought to re- 
semble, &c. 

Every body knows America has no church 
establishment. But great ignorance prevails 
on this subject. In numerous books of some 
authority, it has been stated, that though 
there is no state religion, every one is as- 
sessed for the support of ministers, with the 
right of the contributor to direct its appro- 
priation. This, however, neyer was strictly 
the fact, and is now scarcely so at all. The 
constitution of New Hampshire authorises 
its legislature to make provision for Pro- 
testant ministers, and Massachusetts enjoins. 
In these states a slight assessment is laid 
on property. It was the same not long 
since in Connecticut, but gradual changes 
are still going on, and the Americans fear- 
lessly adapt their institutions to the spirit of 
the age, and that spirit is independence to 
the fullest practicable extent- 

At present, in Maryland, Virginia, North 
Carolina, and Tenessee, the clergy are not 
eligible to the state legislatures. In South 
Carolina, Kentucky, and Mississippi, they 
can be neither governors nor legislators. 
In Missouri, they can fill no civil office but 
justice of the peace. In New York, Dela- 
ware, and Louisiana, no civil office at all. 
The other states, and the United States, a 
general government, are silent on the sub- 
ject, and the clergy are considered as eli- 
gible to every situation; and in all cases, 
restrictions are applicable, as surely they 
ought to be, only where men are in the ac. 
tual exercise of clerical functions. _Con- 
gress appoints chaplains; but takes them 
indiscriminately from the several sects, al- 
most, as we have been assured, in rotation. 
No Catholic has hitherto been chaplain, 
but not so much from exclusive principles, 
as accident. Mr. Cooper was present when 
a Catholic preached to both houses, though 
probably not half-a-dozen Catholics were 
present. The clergy of different professions 
live in great harmony—they have little to 
quarrel about—neither titles nor promo- 
tions. One, moreover, has no advantage 
over another ; he has but one alternative— 
he must abandon the race, or contend with 
watchfulness and care. This does not ex- 
cite jealousy, and, least of all, laxity. Hach 
party knows his influence depends on the 
conformity of his practice with his doctrine 
—which implies charity and forbearance. 
There has been plenty of intolerance in 
America—the inheritance of our fathers— 
but all is giving way. Restrictive laws in 
all the old states are gradually. growing a 
dead letter, and either are already repealed, 
or will speedily be so. Kyen Maryland— 
a Catholic colony—has just rescinded the 
law which disfranchised the Jews. 

o to numbers, if the Presbyterians and 

2 


84 


Congregationalists be taken together, they 
are the first—they have 3,000 congregations. 
The Baptists have more than 2,000. The 
Methodists rank next. The Episcopalians 
have ten bishops and 394 clergy, and are on 
the increase. Quakers are numerous in 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York ; 
and Catholics in Maryland and Louisiana. 
It may be a matter of some interest with 
us Episcopalians to understand the consti- 
tution of the Episcopalian Church in Ame- 
rica. Mr. Cooper supplies us with the re- 
quisite information. 


Where there are Episcopalians enough, the dio- 
eese is confined to a single state, But, as there 
are ten bishops, and twenty-four states, it is plain 
that several of the states are contained in one 
diocese, There are, in point of fact, however, 
eleven dioceses, that of Delaware being vacant: 
The highest spiritual authority known is, of 
course, a bishop. Priests and deacons being all 
the orders named in the Bible, are the only other 
orders known or used in America, The highest 
authority is exercised by the general convention. 
The general convention is composed of two bo- 
dies, a house of bishops, and a house of lay dele- 
gates. Each diocese has a convention for the 
regulation of its own affairs, The general con- 
yention consists of the bishops, who form the 
house of bishops, and of laymen, who are sent as 
Gelegates from the state of convention, The ob- 
ject of this body is to promote harmony and uni- 
formity of doctrine in the whole church, The 
state conventions contain the clergy of the dio- 
cese, and a lay delegation from each church, In 
both conventions, the clergy (or bishops, as the 
ease may be) and the laymen vote separately, a 
majority of each being necessary to an ordinance. 
Clergymen are presented by their congregations, 
and bishops are elected by the conventions of the 
diocese, and are approved of by the house of 
bishops. There is no salary yet given to any 
bishop, though provisions to a reasonable amount 
are making for that object. At present they are 
all rectors of churches. ‘The oldest bishop for the 
time being is called the presiding bishop, though 
he enjoys no exelusive authority. There have 
been, in all, twenty-one bishops of this church in 
the United States, and they hold their ordination 
from the archbishops of Canterbury and York, aud 
from the non-juring bishops of the Episcopal 
Church of Scotland, jointly. 

The law recognizes these authorities to a cer- 
tain extent, as it does the authorities of all other 
churches. The Catholics have their archbishops 
and bishops, the Methodists their bishops, and the 
Presbyterians, Baptists, &c. &c. their own parti- 
cular forms of government. 


Institutes of the Laws of Holland, by 
Johannes Van der Linden, LL.D., tran- 
"slated by Jabex Henry, Esq.; 1828.— 
Convinced, as the nation is now pretty ge- 
nerally become, that our code—civil and 
criminal— is not in all and every part abso- 
lute wisdom, notwithstanding the great age 
of some of it—and disposed as the nation 
is, in consequence, to welcome any changes, 
however extensive, that bear the stamp of 
sound sense, and applicability to great and 
small, we cannot know too much of the laws 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Juy, 
of other countries. Human passions are every 
where very much the same, and the same 
laws will generally produce the same effects. 
The more materials, the safer and the more 
complete will be our deductions. In this 
view, therefore, Mr. Henry has performed 
an acceptable service in translating these 
Institutes. One leaf, at least, we may take 
from them relative to the treatment of 
debtors. The Dutch, it seems, condescend 
to hear before they execute, and to take the 
property before the person. Holland, let 
the traders of England remember, is, as the 
translator suggests, equally a commercial 
country with our own. But it is chiefly for 
the benefit of English settlers in the ceded 
Dutch Colonies, and English judges, who 
administer the Dutch laws in the colonies, 
and at home especially, in Plantation Ap- 
peals in the Privy Council—that these Insti- 
tutes have been translated. For them it is 
invaluable ; for these colonies were ceded in 
the condition that the ancient laws and in- 
stitutions were secured to them. Mr. Van 
der Linden’s character, as a lawyer and 
judge, is in high repute in his own country 
and the Colonies; and he has been singu- 
larly fortunate in his translator. Mr. 
Henry was himself three years President of 
the courts in the old Dutch Colonies of 
Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, and has 
since visited the same places, as “senior 
commissioner in the commission of legal 
inquiry into the administration of criminal 
and civil justice in the West Indies and 
South American Colonies.”’ No pains have 
been spared by the learned and experienced 
translator, to make the whole perfectly in- 
telligible to the English colonist ; and, since 
his return from the West Indies, he has 
visited Holland expressly to consult the 
venerable author, for the purpose of eluci- 
dation and correction. The translation it- 
self was originally suggested, as one likely 
to prove of great utility, by Sir Wm. Grant, 
and executed under the sanction of Lord 
Bathurst, while colonial secretary. 


The Kuzzilbash, a Tale of Khorasan. 
3 vols. ; 1828.—The strange-sounding word 
of the title is, it seems, Turkish for Red- 
cap, and is intended to designate the Persian 
Soldier; and the subject, accordingly, is the 
adventures of one of Nadir Schah’s guards— 
a favoured officer—interwoven with the 
splendid career of that stern and sanguinary 
conqueror, who makes, it must be allowed, 
a much more commanding, and even a 
more respectable, figure, than Sir John 
Malcolm’s history will, we think, sanction. 
The story, however, is told with consider- 
able animation and dexterity, and shews no 
common familiarity with the scenes it de- 
scribes—it is told too orientailly, that is, 
“ figuratively and paraphrastically’’—inter- 
rupted by interminable episodes—suspend- 
ing the course of the narrative, and of course 
breaking the continuity of its interest. 


The hero, Ismael, who tells his own story, 


2 


1828.] 


is the son of a Khorasan chief, whose whole 
family and tribe had been cut off by the 
sudden and devastating irruption of a horde 
of Toorkomans. Ismael, a mere child, was 
the sole survivor; and being carried to the 
felt tents of the Toorkomans, and given to 
young Selim, the son of the chief, as a slave, 
was brought up among them with great 
kindness and indulgence, and taught, like 
them, the use of the bow and the spear. 
Growing up, bold, and brave, and active, he 
accompanied the tribe in their plundering 
excursions, and once saved the life of Selim, 
and became, moreover, not only the general 
fayourite of all, but the particular one of a 
beautiful girl—one of the chief’s daughters. 
This intercourse with the soft and gentle 
Shireen finally exceeded the limits of pru- 
dence, and the consequences were likely to 
prove perilous, if not fatal, to both the 
youthful and thoughtless offenders. 

When the crisis seemed just at hand, a 
dervish, who had interpreted a dream of 
Ismael’s mother before his birth, and fore- 
told the general colour of his fortunes, and 
seemed, indeed, to exercise a sort of myste- 
rious sway over his destinies, presents him- 
self, and reading him a pretty sharp lecture 
on his imprudence, at length assures him of 
a speedy deliverance from the impending 
danger. Discovery follows forthwith ; and 
Selim, though feeling deeply and painfully 
for the honour of his family, is prevailed 
upon, by the implorings of his sister, and 
his own affection for Ismael, to screen him 
from the indignation of the chief of the 
tribe, and assist him in his escape, by fur- 
nishing him with a horse and weapons, and 
directions for his course. Crossing, now, 
the sandy desert on the south, towards 
Khorasan, he and his horse are nearly 
buried in the whelming sands stirred up by 
a furious storm of wind, and he is only 
rescued from absolute destruction by the 
sudden appearance of the dervish, who 
shelters him in a neighbouring cave. Re- 
freshed by a day’s rest, the youth starts 
forward again for the south, and is finally 
met by a lone traveller, who proves to be 
Ibrahim, the brother of Nadir, then in a 
state of all but open rebellion against the 
Schah. Between two solitary individuals in 
a wide and desolate wilderness, intimacy 
soon grows, and a mutual communication 
of circumstances follows of course. Ibrahim 
knew Ismael’s father, and was delighted 
with the bold bearing and general appear- 
ance of the youth, and promises to introduce 
him to Nadir, who was at this time en- 
camped somewhere on the frontiers of Kho- 
rasan. In their way to join him, they were 
surprised by a band of Koords, and escaped 
only by the most desperate efforts of valour 
and resolution, and the lucky arrival of some 
of Nadir’s cayalry, from whom Ibrahim had 
been, by circumstances, recently separated. 
Reaching Nadir’s camp, Ibrahim forthwith 
introduces his young friend to the grim 
chief; and being required on the spot to 


Domestic and Foreign. 


85 


give a touch of his quality, he exhibits his 
skill in horsemanship and the bow so 
much to the satisfaction of Nadir, that he 
is immediately enrolled in his highness’s 
guard. 

Preparations were at this time actively 
making for fighting the rebels before Mu- 
shed, and in the decisive engagement 
which quickly ensued, Ismael’s prowess was 
conspicuous, and was brilliantly acknow- 
ledged. The holy city Mushed fell before 
Nadir’s triumphs, and for a while the 
labours of the soldier ceased, and Ismael 
was left with little to do but to prosecute his 
own enjoyments. Idleness is the mother of 
mischief, and Ismael rapidly degenerates— 
he frequents gaming-houses, and contracts 
sundry profligate habits. Among other 
sources of amusement, he ascends the top of 
a minaret daily, and busies himself in pry- 
ing down upon the harem of an old volup- 
tuous priest. The fancy seizes him to get a 
nearer glance—he scrambles up an old 
adjoining ruin, and succeeds to his heart’s 
content. For a time he is cautious, and 
satisfied with merely gazing on the scenes 
before him; but, growing careless or confi- 
dent by impunity, he is at length observed, 
and has some difficulty in escaping. The 
difficulty had indeed been insuperable, but 
for the connivance of the queen of the 
harem, who had long before detected his 
gazings, and marked his admiration, and 
returned it with ardour. Orientally, matters 
are soon arranged; the lady now loses not a 
moment ; she despatches a slave to conduct 
Ismacl to her boudoir, where, left to them- 
selves, she at once avows her admiration of 
his spirit and person. Ismael is too gallant 
a soldier not to make a suitable return of 
protestations ; but, though struck, and even 
awed, by the splendour of her majestic 
beauty, he is perfectly fascinated by one of 
her attendant nymphs, and very quickly he 
has two intrigues upon his hands—the 
mistress and the maid—of very different 
characters, as he soon finds—the one 
haughty, and domineering, and rapacious— 
the other as gentle, and confiding, and dis- 
interested. 

During the prosecution of these delights, 
he has the good fortune, one evening, to 
rescue a person from an attack of assassins, 
and accompanying him to his house, is 
treated by him with great distinction, and 
dismissed with liberal presents. This person 
proves to be a young merchant, of high 
intellectual cultivation, and prodigiously 
wealthy—who had visited foreign countries, 
and had a great deal to tell. His adven- 
tures are accordingly detailed at a somewhat 
wearisome length; but an opportunity is 
thus given of describing the manners of 
different oriental regions, and particularly 
the capture of Ispahan by the Affghan 
invader, and his subsequent cruelties. An 
intimacy quickly ripens between the young 
men; and Aboo Talib, the merchant, 
knowing that a soldier’s purse is generally 


86 Monthly Review of Literature, 


light, makes him the most frank and liberal 
offers of his: but these Ismael is too high- 
spirited to accept, though the importunate 
exactions of his manceuvring mistress make 
loans very desirable. The facility with which 
these were granted seduces the thoughtless 
youth into encroachments on his friend’s 
kindness, and enables him to extend the 
natural term of his inglorious intercourse 
with his harem-mistress. But matters with 
her, from other causes, precipitate—dis- 
covery follows; and the lady, an Affghan, 
and of course of an indomitable spirit, plans 
a fierce revenge. Ismael is introduced to 
her apartments as usual, and is immediately 
taxed about his base intrigue with her slave, 
and the unhappy girl is brought in by 
numerous attendants. He is himself secured 
and bound, and she, in his very sight, is 
stript—her beautiful and downy shoulders 
mercilessly scourged, and her soft and snowy 
bosom cut and gashed with knives, till she 
falls senseless on the ground; and, just as 
the fell tigress is preparing to put out 
Ismael’s eyes, comes in the enraged hus- 
band, and the scene of violence terminates 
by the wife stabbing her bleeding victim, 
and hersel., after failing in a rush upon 
Ismael, dying under the operation of poi- 
son, and Ismael’s being plunged into a 
dungeon. 

From this dungeon, however, he is quickly 
rescued by the re-appearance of the myste- 
rious dervish, who, reading him another 
lecture on his recent profligacy, takes him 
to a place of safety; from whence, after 
recovering from a sharp fever, the conse- 
quence of his agitations and sufferings, he 
returns to his military duties. But his 
absence has been long, and he is received 
by his master with great coldness, and some 
reproaches, and bade to be watchful for 
some opportunity of recovering his fallen 
credit. This, with his irrepressible ardour, 
he soon accomplishes ; an engagement takes 
place ; and, by an act of daring and despe- 
rate valour, he turns the fortune of the field, 
and regains Nadir’s favour. New victories 
and honours flow in upon him, and success, 
in full tide, attends him up to the recovery of 
Ispahan, the expulsion of the Affehan sove- 
reign, and the restoration of the legitimate 
schah. 

At Ispahan, in a severe fit of illness 
brought on by his exertions and his wounds, 
he is again found by the merchant, and by 
him splendidly taken care of; and we have 
then his farther adventures detailed. Once 
more in a state of convalescence, Ismael is 
despatched with a detachment of troops to 
occupy Mushed, where, among some cap- 
tives, he discovers his own Shireen, in the 
deepest misery, dying from want; and 
learns, moreover, that Selim is in confine- 
ment, and his execution certain on Nadir’s 
arrival, who was expected every day. Nadir 
had, on some former occasion, made him 
the promise of a boon or demand, and he 
now demands the life of his friend, and 


(Juxy, 


when refused, renounces his allegiance, and 
by this resolute behaviour finally shakes the 
stern determination of his commander, and 
receives a pardon for himself and friend. 
At this stage—when all is prosperous—his 
friend rescued from destruction—and him- 
self happy in the arms of his loved and 
long-lost Shireen, the story stops. More is 
promised; and in due time, of course, we 
shall be carried over the career of Nadir’s 
Indian triumphs—which we shall trace with 
interest, under so competent a guide. 


Sketch of the present State of the Island 
of Sardinia, by Capt. W. H. Smyth, R. N. 
1828.—This is an acceptable volume ; for 
of the existing state of Sardinia, and its 
population, we have no accounts to be relied 
upon, and none at all of recent production ; 
and even for its history, we know not where 
to refer to, except where it is mixed up with 
that of other countries, or incidentally ad- 
verted to. Captain Smyth was employed by 
the Admiralty to survey the coast ; and with 
the present publication in view, he seized on 
every opportunity for gaining the requisite 
information, and seems, first or last, to have 
cut the island in all directions. The ac- 
count is, on the whole, as complete as can 
be wished for, of a place so little in commu- 
nion with the rest of the world. Under 
different divisions will be found the political 
history of the island—its produce and re- 
sources—the condition and habits of the 
natives—and a tour round the coast. 

The history is very slightly sketched. 
The oldest accounts represent the island as 
originally colonized by Libyans, some dozen 
centuries before the Christian era, to whom 
were successively added Trojans, Greeks, 
and others. In 530 B.C. occurs the first 
historical fact, an invasion by the Corin- 
thians, which the Sards, aided by a band of 
Corsicans, repelled; and with the same 
success they seem to have bafHed several 
similar attempts from other quarters. In 
259, Cornelius Scipio defeated the Cartha~ 
ginians off the coasts, in two successive 
years, and with his legions overran the 
whole island, without making any effort to 
retain possession—the motives for invading 
and abandoning are equally obscure. But 
in 213, Sardinia was finally reduced, and 
being incorporated with Corsica, became a 
Roman province, governed by a pretor. 
Soon after, we read of a civil war between 
the natives of the plains and of the hills, 
followed by a pretty general revolt from the 
Romans; and in 178, after a tremendous 
destruction, the island was again reduced by 
Sempronius Gracchus, and thenceforward 
made a consular province. From this 
period it followed the fortunes of other 
Roman provinces—long regarded by Rome 
as one of its granaries, and was the spot to 
which her criminals were banished. In the 
reign of Tiberius, according to Tacitus, 
4,000 Jews were despatched to subdue some 
pirates, who were ravaging the island— 


; 
4 
: 
) 
: 
“ 


1828] 


being themselves considered as a worthless 
people, who, if the unwholesomeness of the 
climate carried them off, would be thus well 
got rid of. In the fifth century after Christ, 
it fell under the Vandals, and was in Gense- 
ric’s possession after the death of Valen- 
tinian. In 468, the Emperor Leo made 
great exertions to recover Africa and the 
neighbouring islands from his grasp, and by 
a detachment from his immense armaments, 
Sardinia was retaken, but as quickly was 
recovered by Genseric. Under Belisarius, 
it was once more wrenched from the gripe of 
the Vandals, and being then annexed to the 
African prefecture, continued under the 
Emperors, except during a short interval, 
when it fell before Totila, till the beginning 
of the eighth century. ‘ 

At that period it was first invaded by the 
Saracens, and a struggle between them and 
the Sards was kept up for more than a 
century, till the brave islanders, in despair, 
threw themselves on the protection of Louis 
le Débonnaire, and were by him incorpo- 
rated with the Western Empire—apparently 
without adding much to their security, 
though, certainly, the Saracens never held 
quiet possession of it. About the year 
1,000, Musat, an enterprising Moor, got 
sudden possession of the whole, and assum- 
ing the title of King of Sardinia, he spread 
his deyastations on all the neighbouring 
shores,—till, prompted by the Pope, the 
Pisans undertook a crusade against him, 
which, successful at first, and then failing, 
was again repeated in conjunction with the 
Genoese ; and finally, the whole island, in 
1022, was divided between the confederate 
invaders—the Genoese, apparently, being 
feudatory to the Pisans. ‘These commercial 
cities, howeyer, did not long agree on the 
division of the spoil, and their disputes 
ended only with the ruin of Pisa, some two 
centuries and a half afterwards, when it was 
said, “ Those who would see Pisa must go 
to Genoa.” 

Without adverting to subsequent efforts 
of the Pisans to recover their influence—or 
to the oppressions of the Genoese, which 
drove the Sards to rebel, and call in the aid 
of new foreigners—it must suffice to state, 
that, in 1428, the island was ceded to 
Alphonso of Arragon, and to the crown of 

it continued to be annexed till the 
Succession War, in the course of which 
>) the capital was seized by Sir John 
e for Charles of Austria, and, by the 
treaty of Utrecht, was allotted to the Empe- 
ror. In spite, however, of this allotment, 
, the Bourbon King of Spain, in 
1717, by a sudden attack, recovered it; but 
n, by the prompt efforts of the English 
and Austrians, Philip was compelled to 
resign it once more to the Emperor, who, 
on t same day, ceded it to Victor Ama- 
n exchange for Sicily, 1720. Since 

that period, the island has followed the 
fortunes of the house of Sayoy. It is 


Domestic and Foreign. 


87 


governed by a viceroy, removeable every 
three years. 

The island, upon measurement, proves to 
be larger than Sicily, and, of course, is the 
largest in the Mediterranean. Its dimen- 
sions are 140 by 60 nautical miles, that is, 
about 160 by 70 travelling ones. Besides 
lakes, marshes, aud torrents, there are large 
sandy and stony districts, which occupy, 
together, more than a third of the surface ; 
a similar extent may be assigned for forests 
and pastures; and the remainder, about 
4,400,000 acres, is laid out in corn-fields, 
vineyards, olive-grounds, orchards, &c., for 
the subsistence of about 480,000 persons— 
enough—corn yielding at least eight for one 
—to feed triple the number. Agriculture, as 
may be readily supposed, is in the lowest 
state—the plough is of the rudest construc- 
tion, and so light as rather to scratch than 
turn up the soil. Corn is thrashed in the 
field by the treading of mares and colts, on 
a spot stripped of the sward, and beaten to 
hardness, to the manifest deterioration of 
the corn, but with the advantage, it seems, 
of breaking the straw into a more. eatable 
state. Of what may be called interior 
commerce there can be none, for there are 
scarcely any high-roads, and no cross or 
by-roads at all. The ruts are worn nearly 
as deep as the semi-diameter of the cart- 
wheels; and of a new road now actually 
making from Cagliari to Sassari, it was 
remarked to Captain Smyth by a native, 
“it would be imperfect till it was worn to a 
similar state!” The cart-wheels are solid, 
edged with triangular pieces of iron instead 
of a smooth hoop, and the axle-tree fixed in 
the wheels—the yoke rests upon the fore- 
head of the oxen employed to draw the 
cart, bound round the roots of the horns, 
Captain Smyth, struck with the peculiarity, 
had a model of it constructed, which being 
seen by a canon of the cathedral, he ob- 
served“ The English are a wise people— 
always travelling to seek improvements, and 
carry them home !”’ Some corn is exported. 
Wine is improving. Tobacco is a royal 
monopoly. Silk is cultivated merely for 
amusement. Cotton is grown, but not 
enough for exportation ; and Capt. Smyth, 
being desirous of promoting the growth, 
presented the planters with the white and 
yellow seed of Malta, the staple of which is 
long and silky, but was checked by a person 
high in office—who assured him, the more 
the culture was extended, the more the 
material must fall in value !—a remark 
which may give the measure of his political 
economy. 

Throughout the spring the plains are 
covered with flowers of great variety, and 
honey, in consequence, abounds—retaining 
the bitterness so often alluded to by the 
Latin poets, and attributed by some to yew, 
laurel, and rue, and by others to the herba 
Sardoa—the plant, whatever it may be, 
which produced what is called the sardonic 


88 


grin—a bitter smile in the midst of agony— 
a contortion of the muscles of the mouth, 
that shews like a smile—a sort of grin of 
vexation. For this plant Captain Smyth 
made frequent inquiries—every body was 
familiar with the expression, and every body 
pretended to know the plant ; but no speci- 
men could he obtain. Some spoke of it as 
a parasitic growing among aquatic plants, 
called djurra at Terranova, and lohone at 
Tempio. Others affirmed that it in par- 
ticular adhered to water-cresses; and a 
farmer was very earnest with the sailors to 
throw away some very fine ones! The 
ranunculus sceleratus abounds—so acrid, as 
to give the mouth of the taster a twist, and 
of course a colour to the tradition. But 
Captain Smyth inclines to class it with other 
worn-out wonders of the island—such as the 
fountain that blinded robbers and perjurers, 
and sharpened the eyes of the good, and the 
ladies that had double pupils to theirs.— 
The feudal system, though represented as 
in full vigour, is not exactly so; for the 
vassal is free-born, and may change his lord 
and residence at will. While on the estate, 
he is subject to services of a degrading cast ; 
and an annual tribute is exacted, in money 
or goods, on all above eighteen years— 
besides demands for prisons, indemnities for 
robberies and fires, and exemptions from the 
debt of labour, &c.—if some of these are 
not rather to be called government taxes. 
Assassinations are shockingly numerous— 
quite enough to keep down any surplus 
population. 

So little has the island been permanently 


Monthly Review of Literature. 


[Juny, 


occupied by foreigners, since the Romans, 
that more of the Latin language remains 
than in any other of the southern dialects. 
A specimen is given, which would have 
been equally intelligible to a Roman as it is 
to a Sard. 


Deus, qui cum potentia incomprehensibili 
Nos creas, et conservas cum amore, 

Nos sustentas cum gratia indefectibili, 
Nos refrenas cum peena, et cum dolore- 
Cum fide nos illustras infallibili, 

Et nos visitas cum dulce terrore, 

Cum gloria premias bonos ineffabili, 
Punis malos cum poena interminabili. 


The words mostly end with a, w, or i, and 
are pluralized by adding s. The c is some- 
thing between the s and z, instead of the 
che of the Italians; and the ca resembles 
the Italian ci, or English ch, as in coewu— 
coach. The labials 6 and v are mutually 
substituted. Joseph Scaliger’s pun will be 
remembered, when speaking of the Sards, 
who are not remarkably abstemious—Felices 
populi, quibus didere est vivere. The fine 
arts, as we quaintly term them, are utterly 
unknown among them—they have neither 
painter, sculptor, nor engraver; and for a 
theatre, nothing but a barn or two. Even 
as artizans, they shew little skill or dexterity, 
except in gun-locks. They make no watches, 
or clocks, or any cutlery, but of the coarsest 
description. When sawyers work in unison, 
one stands upon the timber, as with us, but 
below there are two, and both sit. We must 
stop somewhere—let it be here. 


a a EE ES 


FINE ARTS’ EXHIBITIONS. 


Exhibition of Portraits of the most Il- 
lustrious Personages of British History, at 
Messrs. Harding and Lepard’s, Pall Mall, 
East. — The purpose of this exhibition, 
which has been opened gratuitously, and 
very numerously and fashionably attended, 
is that of displaying, at a single view, the 
entire collection of drawings prepared for 
the superb and national work, so well known 
by the name of “ Lodge’s Portraits and 
Memoirs of the most Illustrious Personages 
of the History of Great Britain.”” These 
drawings, or rather paintings, in water co- 
lours, have been executed by some of the 
most distinguished living artists, from the 
original and contemporary portraits pre- 
served in the several galleries and mansions 
(often of the descendants of the illustrious 
originals) which are scattered over the entire 
island; and while, by the accuracy and 
richness of their performanee, they present 
to the lover of art a uniform series of sub- 
jects, belonging to the portrait painting of 
the country during a period of three centu- 
Tier, and longer; they also present to the 
lover of English history and biography, a 
series of historical and biographical illus- 
trations as invaluable as it is rare. That 


the portrait painting of historical personages 
is the best species of historical painting, 
must be a truth which hardly admits of a 
question ; and which, least of all, will be 
controverted by any of those whe have en- 
joyed the opportunity of surveying the col- 
lection now referred to. 

The memoirs which have accompanied 
the engravings of these portraits, are from 
the pen of Mr. Lodge, and have obtained 
the general estimation of readers to a degree 
which renders further encomium needless. 
The beauty of style, and gentlemanly spi- 
rit, for which they are remarkable, are ac- 
companied by the happiest arrangemcnt of 
the narrative ; by coneision and perspicuity, 
and by the fruits of the most diligent re- 
search. 

The original folio edition (of which the 
cost was nearly two hundred guineas), and 
an imperial octavo edition, published in 
numbers, at intervals of two months, are 
now about to be followed by an edition in 
imperial oetavo, in monthly numbers ; and 
in each publication an equal beauty of me- 
chanical execution is preserved. The series 
2 also to be brought down to the present 
ate, : 


1828.] 


C 89 J 


MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 


THE close of the season at the winter 
theatres has at length arrived, and the world 
are left to find what amusement they can in 
the Haymarket and Lyceum. The season 
has been unusually dull at both the great 
theatres. The companies of both have been 
composed of the best actors that the stage 
possesses in this degenerate age; but the 
general result has proved that actors are but 
the minor ingredients of success. Covent 
Garden in possession of Kean, Young, and 
Charles Kemble, had all that tragedy can 
boast among us; and yet, with the excep- 
tion of some nights of Kean’s engagement, 
in which the unusual combination of the 
whole force of the corps produced strong 
public excitement, the success was by no 
Means adequate to the expenditure. On 
the whole, we fear that the season was an 
uppromising one. The great theatres are 
certainly conducted on a system which no 
excellence of the actors can render produc- 
tive. The outlay is enormous: that of Co- 
vent Garden is scarcely less than £250 
a-night ; and when we consider that it re- 
quires an unusually full house to produce 
£500, and how seldom even a moderately 
full one has occurred, we may at once come 
to the conclusion, and regret the loss that 
must be inevitable—and our regret is sin- 
cere. The exertions of the managers have 


been zealous in every thing that belonged to- 


the theatre. The company has been select 
and able ; the performances have been well 
arranged ; the scenery and equipments ex- 
cellent. “There never was exhibited in Eu- 
rope a stage so free from negligence, or any 
kind of offensive irregularity or deficiency, 
as the English stage of the present day; 
yet the result has been dissatisfaction ; and 
we understand that in Covent Garden the 
old expedient of a change of managers is 
to be tried, as an expedient for a change of 
fortune. We are no panegyrists of Charles 
Kemble, nor are we inclined to publish the 
errors which must arise from the attempt to 


ablest kind. Matthews was drawn from his 
annual and productive labours at the Ly- 
ceum ; Liston was won from his perpetual 
visions of the “ ofiwm cum dignitate,” his 
phantasies about perpetual travel between 
Venice, Vienna, the Caucasus, and Con- 
stantinople; his meditations on houries ; 
pipes seven feet long, and the nurture of a 
beard which was to put Sultan Solyman’s 
to shame ; his pleasant reveries; an eternal 
rumbling in postchaises, and eternal scorch-_ 
ing on the bluest waters of the Mediterra- 
nean, much as they have beguiled himself 
and amused the world of the green-room 
these half dozen years, have been dissolved 
by the potent spell of the manager. This 
freest of the free, among the children of 
Thespis, has suffered himself to be chained 
during the hottest of the hot months, to the 
managerial stool; has played admirably, 
and is, we hope, destined by his cruel fate. 
to be tempted from his natural freedom 
many a year to come, to freeze with the 
winter’s visitation; to be scorched by the 
sun in Leo; to make the worst translations, 
from the worst French palatable, and to 
make pleasantry popular, in defiance of dul- 
ness, methodism, and the dog-days. Jones 
has- exhibited himself to great advantage 
during this season. In mentioning him 
subsequently to Matthews and Liston, we- 
have no idea of placing him a single step, 
below those able performers. But he ap- 
pears constantly, while they, visit us only 
on occasion ; he performs in all things, let 
them be of what merit they may, while they , 
appear only in afew, probably of their own 
choice, in which they have been accustomed 
to exert their powers. But the stage has 
had, for a long period, no actor equal to 
Jones for ready adaptation to all parts, for. 
the animation which he throws into all, even. 
the feeblest ; and for the clearness, dexte- 
rity, and brilliancy of his dialogue. No 
comedy can be efficient in which he has not, 
a prominent part, and no audience can in-, 


volve him in the failure of the drama, be, 
its absurdities all that modern authorship is, 
so perfectly adequate to make them. , 

But the grand defect of the whole system 


_ combine the very different objects of actor 
and manager; but while we take into ac- 
_ count the internal predilection of this ac- 
_ complished performer, for plays, and for 


authors, that conduced to’ this impression on 
the public, we willingly do him the justice 
to say, that his talents have done honour to 
the theatre, and his management will find 
few equals in the grace and urbanity of man- 
ners with which so anxious a charge was 
conducted. It is said that he is going to 
America. We sincerely hope that his ab- 
sence, if he be going, will be of the short- 
est possible duration, and that we shall have 
him among us again, personating what 
none can personate like him—the fine spirit 
of chivalry, of youthful passion, and of he- 
roic beauty. 
The force of Drury Lane was determined 
to comedy, and the company was of the 
M.M. New Series. —Vou.VI. No. 31. 


is the want of able authorship. No excel-_ 
lence of acting can make us endure the, 
eternal repetitions of even the cleverest of. 
our comedies. There is, besides, a period 
which no rank of cleverness can survive, as 
there is a period at which the strongest body . 
of our wine evaporates or turns into vinegar. _ 
The whole race of the comedies, &c., at 
the beginning of the last century, were old 
fifty years ago, and had expired of old age. , 
No attempt at revival was able to keep them 
before the public. A new race then ap- 
peared: the ‘Clandestine Marriage” and. 
the ‘‘ School for Scandal,”’ were at the head. 
of these ; and nothing could be more ad-, 
mirable than the vigorous plot of the one 
N 


90 


and the playful poignaney of the other. But 
they had their day. New manners, new 
feelings, new modes of thinking, and new 
styles of being pleased or pained, have su- 
perseded those of the day of Colman and 
Sheridan. Their plays are now worn out ; 
their plots have been repeated in a thousand 
forms, until they are worn out too. Their 
wit has transpired in the shape of so many 
old stories, that it is identified with the tire- 
some old gentlemen who tell them, and 
who protest that since mankind left off tie- 
wigs and cocked hats the world has gone to 
ruin. The “Clandestine Marriage’ and 
the “School for Scandal,” are now old- 
fashioned. Their pleasantries are stiff; 
their burlesques of life burlesques of a life 
that has no examples among us, and even 
the brilliant Charles now appears a good 
deal of a vulgar rake, and the dexterous 
Joseph but a bad imitation of a relapsed 
quaker. 

There has not been in the whole year 
any one original performance on the stage. 
“Pon Pedro,” a tragedy, by Lord Por- 
chester, being the only one that pretended 
to originality, and being, though the pro- 
duction of an accomplished and intelligent 
young noblemen, not fitted to last beyond 
its first half hour. There has been no ori- 
ginal comedy ; no opera; no farce; even no 
melo-drama. France has given her little 
nerveless performances to be rendered more 
nerveless by being pulled to pieces and flung 
together in the literary cauldron, to re-ap- 
pear moulded into some awkward shape of 
English drama. But failure has set its seal 
upon all; and soit must be, until the genius 
of the country be induced to turn its vigour 
to the drama. 

The Haymarket Theatre has already 
opened, with a good company. Several of 
the public favourites of the last year are 
missing from the list : but this ‘is the natu- 
ral result of their success at this theatre. 
The humble country actor, transferred to 
London, becomes, if a favourite, a formi- 
dable being to manage. The emoluments 
of these small summer theatres, which were 
once opulence to him, become trivial in his 
opened eyes, and he, like other gentlemen, 
scorns town at midsummer, and flies to the 
delights of a circuit through the country. 
No one can blame the fortunate members of 
a profession so ephemeral for making all the 
money they can in as short a time as they 
can. But the result is, that the summer 
theatres lose their most effective actors, 
and are compelled to drill a new tribe into 
fame. 

Among the débutantes is Miss Barto- 
lozzi, the sister of Vestris, and with some 
resemblance in voice and countenance to 
this clever and lively actress. Her figure is 
feminine and graceful, but she is impeded 
a good deal by the embarrassment of a first 
trial. Her voice is powerful, and evidently 
taught by Italian rules. But she will re- 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[JuLy, 


quire practice to give her facility and the 
habit of the stage, to allow of the full de- 
velopment of her powers. 

The house has been considerably altered 
in its appearance; the projections of the 
boxes are taken away, and the whole range 
of boxes and gallery richly decorated. The 
coup-d’eil is handsome, 2nd, with a better 
drop-scene and a better orchestra, both of 
which the enterprizing and active manager 
can so easily supply, nothing will be wanting 
to the usual and deserved popularity of this 
lively theatre. 

The prominent theatrical event of the 
month has been the appearance of Made- 
moiselle Mars at the King’s Theatre, turned 
from an Jialienne into a Francaise. Her 
first performance was in De Lavigne’s very 
long-winded and very tiresome comedy of 
“ L’Ecolé des Vieillards,”’ a comedy which 
differs from a tragedy only in its being 
without any death, except what may happen 
among the audience from excessive yawn- 
ing; and which seems to have been written 
by one of the fatiguing old men that it cha- 
racterises. But in France dramatic talent 
is now in exactly the same degeneracy as in 
England. We have no right to exult over 
the more prostrate stupidity of our vivacious 
neighbours ; their stage is dull, and ours is: 


just as dull. We adopt and adapt from. 


them ; they adopt and adapt from the Spa- 
‘Nnish and the German. So runs the circle ; 
and the system of adoption by M. Scribe is 
just as palpable and as nationally unproduc- 
tive as that of any of the facewrs who pro- 
vide us with flippancy and foolery at second- 
hand. 

Mademoiselle Mars has been for many 
years at the head of French comedy; and 
she has unequivocally deserved her distine- 
tion. Nothing French could be more 
finished than her performance of Hortense, 
the coquettish wife. With all the national 
vivacity, she had the good taste to keep it 
down to the universal standard of easy elo- 
quence ; and, with the singular volatility of 
tongue that belongs to her countrywomen- 
evidently at her command, she spoke with 
a delicacy and occasional composure, that 
allowed her accents to sink into the heart. 
This fine performance is an instance of the 
power of talent over time. She is said to 
be above fifty ; yet her countenance, on the 
stage, has almost the freshness of early life; 


her features are expressive, and her smile is — 


perfectly beautiful. Her face is, it is true, 
on the model of the French Venus, round, 
full, and small featured. Neither an ancient 
Greek nor a modern Englishman would be 
inclined to think the rotund in face or per- 
son the most fortunate of forms. But every 
nation has its taste, from the negroes up- 
wards, and the sphere is in France the 
model of perfection in eyes, visage, and 
figure. Mademoiselle Mars was received 
with great applause. 


‘a 


1828.] 


C 9t J} 


PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 


ROYAL SOCIETY. 

Feb. 7.—An account was given of trigo- 
nometrical operations, in the years 1821-2-3, 
for determining the difference of longitude 
between the royal observatories of Paris and 
Greenwich, by Captain Kater.—14. On the 
mode in which the nerves belonging to the 
organs of sense terminate, by Sir E. Home. 
Experiments on heated iron, in reference 
to the magnetic and electric fluids, by W. 
Ritchie, Esq.—April 24. A paper was read, 
containing an account of experiments on 
the elastic curve, by B. Bevan, Esq. This 
curve has generally been stated to be the 
parabola, but after many trials, Mr. B. 
found that the formula, for the common 
hyperbola, gave a very near approximation, 
in all practical cases, to the curve assumed 
by a prismatic rod, when acted upon by the 
weight of its own parts.—May 1. A paper 
was read, entitled a description of a vertical 
floating collimator, and an account of its 
application to astronomical observations, 
with a circle, and a zenith telescope, by 
Captain Kater. This instrument, an im- 
provement on the horizontal collimator, in- 
vented by this gentleman in 1825, from the 
greater degree of precision attainable by its 
‘empleyment, from the facility of its con- 
struction and application, and the time 
saved by using it, the author deems it not 
unreasonable to infer that ere long the use 
of the level and plumb-line, in celestial ob- 

servations, will be wholly abandoned. 


ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY. 
March 14. The first paper read, was an 
ephemeris of the place of Encke’s comet, 
during the time of its re-appearance at the 
‘end of the present year. Drawn up at the 
request of the Council of the Society, by 
F. Baily, Esq. The next was a paper, on 
‘finding the rates of time-keepers, by BE. 
Riddle, Esq. The method proposed is by 
taking equal altitudes ofa fixed star, on the 
same side of the meridian, on successive 
nights. If the difference of the two conse- 
cutive times at which the star attains the 
‘same altitude (whatever it be) on the same 
side of the meridian, be less than 3-55-91, 
chronometer (presuming that it is regu- 
lated to mean solar time) will have gained, 
‘and if more, it will have lost much in a 
: day. And if the observations are 
made at an interval of m days, the 
_ part of the difference between the times 
__of observation compared with 3/5591, will, 
in like manner, give the mean rate for 
that interval, and if this quantity be mul- 
tiplied by 1-0027, it will give the rate for a 
“mean solar day. Lastly, there was read, a 
by the Rey. T. Hussey, on certain 
between the places of particular 
“stars as laid down by Piazzi and Bradley, 
: and the places assigned by reducing the 
4 observations of M. Bessel, which, in one 
instance at least, induce a supposition of an 


annual proper motion of +4-0’"9872 of the 
star in R.A.—April 11. A paper was read 
on the construction of large achromatic 
telescopes, by A. Rogers, Esq. Myr. HR. 
proposes to employ a single object lens, and 
to correct it by a compound lens placed 
near the focus of the former. A portion of 
a paper was also read on the occultation of 
é piscium, observed in Blackman-street, in 
the month of February, 1821. References 
to recorded observations of occultations, in 
which peculiarities have been apparently 
seen, either at the moon’s limb, cr upon her 
disc, together with an inquiry how far cer- 
tain hypotheses seem adequate to account 
for the phenomena, by I. South, Esq. 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

March 21. Benjemin Silliman, M.D., 
was elected a foreign member of this So- 
ciety. F. Finch, Esq., and T. Winter, 
Esq., were elected Fellows. A paper was 
read, entitled ‘“‘ Topographical and Geolo- 
gical Notices,’ from information collected 
during the expedition to the North West 
Coast of America, under the command of 
Captain Franklin, by Dr. Richardson. Of 
this memoir, which will be published in 
full in the appendix to Captain Franklin’s 
Narrative of the Expedition, we shall here- 
after offer an analysis.—April 18. William 
Hutton, Beriah Botfield, and W. P. Ha- 
mond, Esqs., were elected Fellows. A paper 
wasread on the fossil remains of two new spe- 
cies of mastodens and of other vertebrated 
animals found on the left bank of the Irawadi 
(presented to the museum of the society by 
Mr. Crawfurd), by W. Clift, Esq. The 
president having communicated to the So- 
ciety that the Lords of the Treasury had 
granted to them the rooms in Somerset- 
house, formerly used as the Lottery-office ; 
thanks were voted on the occasion, and a 
subscription entered into for defraying the 
expense of fitting up the rooms.—May 2. 
Dr. Burton was elected member of the 
council on the retirement of Mr. Majendie, 


-and elected secretary in the room of R. I. 


Murchison, - Esq., who resigned and was 
elected foreign secretary in the place of 
H. Heuland, Esq. J.C. Loudon, and T. 
Copeland, Esqrs., were elected Fellows. 
And an extract of a letter was read from 
Lieutenant W. Glennie, R.N., dated Mexi- 
co, May 6, 1827, entitled “‘ The Ascent 
of Popocatapel;” also a letter from. J. B. 
Pentland, Esq., respecting the fossil re- 
mains of some animals from the north-east 
border of Bengal. The author has disco- 
vered among the mutilated fragments of 
bones obtained from the tertiary deposits 
on the Bramahpootra river, in the» small 
state of Coosh Behar, presented to the So- 
ciety some years ago by David Scott, Esq., 
and referred to in a former volume of the 
Transactions, the remains of four distinct 
species of mammalia, making an interest- 
N 2 


92 Proceedings of Learned Societies. 


ing addition to the list already published 
by Mr. Colebrooke. 
LINNEAN SOCIETY. 

May 4.—The reading of Mr. Morgan’s 
paper on the mammary organs of the kan- 
garoo was continued, containing further 
particulars of the dissection of these parts, 
as well as of the muscles attached to the 


[Juny, 


bones of the adult and impregnated animal. 
—May 24. This day was the anniversary 
of the Society ; and Lord Stanley was elect- 
ed president in the room of the late Sir J. 
E. Smith; and E. Foster, J. E. Bicheno, 
and R. Taylor, Esqrs., respectively re-elect- 
ed to the offices of treasurer, secretary, and 
under secretary. 


VARIETIES, 


SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


Guinand’s Glass.—The materials used in 
the composition of glass are some saline sub- 
stance, and some sort of silicious earth. 
With respect to the latter, it is indeed said, 
that all white transparent stones which will 
not burn to lime are fit to make glass. 
Where proper stone cannot be had, sand is 
used; and it is now almost the only kind of 
substance employed in the British manufac- 
tures of glass. The other ingredient is an 
alkali, either soda or potash, which is always 
used at first in a state of carbonate. There 
are other fluxes used for different kinds of 
glass, and for various purposes: of the ox- 
ides of lead, litharge and minium are 
‘found to be of singular use: the first of 
these is a powerful flux, and imparts to 
glass the valuable qualities of greater den- 
sity, and of greater refractive power. A 
considerable quantity of this oxide is con- 
tained in the finer glasses, the flint-glass in 
particular, and that which is used for the 
table, for lustres, for artificial gems, and for 
most optical purposes. It is, however, well 
known that glass which contains much lead 
is extremely soft, very fusible, and liable to 
be corroded by very acrid liquors. There 
is, beside, much difficulty in so contriving 
the materials, that the glass shall be through- 
‘out of uniform density. Still this does not 
‘seem to present an insurmountable obstacle ; 
and, from some analyses that have been 
made of M. Guinand’s Swiss flint-glass, we 
should be induced to conclude that it is to 
the successful employment of this material 
that the superiority of his flint-glass has been 
owing. But a glass which is liable to cor- 
rosion by a powerful acid would likewise 
appear susceptible of oxidation—an unlucky 
‘process, which it is rumoured that a cele- 
brated object-glass constructed from some 
of his glass, is at present undergoing. 

Earthquakes in 1827.--The following 
list of earthquakes, which occurred in the 
course of last year in different parts of the 
world, has appeared in a foreign journal :— 
January 2. At Mortagne (Ome) and its 
environs: a violent shock, ofshort duration, 
accompanied with an intense noise. Chim- 
nies and household furniture were thrown 
down ; the commotion reached as far as 
Alencon ; the day was cloudy, the weather 
thick and stormy, which is unusual at that 
time of the year.—February 9. At seven 
o'clock in the, evening, “in the north-west 

-part of Wales, and the Isle of Anglesea. 


The shocks continued from forty seconds to 
a minute; they were sufliciently violent to 
overturn several pieces of furniture. A noise 
was heard like that of a heavy-laden cart 
going on the stones.—April 2. At Beverss, 
at twenty minutes past one in the morning, 
two strong consecutive shocks. The inha- 
bitants of Basse Engadine assert, that they 
counted twenty similar shocks during the 
winter.—May 29. At Vajaca, in Mexico, 
two slight shocks.—June 5. At Martinique, 
a slight shock.—June 12. At Tehenecan, 
in Mexico, at half-past one o’clock, a violent 
shock, with a frightful noise ; many build- 
ings damaged.—June 16. At Aquila, in 
the kingdom of Naples, a shock, at five 
o’clock in the morning.—June 2]. At Pa- 
lermo, at eleven in the morning, four strong 
shocks in the space of seven seconds: it 
Was an oscillatory motion from the west to 
the east.—August 14. At Palermo, at 2 
p- m., several shocks ; they continued about 
eighteen minutes, with very short intervals ; 
the motion was always oscillatory. — Sep- 
tember 18. At Lisbon, a slight shock.— 
October 10. At Zurich, and all the shores 
of the lake, at twelve minutes before 3 
p-m., a strong shock.—October 15. At 
Jassy, at eight in the evening, two violent 
shocks, directed from north to south, and 
accompanied by a subterraneous noise : 
two or three days after, the heat was very 
great.—October 30. At Corsica, in the can- 
tons of Taravo, Tagliano, and Sartene, two 
shocks, at twenty minutes past 5 a,m.— 


-November 30. At Pointe-a-Petre, Guada- 


loupe, at three in the evening, a violent 
earthquake. At Mariegalante it was pre- 
ceded by a strong and sudden storm. 

New Cannon.—We mentioned in this 
journal, several months since, that a Colonel 
Paixhans, of the French artillery, had been 
endeavouring to introduce into the marine 
of his nation a comparatively light cannon, 
of very large calibre, for the purpose of dis- 
charging point-blank explosive shells at sea. 
Whether they will be employed on board 
vessels engaged in civilized warfare, remains 
to be seen. But, for some short time since, 
a new sort of howitzer, in every particular 
appearing to correspond with the gun de- 
signed by Colonel Paixhans, has been in- 
troduced into the British service; and one 
of them is now to be found attached to each 
of our brigades of guns, capable of dis- 
caging a solid shot, or a hollow projec~ 
tile. 


. 
: 
|! 
; 
‘ 
f 
5 


. 


’ 
~ 


1828] 


Improved Camera Lucida.—The difli- 
culty of employing the camera lucida in the 
form in which it was presented to the public 
by its inventor, Dr. Wollaston, is well 
known. From Professor Amici, of Modena, 
this ingenious instrument received several 
improvements ; but, in the one which he 
exhibited last year in this country, and 
which, consequently, it was to be supposed, 
was of the best construction, there was a 
double image, which, so long as a concave 
lens was employed in front of the prism, 
could not be gotten rid of. A very skilful 
optician in this country (Robinson, of De- 
yonshire-street, Portland-place), having in- 
vestigated the cause of this, and succeeded in 
the inquiry, set himself to remedy the evil; 
and has now succeeded in producing a mo- 
dification of Wollaston’s camera lucida, as 
improved by Amici, which, for the pur- 
poses for which that instrument is designed, 
cannot be surpassed—the whole practice of 
landscape-drawing being reduced entirely to 
the mechanical operation of tracing. The 
Same ingenious artist is the inventor of the 
Rhodium pens, which, at about one quarter 
of the price of the ruby pens, possess all the 
adyantages of the latter. 

English Patents.—It is amusing enough 
for any person who is not a sufferer by them, 
to attend to the operation and effect of the 
English patent laws. The best examples of 
the effects of them are to be found in a re- 
spectable monthly journal, belonging to one 
of the members of the patent-office, and de- 
voted principally to the description and enu- 
meration of patents. In Newton’s Journal 
for last month, ten new patents are enu- 
erated, of which four may be considerated 
_as identical with others previously granted. 
One for separating the salt from sea-water, 
and thereby rendering it fresh and fit for 
use, by the process of filtration ; another for 
tanning, by a process which has been used 
for many years in the Bank of Ireland for 
sizing, dyeing, and wetting paper ; a third 
person, bearing the. ominous name of 
Wilks, lays “‘ no claim to the exclusive use 
_of coke ovens under steam boilers, for the 
purpose of generating steam therein during 
the process of making coke ; but I claim the 
application of a steam boiler in the construc- 
tion of a coke oven, by making the bottom 
of the boiler form the top of the oven.” The 
idea of combining a coke oven and steam 
boiler had been anticipated, in 1824, by a 
former patentee—a very ingenious gentle- 
man, of the name of De Iongh—and been 
extensively practised with great advantage. 
But the very nice distinction which has been 
drawn (probably by some gentleman learned 
in the law), between the present invention 

id the former, is truly admirable. “ I 

ve,” says Mr. De Iongh, “ placed a coke 
oven under a boiler ;” then says Mr. Wilks, 
“T lay no claim to a coke oven under a 
boiler ;”’ but “J claim a boiler placed over 
a coke oven.” "The fourth was for some an- 
_tique modern improvement in the process of 


Varieties. 


93 


evaporation. A few months since a genius 
obtained a patent for making steel, by com- 
bining iron with carbon!!! Much about 
the same time another laid claim to origi- 
nality in composing brass of zinc and cop- 
per—in particular proportions, it is true ; 
but those proportions were precisely such as 
every experienced artist had been in the 
habit of employing. We will only cite 
one other instance :—a clever and liberal ar- 
tist invented a most useful surgical appa- 
ratus, and obtained a patent to protect his 
right to the sale of it. Unluckily, this wor- 
thy man had nothing but his character and 
talents to support him. A shopkeeper, who 
had been extremely busy in jobbing for a 
body to which John Bull has affixed a most 
offensive name, pirates this invention, under 
the sanction of the leading member of this 
new joint stock knowledge company, who 
engaged that, before he could suffer from 
any legal proceedings of the inventor, he 
(the said acting manager) would find out 
some passage in a foreign work which should 
suffice for upsetting the patent-right. He 
kept his word. An injunction was, in the 
first instance, obtained to stop the sale of his 
protégé’s apparatus, but subsequently with- 
drawn, on the authority of an obsolete 
work, stating that, a certain number of cen- 
turies ago, is was imagined, &c. &c. It is 


easy to say, that, when a patent has been 


granted on improper grounds, it can be 
set aside by legal process ; or that, when a 
patent-right has been infringed, a court of 
justice can award reparation. The expense 
of legal proceedings is an effectual bar to all 
poor claimants;* and who, in his senses, 
will trust the decision of a patent-right to a 
jury unacquainted, as the members gene- 
rally are, with scientific subjects, and with 


‘such innumerable examples, not of their 


misinterpreting the patent-laws—for laws 
which admit of every interpretation can 
never be misconstrued—but of decisions at 
direct variance both with the laws of science 
and the principles of equity. 

Figure of the Earth.—Mr. Ivory’s inves- 
tigations of the figure of the earth have 
been subjects of the highest admiration 
among mathematicians. After having again 
considered all the data which the recent la- 
bours of various experimentalists have sup- 
plied, he observes there cannot be a more 
satisfactory way of proving that the meridian 
of the earth is an ellipsis, than by shewing 
that it coincides with that figure at the 
equator, at the mean latitude of 45°, at the 
parallel of 54°. 44’. where the curvature is 
identical to the equatorial circle and at the 
pole; a task which this emizent philoso- 
pher has accomplished as far as the mea- 
surements in his possession put it in his 

* Which of the poor inventors who submitted 
plans, returned to them as useless, and for which 
patents were afterwards granted to the indivi- 
dual who officially inspected them, would have 
ventured to take legal measures against this late 


inspector, so conspicuous in the bubble-and- 
squeak year of 1825? 


94 


power te do so. The proof would have been 
much more complete, if it could have been 
confirmed by the length of the meridian 
through the whole extent of Britain. 
Fulgurites.—W e noticed in our last No. 
the experiments made by some French philo- 
sophers to produce, by means of a powerful 
electrical battery, vitreous tubes, similar to 
those which are the effect of lightning. The 
following synopsis of the history of fulgurites 
is from the pen of Dr. Fiedler, of Dresden. 
—Fulgurites shew that lightning, the ef- 
fects of which were considered as terminated 
on its reaching the surface of the earth, is 
capable of penetrating deep into it; they 
offer to us substantial proofs of its course ; 
they exhibit to us such an astonishing de- 
gree of heat produced by lightning as was 
never known before. ‘The fulgurites are 
formed where, under certain favourable cir- 
cumstances, the lightning striking into sandy 
soil, in order to unite itself with the -- E of 
the subterraneous waters, forces itself 
through the quarry sand, and fuses it, in con- 
sequence of its being a non conductor, and 
forms, by means of the radiating nature of 
electricity, and watery vapours arising, tubes 
which run under an inclination of from 60° 
to 90°, sometimes to the depth of thirty feet, 
and from them several ramifications issue 
sideways. These tubes are internally per- 
fectly fused: the external sand in imme- 
diate contact conglomerates, and that which 
surrounds the tubes assumes a reddish colour, 
produced by the sudden heat of the lightning 
and the small particles of iron contained in 
the sand. Externally these tubes are partly 
knaggy and rough, partly roundish. From 
their being suddenly cooled, they are cracked 
into many smaller and larger bits, fitting 
perfectly into each other. Thus a fulgurite, 
of 17 feet long, discovered near Dresden, 
dug out and geognostically joined together, 
and presented to the late King of Saxony by 
Dr. Fiedler, consisted of 411 pieces. Ano- 
‘ther, still in his possession, 19 feet long, of 
532 pieces, and a third, of 7 feet long, with 
a side branch, extending to 14 inches, con- 
sisted of 168 pieces. The cabinet of Dres- 
den is the only one which possesses a fulgu- 
rite put together in its perfectly natural 
state, and which was considered by the late 
Professor Gilbert as the most remarkable 
and important object of this valuable cabi- 
net. The fulgurites and their lateral rami- 
fications in sandy soil tenuinate in obtuse, 
slightly-fused points ; amd on clay strata, as 
in Hungary, in oblong hollow bells. Al- 
though the arguments are conclusive which 
prove the origin of fulgurites by means of 
lightning, yt, since the subject has attracted 
attention, nature itself has offered several 
proofs of it, by the lightning striking before 
the eyes of several sailors into the sand 
downs of the Island of Amrum, on the Bal- 
‘tic coast, and forming a fulgurite, which was 
‘brought to Professor Pfaff, of Kiel, who hap- 
pened to be there. The lightning also 
struck at Rausthen, a bathing-place on the 


Varieties. 


[Juny, 


Baltic coast, in the presence of different per- 
sons; and Professor Hagen, of Konigsberg, 
had the spot dug, and found a fulgurite. 
Duelling.—The practice of duelling, by 
which the best blood in Europe has been 
shed during several centuries, has been 
called a necessary evil. Captain M‘Naghten, 
late Deputy Judge Advocate General in 
Bengal, in a work he has recently published, 
proposes the following admirable expedient 
for adoption in the army, in which the 
principals and seconds are,all amenable to 
military law, end all of whom, therefore, can 
be brought before a military tribunal.—Let 
there be, by the enactment of the legisla- 
ture, the necessary powers given for the es- 
tablishment of a new court, for the exclusive 
purpose of deciding in all cases of personal 
quarrels between officers, and which are not 
otherwise connected with the rules of disci- 
pline, as in the case of an inferior insulting 
his superior in the execution of his duty. 
Let these courts, under some significant de- 
nomination, be assembled, as circumstances 
may require, cither by commanders-in- 
chief, commanders of divisions, or of regi- 
ments, battalions, detachments, and so forth ; 
and let their decision—this he holds to be a 
sine qua non—hbe unalterable by any other 
power, and not remissible, as is that of a 
court-martial. Let the members be sworn, 
subject to challenge, and bound to secrecy 
of individnal opinion, as is the custom at 
present; and, in a word, let it have the aid of 
all necessary formalities. Let it now be 
supposed that, at the mess table, an officer 
has given the lie to another, that complaint 
is made to the commanding officer of the 
corps, who thereupon orders the court to 
assemble ; and, lastly, that upon due investi- 
gation, the insulting expression is proved to 
have been unprovoked, undeserved, and in 
all respects wanton. Let the decree of the 
court, which, in all possible cases, should be 
laid down in the articles of war, be that the 
offender shall, in presence of every officer, 
then with the corps or detachment, read an 
expression of sorrow for his conduct, entreat 
the pardon of the offended party in par- 
ticular, and of all in whose presence the 
outrage was committed; and let what he 
reads have been dictated and drawn out by the 
court itself, and signed by the offender ; and, 
finally, let it be recorded in the proper staff 
office, report of proceedings being made to 
head-quarters, and an authenticated copy 
of the decree given to the complainant for 
his lasting satisfaction. In more aggravated 
cases, such as that of a blow wantonly struck, 
let the penitentiary confession be still more 
forcible in its terms, more ‘public in its man- 


ner of being read, and let the offender read — 
These are suppositions of 


it on his knees. 
the extremest cases; and for offences of a 
minor degree, it were easy to modify the 
manner and measure of atonement. Like 
the existing laws, the above would be use- 


less if adequate means were not taken to 2 
Let, therefore, provision be 


enforce them, 


‘¥) 


— 


1828.] 


made, that any officer so offended, who may 
decline calling upon the judgement of this 
court, and who may take any means what- 
ever of redressing himself, be, upon due 
conviction thereof, before a general court- 
martial, irremissibly cashiered ; and the 
same in regard to any officer refusing to 
submit to the judgement of the proposed 
court, immediately and explicitly. Of course, 
if the investigation proved that the com- 
plainant was deserving, to any extent, of the 
obloquy put upon him, he too must be pu- 
nishable, either by the apology being made 
reciprocally, or in a severer way, as the case 


Varieties. 


95 


may require. If laws of the foregoing 
nature were formed, and rigidly executed, 
the decision of the suggested court would 
soon come to be considered as a sufficient 
purification of character, and no officer could 
think meanly of another, whom a body of 
officers pronounced undishonoured, such 
pronouncement being founded upon a sworn 
investigation into the facts of his case. On 
the contrary, an officer repeatedly offending 
would soon come to be universally despised 
and avoided, even if cashiering were not 
rendered the penalty of a repetition. 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


—— 


WORKS IN PREPARATION. 


A Volume of Poems, by S. Laman 
Blanchard, is in the Press, and will appear 
early in Jilly. 

Mr. Kendall has in progress a work of 
much meditation and research, and of equal 
speculative and practical interest, under the 
title of “The Holy Spirit, its Philosophy, 
Imagery, and Worship ;” in which he at- 
tempts to establish, upon incontrovertible 
ground, but under an entirely new aspect, 
the truth of the Trinitarian doctrine at large. 
The several subjects are treated philosphi- 
cally, poetically, and historically ; with the 
view of closing many controversies and heal- 
ing many animosities. 

The Winter’s Wreath for 1829: a Col- 
lection of original Pieces. To be embel- 
lished with 12 highly-finished Line Engrav- 
ings on Steel; from the Productions of H. 
Howard, R. A. ; J. Northcote, R.A. ; W. 
Havell; G. Arnold ; W. F. Witherington ; 
Nicholson (of Edinburgh); F. P. Stepha- 
noff; J. Watson; Severn (of Rome); 
Vandyke ; Wright (of Derby); Garnier ; 
Burns, &c. &c. 

A Universal Prayer, a Poem, by Robert 
Montgomery, &c. 

Memoirs of General Miller, of the Peru- 
yian Service, containing some Account of 
the War of Independence in Buenos Ayres, 
Chile, and Peru; and interspersed with 
Sketches of Character, Manners, and Cus- 
toms of those Countries. 
| Mr. Planché, the Author of “ Lays and 
Legends of the Rhine,” has in the Press his 
“ Descent of the Danube, from Ratisbon to 

- Vienna, during the Autumn of 1827; with 
Recollections, Historical and Legendary, of 
the Towns, Castles, Monasteries, &c., on 
the Banks of that River,” in one volume, 
Byo. 

Forty Views on the Danube, in illustra- 
tion of this Volume, will also speedily ap- 
pear, lithographed by L. Hayhe, frova 
Sketches made on the spot by Mr. Planché. 

The most Easy Greek Exercises for the 
use of the Lower Forms ; with a Greek and 
English Lexicon of every Word. By the 
Kev. Wm, Moseley, A.M. LL.D. 


St. Petersburgh at the Close of 1827. By 
A. P. Granville, M.D. 

Memoirs of John Frederic Oberling, 
Pastor of Walbach, in the Ban de la Roche. 

The Abomination of Desolation ; or, 
Proofs that the Destruction of Jerusalem 
was not foretold in the 24th Chapter of 
Matthew, 13th of Mark, and 21st of Luke. 
By T. Parkin. 

The Juvenile Forget-Me-Not ; a Christ- 
mas and New Year’s Gift, or Birth-Day 
Present for 1829. 

Mr. Britton’s History and Tlustrations 
of Peterborough Cathedral, containing ac- 
counts of this very fine Edifice, and of its 
Bishops and Deans, with 16 Engravings, is 
published ; also the first and second Num- 
bers of his Illustrations of Gloucester Cathe- 
dral. ; 

The whole of the Letter-press, by the 
same Author, to accompany the Architec- 
tural Antiquities of Normandy, is likewise 
announced to be given away to the Sub- 
seribers to the Engrayings of that Work. 
The reasons for this unusual circumstance 
are detailed in the Preface, which contains 
an Address to the Legislature, urging the 
repeal of that odious tax of presenting eleven 
copies to private corporate bodies of all 
published hooks, however expensive in get- 
ting up, and however limited the sale of 
such books. We cannot sufficiently com- 
mend this Author for his perseverance in 
reprobating this grievous and oppressive 
legislative enactment. 

On the Ist of July will appear the First 
Number of a new Topographical W ork, en- 
titled “‘ Picturesque Antiquities of the Eng- 
lish Cities,’ with 12 Engravings, by and 
under the directions of Mr. Lekeux, illus- 
trative of the Architectural Antiquities of 
York, Lincoln, and Gloucester. This pub- 
lication is to be comprised in Six Numbers. 

Dr. Burrows has nearly ready “ Commen- 
taries on Insanity,” in one volume, 8vo. 

A First Series of Dramas: comprising 
Jagellan, a Tragic Romance; and the 
Siege of the Scots, or Appleby in 1773—an 
Historical Play. By H. W. Montagu. 

The Life and ‘Times of Archbishop Laud, 
by John P. Lawson, M.A. 


96 List of New Works. 


The Rev. R. Warner is preparing The 
Book of Psalms, according to the Autho- 
rized Version, with Practical Reflections 
and Notes, in one octavo volume. 

The Anniversary, or Poetry and Prose 
for 1829, edited by Allan Cunningham, 
and illustrated with 18 Engravings, is anew 
Annual announced for publication. 

The Bride, a Tragedy, by Joanna Baillie. 

A Journal of a Voyage to Peru, Journey 
across the Pampas, and a Passage across 
the Cordillera of the Andes, by Lieut. 
Brande, R.A., who performed the journey 
on foot in the snow during the severe win- 
ter of 1827. 

The Life and Remains of Wilmot War- 
wick, edited by his Friend, Henry Vernon. 

The Present State and Future Prospects 
of the Free Trade and Colonization of 
India. 

An Historical View of the Sinking Fund, 
by Philip Pusey, Esq. 


LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

Life of Mary Queen of Scotts. By Henry 
Glassford Bell, Esq. 2 vols. 18mo. 7s. 5 
fine paper, 10s. boards. 

The Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo 
(M. Savary). Written by himself. Tlustra- 
tive of the History of the Emperor Napo- 
leon. Vol. 1, Parts I. and Il. 8vo. 16s. 
boards. 

The Life and Reign of Charles I., King 
of England. By J. D’ Israeli. 2 vols. 21s. 
boards. 

History of Italy, during the Consulate 
and Empire of Napoleon Buonaparte. 
Translated from the Italian of Carlo Botta; 
by the Author of the Life of Joanna, Queen 
of Naples. 2 vols. 8vo. 26s. boards. 

Dodsley’s Annual Register for 1827. 8vo. 
16s. boards. 

The Edinburgh Annual Register for 
1826. 20s. boards. 

Transrhenane Memoirs. By John Richard 
Best, Esq., Author of Transalpine Me- 
moirs. 8yo. 8s. boards. 

Memoirs of Granville Sharpe. By Prince 
Hoare. In8vo. 2 vols. 24s. 

FINE ARTS. 

Anecdotes of Painting in England, &c., by 
the Hon. Horace Walpole. With consi- 
derable Additions by the Rey. James Wall- 
away. 5 vols. royal &vo. £10. 10s. ; India 
paper, proofs, £15. 15s. 

Knight’s Modern and Antique Gems, 
with appropriate Mottos and Quotations to 
each Subject; 86 Plates. Crown 8vo., 
£1. 11s. 6d.; large paper, £2. 12s. 6d. 

The Visions of an Amateur, consisting 
of 42 Etchings. By Sir James Stewart, 
Bart. Price £3. 13s. 6d. 

Scraps and Sketches by George Cruik- 
shanks. 8s. plain; coloured, 12s. 

Thirty-two Illustrations to Novels, Tales, 
and Romances, by Sir Walter Scott. 8vo. 
£1. Ls. 6d. 


[Jury, 


Illustrations of Virginia Water and the 
adjacent Scenery, in a Series of Views, 
from Sketches by W. A. Delamotte, Jun. 
Drawn on Stone by W. Gauci. Part I.’ 
4to. 7s. 6d.; proofs, on India paper, 
10s. 6d. ; 

Letters of an Architect, from France, 
Italy, and Greece. By Joseph Woods. 
With Plates. 2 vols. 4to. India paper, 
£5. 5s. 

A Selection of Vases, Altars, Candelabra, 
and Tripods, from the Louvre at Paris. 
Engraved by Henry Moses, with descrip- 
tive Letter-press to each Plate, by T. L. D. 5 
and dedicated to her Grace the Duchess of 
Bedford. 

MEDICAL. 

On the Curative Influence of the South- 
ern Coast of England, more espicially that 
of Hastings. By Dr. Harwood. Post 8yo. 
9s. Gd. boards. 5 

On Deafness, its Causes, Prevention, and 
Cure. By John Stevenson, Esq. Post 8yo. 
7s. Gd. boards. 

Edinburgh Medical Transactions. Vol. 3, 
Part I. 8vo. 12s. boards. ‘ 

Rennie on Gout, Apoplexy, &c. 8vo. 8s. 
boards. 

Alcock’s Account of the Hospitals of 
Paris. 18mo. 3s. 6d. boards. 

An Investigation of the Properties of the 
Thames Water. By Wm. Lambe, M.D. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 

The East India Register and Directory, 
corrected to the 13th of May 1828. 12mo. 
10s. sewed. cae 

The Clemency of Titus, from the Italian 
of Metastatio. By a Lady. 8vo. Price 
3s. 6d. 

“¢ My Early Years,”’ for those in Early 
Life. 12mo. 3s. boards. 

Richard Baynes’s General Catalogue of 
Books in Theology, and all other Depart- 
ments of Literature, containing near 6,000 
Articles. In 8vo. Price 2s. 6d. 

Instructions of French Pronunciation, 
and on the Genders; in the Form of a 
French Vocabulary and Reader. By Marin 
de la Voye. 7s. Gd. boards. 

The Elements of Euclid. By the Rev. 
D. Gardner, of the London University. 
8vo. 7s. boards. 

The History of the Conspiracy of the 
Spaniards against Venice. By the Abbé 
St. Real. With an English Interverbal 
Translation, adapted for teaching and 
learning the French Language on the Ha- 
miltonian System. Price Gs. boards. 

A Supplement to the Miniature English 
Dictionaries. 18mo. 1s. 6d. boards. 

The Cambist’s Compendium ; or, Two 
Familiar Practical Treatises on Bills of 
Exchange, &c. &c. By J. Henry Freese, 
Merchant. Royal8yo. Price 20s. boards. 

The Household Economist: a Selection 
of Practical Receipts, by Frugal Means dis- 
pensing Tiealth, Ease, Comfort, and mode- 
rate Luxuriation. By a. Domestic Man. 
lémo. Is. 6d. sewed. 


1828.] 


_A Treatise on the Cause and, Cure of 
Hesitation of Speech, or Stammering; as, 
discovered by Henry M‘Cormac, M.D. 
8yo. 5s. 6d. boards. ‘ 

* Concise Forms in Conveyancing. By 
Thomas Coventry, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. 
Third Edition, with large Additions. 8vo. 
6s. 6d. boards. 

Rhymes on Geography and History. By 
W.S. Sankay, A.M. With Maps. 2s. 6d. 
half-bound. 

On the Spinning Machinery of the Bri- 
tish Cotton Manufactories. By R. Guest. 
8vo. 7s. Gd. boards. 

The Bacche and Heraclid of Euripides, 


translated into English Prose, from the. 


Text of Elmsley: with Notes. 8vo. 4s. Gd. 
sewed. 

The Evidences against the System of 
Phrenology, being the Substance of a Paper 
read at the Royal Medical Society of Edin- 
burgh. By Thomas Stone, Exq. @vo. 

Letters to the Young. By Maria Jane 
Jewsbury. Foolscap. Price 6s. boards. 

Parsing Lessons to the First Book of 
Homer’s Iliad ; with a Single English Ver- 
sion, corresponding to the Interlinear Trans- 
lation, and an Explanatory Introduction, 
2s. 6d. 

Mornings in the Library. By Ann 
Knight. With Introductory Lines, and 
concluding Poem, by Bernard Barton. 
2s. 6d. half-bound. 

An Account of the General Penitentiary 
at Milbank, containg a Description of the 


Buildings of the Officers employed in the, 


Prison, and the Course of Discipline ob- 
served in it, &e. &c. By George Holford, 
Esq. 8vo. 12s. boards. 

Evenings or Mental Recreation. By the 
Author of the Rival Crusoes. 12mo. Half- 
bound. 4s. 6d. 

POETRY. 
- Eccelino da: Romano, surnamed the Ty- 
rant of Padua; a Poem, in 12 Books. By 
Henry Augustus Viscount Dillon. Svo. 15s. 
boards. 

Specimens of the Lyrical, Descriptive, 
and Narrative Poets of Great Britain, from 
Chaucer to the present Dey. With a Pre- 
liminary Sketch of the History of Early 
English Poetry, and Biographical and Cri- 
tical Notices. By John Johnstone. 24mo. 
5s. Gd. 

The Poems of William Collins, with 
Notes. By the Rey. William Crowe, Public 
Orator of the’ University of Oxford. Fools- 
cap 8vo. 3s. Gd. boards. 
_ The Puffiad: a Satire. Post 8vo. 6s. 
boards. 

Italy: a Poem by Samuel Rogers. Part 
IL. l2mo. 7s. 6d. boards. 

The Poetical W orks of Thomas Campbell, 
now first collected, in 2 vols. 8vo. 18s. 
boards. 


Historical Survey of German Poetry, in- 
terspersed with various Translations. By 
Wm. Taylor, of Norwich, Vol. 1, 8vo. 
15s. boards. 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 31. 


List of New Works. 


97. 
POLITICAL: 

The Anti-Pauper System ; exemplifying 
the Positive and Practical Good realized by 
the lawful Administration of the Poor 
Laws, prevailing at Southwell. By the Rev. 
John Thomas Becher, M.A. 

A few Practical Arguments against the 
Theory of Emigration. By Captain Head. 
8yo. 2s. 6d. 

The Substance of a Speech, delivered by 
Colonel Torrens, in the House of Com- 
mons, Feb. 15. 1827, on the Subject of 
Emigration. 8vo. 2s. Gd. sewed. ; 

A Leiter to the Duke of Wellington on 
the Regulation of the Currency, and Pre- 
vention, Correction, and Detection of 
Crime. By an Englishman. 2s. 6d. 

Reasons for a Revision of our Fiscal Code, 
addressed to the Finance Committee. By 
Alexander Mundell, Esq. 3s. 6d. 

A Brief Account of the Proceedings in 
Parliament, from the Reign of Henry VIII. 
to the present Time, relative to the Defects 
in the Administration of Justice in the 
Courts of Chancery, the House of Lords, 
and the Court of Commissioners of Bank- 
rupts ; together with the Opinions of dif- 
ferent Statesmen and Lawyers as to the 
Remedies to be applied. By C. P. Cooper, 
Esq. 8vo. boards. ' 

A Farther Inquiry into the Expediency 
of applyiag the Principles ef Colonial Po- 
licy te the Government of India. S8vo. 8s.) 
boards. 

RELIGION, MORALS, &c. 

Lectures to Young Persons on the Intel- 
lectual and Moral Powers of Man; the Ex- 
istence, Character, and Government of 
God; and the Evidences of Christianity. 
By the Rey. John Horsey. 1 vol. 8vo. 
&s. boards. : 

Memoirs of the Life, Character, and 
Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry. By 
J. B. Williams, Esq., F.S.A. 1 vol. 8vm 
8s. boards. 

An Exposure of Civil and Religious 
Despotism, in explaining Parts of the Pro- 
phecies of Daniel, Paul, and John ; with an 
Answer fo Mr. Itving’s Letter to the King. 
By T. Parkin. 5s. ; 

Eight Lectures on. the History of Jacobs, 
By the Rey. Henry Blunt, A. M. 12mo. 
4s. 6d. 

The Confession of the Church of England 
practically elucidated in Seven Discourses. 
By Thomas Bartlett, A.M., Rector of 
Kingstone. 12mo. Price 3s. Gd. boards. 

An Exposition of the Parables of Our 
Lord, shewing their Connexion with his 
Ministry, their Prophetic Character, and 
their Gradual Development of the Gospel 
Dispensations: with a Preliminary Disser- 
tation on Parable. By the Rev. B: Bailey,. 
M.A. 6vo. 14s. boards. 

Brief Remarks on The Declaration of 
the Catholic Bishops, the Vicars Apos- 
tolic, and their Coadjutors in Great Britain. 
By the Rev. Philip Allwood, B.D.  8vo. 
2s. Gd. 

O 


98 List of New Works. 


An Historical Inquiry into the Probable 
Causes of the Rationalist Character lately 
predominant in the Theology of Germany. 
Translated from the German, by G. B. 
Pusey, M.A. 8vo. 7s. 6d. boards. 

The Danger of resting in Inadequate 
Views of Christianity: addressed particu- 
larly to Christian Parents. By Patrick 
Falconer, Esq. 12mo. Price 6s. boards. 

Hore Catchetice ; or, an Exposition of 
the Duty and Advantages of Public Cate- 
chising in Church. By W. S. Gilley, M.A. 
8vo. 5s. 6d. boards. 

The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy. By 
George Stanley Faber, B.D., Rector of 
Long Newton. 8 vols. 8yo. 3s. Gd. bds. 

The Commission and Consequent Duties 
of the Clergy: in a Series of Discourses. 
By Hugh James Rose, B.D. 8yo. 8s. 
boards. 

A Vindication of the Church of England 
from the Imputation of Inconsistency and 
Uncharitableness in retaining the Athana- 
sian Creed. By the Rev. W. T. Myers, 
A.M., Curate of Eltham. 12mo. 3s. 6d. 
boards. 

An Inquiry concerning the Means and 
Expedience of proposing and making any 
Changes in the Canons, Articles, or Liturgy, 
or any of the Laws affecting the Interests 
of the Church of England. By Wm. Win- 
stanley Hull, Barrister at Law. 8vo. 7s. 
boards. 

Daily Helps to Devotion, for Christians 
in Retirement. By A. Westaby, M.A. 
12mo. 3s. boards. 

Annotations on the Apocalypse. By 
John Chappel Woodhouse, D.D., Dean of 
Lichfield. 8vo. 12s. boards. 

The Testimony of Primitive Antiquity 
against the Peculiarities of the Latin 
Church, being a Supplement to the Diffi- 
culties of Romanism. In Reply to an 
Answer to the Difficulties of Romanism. 
By the Right Rev. J. F. M. Trevern, D.D., 
Bishop of Strasbourg. By the Rev. Geo. 
Stanley Faber, B.D. 8vo. 6s. boards. 

NOVELS AND TALES, 

At Home, a Novel. By the Author of 
English Fashionables Abroad. 3 vols. post 
8vo. £1. 11s. 6d. boards. 


[Juxy, 


Our Village. By Mary Russell Mitford. 
Vol. 3, post 8vo. 9s. boards. 

. The Rector of Overton, a Novel. 3 vols. 
21s. boards. 

Betrothed Lovers, a Milanese Tale of 
the 17th Century. ‘Translated from the 
Italian of Allesandro Manzoni. 3 vols. 
12mo. 21s. boards. 

Victoria; or, the Male Coquette and the 
Dupe. 3 vols. 12mo.- 18s. boards. 

The Lairds of Fife. 3 vols. 12mo. 24s. 
boards. 

Detraction Displayed By Amelia Opie. 
1 vol. 12mo. 

Whim-Whams, an American Souvenir. 
3s. 6d. boards. 

The Voyage of Captain Popanilla.* By 
the Author of Vivian Grey. Post 8vo. 
7s. 6d. boards. 

Journey to the World under Ground ; 
being the Subterraneous Travels of Niels 
Klim. From the Latin of Lewis Holberg. 
Post 8vo. 10s. 6d. boards. 

VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 

Narrative of a Second Expedition to the 
Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1825, 
1826, and 1827. By John Franklin, Capt. 
R.N., and Commander of the Expedition ; 
including an Account of the Progress of a 
Detachment to the Eastward. By John 
Richardson, M.D. 4to. £4. 4s. 

Journal of an Embassy from the Gover- 
nor-General of India to the Courts of Siam 
and Cochin China; exhibiting a View of 
the Actual State of those Kingdoms. By 
John Crawfurd, Esq. 4to. £3. 3s. boards. 

Narrative of a Journey through the 
Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to 
Bombay. By Bishop Heber. 3 vols. 8yo. 
£1. 16s. boards. 

Narrative of a Journey from Constanti- 
nople to England. By the Rey. R. Walsh. 
8vo. 12s. boards. 

Narrative of an Ascent to the Summit of 
Mont Blanc, on the 8th and 9th of Au- 
gust, 1827. By John Auldjo, Esq. Royal 
4to. with plates. Price 21s. boards. 

Notions of the Americans, picked up by 
a Travelling Bachelor. 2 vols. 8vo. 28s. 
boards. By Mr. Cooper, Author of “ Spy,” 
“ Pioneers,”’ ** Red Rover,’ &c. &c. 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


New Patents Sealed in June 1828. 

To Thomas Aspinwall, of Bishopsgate 
Church-yard, London, Esq., for an improved 
method of casting printing types by means 
of a mechanical process, which invention he 
proposes to call the mechanical type-caster— 
22d May; 6 months. 

To Samuel Hall, of Basford, Notting- 
ham, cotton-manufacturer, for a new method 
of, and an apparatus for, generating steam 
and various gasses to produce motive power, 
and for other useful purposes—3l1st May ; 
6-months. 


To James Moffat, of King’s Arms-yard, 
Coleman-street, London, master mariner, 
for an apparatus for stopping and securing 
chain-cables, also for weighing anchors at- 
tached to such chain or other cables, either 
with or without a messenger—3d June ; 
6 months. 

To Daniel Jobbins, of Uley, Gloucester- 
shire, millman, for an improved method by 
certain machinery applicable to stocks or 
fulling machines of milling and scowering 
woollen cloths, and other fabrics requiring 
such process—-3d June ; 2 months. 


pene A ee 


: 


1828. ] 


To Baron Charles Wetterstedt, of Com- 
mercial-place, Commercial-read, Middlesex, 
for his invention of a liquid or composition 
for water-proofing and strengthening leather 
—4th June; 6 months. 

To Richard Witty, of the Township of 
Hanley, Stafford, engineer, for certain im- 
provements in apparatus for making and 
supplying coal gas for useful purposes— 
10th June; 6 months. 

To Edmond Gibson Atterley, of York- 
place, Portman-square, Middlesex, Esq., for 
an apparatus for a method of generating 
power applicable to various purposes—12th 
June ; 6 months. 

To William Strachan, of Avon Eitha, 
in the parish of Ruabon, Denbigh, for an 
improvement in the making or manufac- 
turing of alum—12th June; 4 months. 

To John Bartlett, of Chard, Somerset, 
shoe-thread manufacturer, for a new pro- 
cess for preparing flax-thread or yarn, for use 
in the manufacture of boots, shoes, sadlery, 
and of sail, and other cloths and bagging.— 
16th June; 2 months. 

To George Johnson Young, of Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne, iron-founder, for an improved 
machine for working ships, windlasses and 
capstans—21st June; 6 months. 

To Samuel Pratt, of New Bond-street, 
Hanover-square, camp equipage-maker, for 
certain improvements on elastic beds, 


List of Patents. 


99 


cushions, seats, pads, and other articles of 


“that kind—25th June ; 6 months. 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in July 1814, expire in the present 
month of July 1828. 

12.—B. L. Mertian, London, for @ me- 
thod of extracting gelatinous matter from 
substances capable of affording the same. 

16.—J. Dawson, Dublin, for certain 
means of communicating motion to bodies 
either wholly or in part surrounded by 
water or air, by the re-action of suitable 
apparatus. 

— I. Smith, London, for a spring hinge 
for doors ond gates. 

96. G. Dunnage, Hammersmith, for @ 
method of rowing or propelling vessels. 

— H. W. Vanderdeft, London, for a 
method of purifying and refining whale and 
seal oil. 

— A. Hill, Glamorgan, for improve- 
ments in melting and working iron. 

— W. Jonson, Essex, for an improved 
process of making salt. 

— W. Doncaster, London, for improve- 
ments in navigating vessels—a hydrostator, 
or mill—accelerating the motion of car- 
riages, and a dining table. 


BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 


—— 


PETER MOORE, ESQ. 

Peter Moore, Esq., late M.P. for the city 
of Coventry, was the son of a respectable 
clergyman. He was born about the year 
1749. Early in life, he went out to India, 
as a writer in the service of the East India 
Company. In that service, he realized an 
ample fortune. His residence in India was 
during the administration of Governor 
Hastings ; and, upon his return to England, 
he is said to have furnished Burke and She- 
ridan with important facts and documents 
for the memorable impeachment, and long- 
protracted prosecution—a trial of seven 
years’ duration—of that gentleman. This 
circumstance naturally connected him with 
the Whig opposition; a party to which, 
during the remainder of his life, he seems to 
have adhered; many, however, in later 
years, regarding him rather as a radical 
than as a Whig. 

Soon after his return from the east, Mr. 
Moore stood candidate with the late Sir 
Philip Francis, for the borough of Tewkes- 
bury. On that occasion, they tendered the 
votes of the housekeepers ; but the House of 
Commons resolved, that the freemen and 
freeholders, only, had a right to vote; and, 
consequently, these gentlemen lost their 
election 


In 1802, Mr. Moore offered himself for 


Coventry, in conjunction with Mr. Wilber- 
force Bird ; but neither he nor his colleague 
was returned. One of the successful candi- 
dates, however, was afterwards unseated by 
the House. In Mr. Moore’s next attempt 
at Coventry, fortune proved more favour- 
able: he carried his election in favour of 
what was termed the “ freedom and inde- 
pendence”’ of that city, at an expense of 
£25,000. He was re-elected for subsequent 
parliaments, at comparatively little cost ; 
and, for twenty-five years, he was the po- 
pular representative of the freemen of Co- 
ventry. At the last general election, he was, 
much to his chagrin, thrown out. The 
majority of the electors of Coventry are 
operative silk-weavers ; and they are said to 
have suspected that, in a contest for high 
wages, their two old members—Mr. Moore 
and Mr. Ellice—had favoured the master 
weavers. The rival party availed them- 
selves of this impression ; and, by dint of 
the usual electioneering mancuvres, they 
carried the day in favour of the Tory candi- 
dates. 
Throughout his parliamentary career, Mr. 
Moore was a constant and ready speaker in 
the House of Commons. In getting a bill 
through the House, he was considered to be 
one of the most adroit and successful men 
ve known. He was at all times, as already 
2 


100 


intimated, on what is termed the popular 
side of the question. The warmth with 
which he advocated the cause of the late 
Queen Caroline will not soon be forgotten. 

In the debates at the India-House, as 
well as in those of the House of Commons, 
Mr. Moore frequently took an active part. 

As a projector, a speculator, and a pro- 
moter of public works, no man was more 
distinguished. He exerted himself with 
much success respecting the erection of 
Drury Lane theatre; and, for some time, 
he was the chairman of the committee for 
the management of that concern. He was 
engaged in the Highgate-tunnel affair. He 
was also a successful promoter of the Impe- 
tial Gas Light Company, the bills for the 
incorporation of which-he carried through 
Parliament, and was made its deputy-chair- 
man; and he conducted the opposition 
made, by the Imperial and other gas com- 
panies, against the projectors of an Oil Gas 
Company. He defeated his opponents, with 
a lors of £30,000.; while, on his side, not 
mere than half of that sum was expended. 

During the years 1824 and 1825, Mr. 
Moore was much courted by the projectozs 
of many of the Stock Exchange bubbles. 
By connecting himself with these baseless 
eoncerns,. he subjected himself to heavy 
responsibilities. Bythe John Bull, and other 
Tory papers, he was, in consequence, very 
roughly handled; and, if we are to credit 
the statements and insinuations of those pa- 
pers, his conduct was not, upon every occa- 
sion, of the most satisfactory or honourable 
description. Under a fictitious name, he 
is thought to be one of the dramatis per- 
sone in the novel of “‘ George Godfrey” — 
a work in which the schemes of the Alley 
ere held up to severe and pointed ridicule. 

Having been some time held in durance, 
and finding himself assailed by legal pro- 
cess on all sides, Mr. Moore, to avoid the 
prospect of passing his last days within the 
walls of a prison, deemed it expedient to 
pass over to France. For some time he re- 
sided at Dieppe, but latterly at Abbeville, 
where he died, on the 5th of May. 

This being, pre-eminently, the age of 
auto-biography, reminiscences, &c., Mr. 
Moore had been occupying himself in the 
task of writing the Memoirs of his own Life 
and Times; but his mind is said to have 
been too much harassed by the reverses of 
his fortune, and his anxieties respecting the 
affairs in which he had been engaged in 
England, to allow him to make much pro- 
press! bane 

Mr. Moore kas left one son, now in India; 
and two daughters, one married, and both 
respectably situated in life. 

JOHN SCOTT. 

JEEvery collector of fine and valuable prints 
will remember the name of Scott, as that of 
an artist of high celebrity, in the depart- 
ment of animal and figure engraving Mr. 
Scott may almost be said to have been 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Juuy, 


born an engraver. His birthplace was at 
Neweastle-upon-Tyne, about the year 1773. 
His education was probably humble, as he 
was apprenticed to a tallow-chandler, named 
Greenwell, in the Old Flesh Market, New- 
castle. His leisure hours, especially during 
the latter portion of his term, were sedu- 
lously devoted to the arts of drawing and 
engraving. At length he was induced to 
shew his performances to his friend, Mr. 
Fisher, the keeper of a circulating-library, 
and clerk of the parish of St. Nicholas. 
Mr. Fisher submitted these productions to 
the examination of certain gentlemen who 
frequented his library, and by whom, as 
executed by a self-taught youth, they were 
thought highly of. On the suggestion of 
Mr. Fisher, young Scott wrote to Mr. Robert 
Pollard, the engraver, in London—trans- 
mitted to him some specimens of his talent 
—and solicited his advice as to the propriety 
of his visiting London, with the view of 
adopting the profession of an engraver. Mr. 
Pollard acted most generously : satisfied of 
his ability, he not only encouraged the pro- 
ject, but took him under his own tuition, 
gave up his claim to the customary fee, and 
allowed him a progressively increasing 
weekly payment. Under such auspices, he 
rapidly improved, and ultimately attained 
the summit of his art. His master-pieces 
were the Fox-Chase, from a painting by 
Reinagle and Marshall; and the Death of 
the Fox, from a picture by Gilpin, the pro- 
perty of the late Colonel Thornton, of sport- 
ing notoriety. The latter, if we mistake 
not, was -the picture for which Colonel 
Thornton—then resident at, and the pro- 
prietor of, Thornville Royal—had several of 
the finest sporting dogs in the kingdom 
killed, and placed in the requisite positions, 
to assist the painter in its production.— 
Other principal works by Mr. Scott were the 
various characters of dogs, and of horses, on 
a royal quarto size, with letter-press descrip- 
tions of the qualities and properties of these 
animals. 

Asa man, Mr. Scott was distinguished 
by unaffected plainness, scrupulous integrity, 
and general worth. He was one of the eight 
artists who, in the year 1809-10, assembled, 
and formed the plan of, the Artists’ Joint 
Stock Fund, for the benefit of decayed mem- 
bers, their widows, and children. This noble 
institution has so prospered, that, from its 
own subscriptions, and the contributions of 
gentlemen and amateurs, it is now in pos- 


‘session of government securities to a large 


amount. It is melancholy to add—though, 
at the same time, the circumstance shews 
the value of such societies—that Mr. Scott 
himself lived to become a quarterly depen- 
dent upon the very institution of which he 
had been a principal founder and promoter. 
Five or six years hence, after serving as stew- 
ard to the society, in high health and spirits, 
at one of its annual meetings, at the Free- 
mason’s Tayern, London, he was taken ill; 
subsequently, he lost his reason; and, at 


1828.] 


the close of the year 1827, his valuable life 
terminated at Chelsea. To lament his loss, 
Mr. Scott left a widow, one son, and eight 
or nine daughters, all arrived at the age of 
maturity. 

THE DUKE DE RIVIERE. 

The Duke de Riviére, governor of the 
young Duke of Bordeaux, and one of the 
most devoted servants of the Bourbons, was 
the descendant of a noble family of the pro- 
vince of Berri. He was born in the year 
1763; and, in 1780, he entered the army. 
He emigrated with the French princes in 
1789; and, after having served in the army 
of Condé, he became first aid-de-camp to the 
present King of France, then Count d’ Artois, 
by whom he was employed.on various mis- 
sions to the royalists of the west. He en- 
tered France seven times in disguise, to cor- 
respond with the friends of the royal cause ; 
but, unfortunately, in 1804, having been 
sent to Paris, with the generals George and 
Pichegru, he was arrested with those officers, 
tried, and sentenced to death. On his trial 
he evinced the most dignified courage. 
Through the intercession of Buonaparte’s 
wife, Madame Josephine, his life was spared, 
and his punishment was mitigated into an 
imprisonment of four years. 

When Louis XVIII. was restored, Mons. 
de Riviére was appointed a mareschal de 
camp, made a commander of the order of 
St. Louis, and nominated ambassador to the 
Ottoman Porte. He was waiting at Mar- 
seilles for a favourable wind, when Buona- 
parte landed from Elba; and, having ex- 
erted himself to the utmost in raising the 
south of France against the usurper, he 
sailed to Barcelona, and joined the Duke 
.d’Angouleme. 

In July, Monsieur de Riviére returned 
to Marseilles, on board of the British squa- 
dron, as governor of the eighth division, 
and was received with acclamations by the 
inhabitants. On the re-establishment of the 
Bourbons, he, for his services, in prevailing 
on Marshal Brune to relinquish the com- 
mand of the army of the Var, and retire 
from Toulon, to prevent the Austrians and 
English from acting hostilely in Provence, 
was eleyated to the peerage. 

The Duke de Riviére was then sent, as 
governor, to Corsica. That island was in a 
very disturbed state ; but, by a happy com- 
Dination of intrepidity and amenity of man- 
ners, he had the satisfaction of speedily wit- 
Nessing a restoration of tranquillity. His 
object having been accomplished at Cor- 
ica, he proceeded on his mission to Con- 
Stantinople, where he, for a considerable 
time held the office of ambassador. 

After his return to France, the Duke de 
Riviere had the honour of | eing appointed 
governor of the Duke of Bordeaux. He died 
at Paris, in the exercise of that high trust, 
on the 21st of April. It is not a little re- 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


101 


markable, that the Duke de Riviére was the 
third governor of whom the Duke of Bor- 
deaux has been deprived by death. 


ST. GEORGE TUCKER, ESQ. 

Mr. St. George Tucker, who, by way of 
honorary distinction, has been known in the 
United States, for the last thirty-five years, 
as the American Blackstone, died at Nor- 
folk, in Virginia, in March last. In the 
struggle for American independence, he 
employed both his sword and his pen. 
While in the command of one of the revo- 
lutionary regiments, he was severely wounded 
in a charge of infantry: a soldier's bayonet 
was driven through his knee-pan, and, as a 
consequence of the wound, he hada stiff- 
ness in the knee ever after. His brother, 
Thomas Tudor Tucker, Esq., the present 
treasurer of the United States, and the friend 
and favourite of General Washington, has 
often been heard to declare, that Mr. St. 
George Tucker’s poem on Liberty was equal 
to a reinforcement of ten thousand disci- 
plined troops. 

Mr. Tucker was the father-in-law of the 
American patriot and orator, Thomas Ran- 
dolph, Esq.; and uncle of his namesake; 
the East-India director. He has left con- 
siderable American property to his nearest 
relations. 

M. HOFFMANN. 

M. Hoffmann, one of the most distin. 
guished /iterati of France, was born at 
Nanci, in the year 1745. His entire life 
has been devoted to literature. His first 
publication was a volume of poems. He 
next attempted the drama; in which, hav- 
ing written twenty pieces, or more, he has 
been almost invariably successful. His Eu- 
phrosyne, The Young Sage and the Old 
Madman, The Jockey, The Secret, The 
Castle of Montenero, and Stratonice, are re- 
garded as some of the best pieces belonging 
to the comic opera of France. In the year 
1799, his lyric tragedy of Adrian was de- 
nounced, as anti-republican, in the Council 
of Five Hundred, and its representation was 
suspended. 

M. Hoffmann attacked, with great seve- 
rity, The Martyrs of M. de Chateaubriand, 
on account of the injury it might do to 
youth, in placing the mysteries of the 
Christian religion on the same footing with 
the fables of paganism. He has had many 
contests in the journals, where his works 
have been severely criticised and ably de- 
fended. His remarks and criticisms were 
distinguished by ease, taste, and pleasantry, 
Possessing a truly independent spirit, M. 
Hoffmann was considered to be the best 
writer in the French journals. The Journal 
des Débats, in particular, will suffer from 
his loss. He died at Paris, in the month of 
April. j 


Bec ia a [Juxy, 
MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 5 


The previous state of the weather may weil form the leading topic of an Agricultural 
Report, seeing that, therein subsists cur grand dependence for success, in the abundance 
and good quality of our crops. During the last three or four weeks, our meteorologies 
have considerable improved. We have been free from those chilling blasts which suspend 
the circulation of the juices in plants, impede their growth, and induce the blighted, or sickly 
state. The first symptom, of this, is a change of colour from the vivid and healthy green to 
a pale yellow, and a roughness on the surface of the leaves, followed by mucor or mould, 
consisting of the ova or eggs of insects, each species of vegetable having its peculiar blight- 
insect. In the wheat particularly, part of this mwcor becomes a fetid black powder, tech- 
nically known by the name of smué, which is found in lumps or balls amongst the kernels, 
discolouring and rendering them impure and unfit for bread, although they serve to make 
gingerbread and starch. It has been a controverted point, for more than a century, 
whether this disease of smut originate from infection of the seed, or the evil influence of the 
atmosphere, or from both; and rivers of ink have been poured upon mountains of paper, 
in order to lighten the darkness visible of this subject, which, nevertheless, with regard to 
the majority, still clings fast to its pristine obscurity. 

Since the change adverted to, the weather has assumed a far milder character, though 
still a very capricious one; for, in no spring which the writer has witnessed, did he ever 
observe the wind more variable. In fact, it frequentlymight well be described as E. by W. 
and N. by S. There have been some heavy gales, and daily continued showers, which 
last, we hope, will diminish the energies of that periodically micturient saint, the notorious 
Swithin. The general, though moderate warmth of the weather, has prevented any injury 
from the quantity of rain ; indeed, vegetation has been greatly improved and forwarded by 
the warm showers which have falien. The wheats are highly improved, and there is every 
appearance that they now experience a very favourable blooming season, in the phrase of 
the old farmers, half the battle. The peas, preceding the wheats, have blossomed most 
luxuriantly. The showers also must have been of great benefit to the hops, at least to those 
not beyond recovery, in washing off the vermin and giving strength to the bine. As we 
stated last month, the grasses, natural and artificial, including tares, are the most luxuriant 
crops of the present season, of which, moreover, there is at present, great hope of a success- 
ful general average of all crops. Peas, always a risk crop, will prove defective, in parts. 
The showers will force a large bulk of straw, so that the crops of hay and straw are likely to be 
superabundant ; the former, however, will be partially discoloured by the rain, not, we trust, 
to any great extent or injury. , 

It is quite necessary to state that, in our estimation of the wheat crop, considerable 
deduction must be made for those lands and districts, on which the blight had for a con- 
siderable time its full baleful effect. These were chiefly poor, shallow, and wet clays, and 
other cold and naturally unfertile soils. On such, the corn will be generally short in quan- 
tity, and ofa very ordinary sample; and in poppy-/and, and wherever cultivation has been 
defective, matters will be still worse. On such soils, complaint is made that the ear of 
wheat is so weak, as to be unable to eliminate itself from the hose, remaining half out and 
curling or bending downwards. This we have often remarked, and it is the true indication 
of a blighting season. Assuredly, had the evil atmospheric influence continued two or 
three weeks longer, the whole of the crops would have been in the utmost peril; and 
favourable as the change has been, it is probable, next season that a line will be wanted 
for black wheats, in the market lists. 

An immense breadth of mangel wurtzel has been sown; and upon the forward lands, 
that most valuable beet, and the Rutabega, or Swedish turnip, are above ground, and in a 
very healthy and flourishing state, with some exceptions from the presence of the fly. The 
common turnip sowing is nearly finished, and under the happiest auspices of season. Agri- 
culture, like all other human employments and amusements, has its fashions, and in equal 
variety. Winter sown beans and peas, which have been so many years slumbering, have 
of late revived with pristine success, and winter barley will probably follow. The hardy 
Scotch cabbage, such a favourite in the early days of Arthur Young, has been for some 
time making its way again in the North. Melilot, a still more ancient article, is under 
experiment in a few places. It produces a great bulk, and is not difficult in respect of 
soil. The breadth of oats is said to be unusually large, with good promise of a crop, and 
the barley promises well. Potatoe planting has been very successfully finished, though 
late ; as was the case with barley from the difficulties of the season. The present seems.a 
plentiful year for oak bark, the demand somewhat brisk. The various reports on the stock 
in hand, of wheat and barley, as usual, local, and little to be depended on, in a general 
view. : 

Sheep farmers are now busily employed in washing and shearing their flocks, from which 
there will probably be the weightiest clip of wool that has been obtained for many seasons. 
This has arisen mainly from the good and sufficient provision which the sheep have enjoyed 
throughout the winter and early spring. The shows of rams also, among the breeders and 
letters, have been remarkable for the size, fine form, and condition of the animals, and the 
prices have been liberal. In some districts, it is observed that the feeding grounds exuber= 


nt 
; 


1828.] Monthly Agricultural Report. 103 


ant in keep, are understocked ; either from want of money, or wariness in purchasing, from 
former errors. As in last month’s Report, stores of all kinds return a profitable price to the 
breeders, whilst fat meat has declined, though with respect to the London markets, it 
cannot be deemed cheap. But for the great, indeed, unexpected abundance of winter 
provision, the feeders would have been in a sad dilemma. During years past, breeders 
seem to have united in a general determination that milch cows and pigs should bear a 
good price. Even Ireland begins to falter in her supply of pigs. Cart horses we continue 
to import from the opposite Continent in great numbers, at a duty of £1. a head. The 
horse market generally, in its old course; the ordinary sorts in sufficient plenty, good 
ones, wherever found, commanding whatever price may be asked for them. Fruit and 
garden stuff, thus far, in vast plenty, mal/gré the late blasting influence of the N. E. winds, 
and did we need a title of distinction for 1628, we might well style it the CAULIFLOWER 
Year; for never were those flowers in finer bloom, or of more substantial quality. 

Tn looking over two or three late Quarterly Reviews, we observe the critic has opportunely 
introduced the Corn Question, during the abeyance of the bill. Perhaps he is not quite 
so much at home, on this peculiar topic, as upon those of classical and general literature : 
placing a necessary and somewhat implicit dependence on authors who, from various 
motives, strenuously advocate one side of the question. In an enthusiastic attachment 
to agriculture and to its best interests, we will yield to no man or body of men; but we 
cannot carry our natural or early prejudice to the height of an abandonment of the para- 
mount interest of the nation. 

On the vital consequence of the culture of the earth to every people, there can be no 
question ; but in a great and opulent commercial and manufacturing state, where public 
debts and taxes are of such enormous amount, and public credit such an immense and 
fearful stake, the commercial interest must be the great national dependence. Did ever 
any nation upon earth, purely agricultural, arrive at that height of power, of opulence and 
splendour, of superiority in all the arts, and profusion of all the goods and conveniencies 
of life, which distinguish, in so super-eminent a degree, this most prosperous and envied 
of all countries? It is, however, a melancholy truth, which cannot be concealed, that 
excess of prosperity in a state, is too generally accompanied by extreme misery in those 
classes, which have been the laborious operatives-in its creation. The reasonings adopted 
by the Westminster, are by no means definitive or conclusive against the present Corn 
Bill, or against free trade in corn, under fair and equitable regulations ; far less against 
the national or universal right in the case. The decisive arguments on that side, and 
materially one great motive or inducement, seem not to have been within the reviewer’s 
contemplation. He places great stress on the small average quantity of corn imported, as 
not being of any consequential interest to the public, considering the immensity of their 
consumption , overlooking the converse of the proposition. Ample allowance is made to 
the home-grower, in the scale of duties on corn imported. After all which has been said 
on our great powers of production, we have, during along period, been an importing 
country ; and from the regular and unfailing increase of population, it appears probable 
we shall continue in that predicament, by no means an unprofitable one, for a country so 
entirely dependent on commerce. It is not corn alone which we import, but horses, seeds, 
cheese, butter, eggs, poultry, and other common articles of subsistence. In fine, the public 
must be fed—must pay a living price to the producers of their daily bread ; and there is, 
and we trust ever will be, a monied aristocracy in our farmers of good land, able to hold 
up their commodity to that price. The farmers of poor land will certainly not be hurt by 
the bill, which imposes an equal duty upon the lowest, as upon the highest quality of 
imported corn. 

Smithfield.— Beef, 3s. 4d. to 4s. 4d.— Mutton, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 8d.—Veal, 4s. 4d. to 5s. 2d. 

—Pork, 4s. 4d. to 6s. Od.—Raw fat, 2s. 2d. 
Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 46s. to 72s.—Barley, 26s. to 36s.—Oats, 17s. to 30s. 
—Bread, 94d. the 4 Ib. fine loaf. — Hay, 70s. to 105s. — Clover ditto, 80s. to 115s. — 
Straw, 30s. to 38s. ‘ 
Coals in the Pool, 27s. to 38s. per chaldron. 
Middlesex, June 27, 1828. 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 

Sugar.—The transactions in Muscovadoes have been on the most extensive scale this 
week ; and as the holders haye been nearly as anxious to effect sales as the buyers to 
— there has been little variation in the currency. The sales are estimated at 5,200 

gsheads and tierces during the week. ‘To-day the sales of Muscovadoes are on a more 
confined scale than usual, owing to the few good New Sugars left on sale. Refined Sugars 
of every description are very scarce. 

Coffee.—The public sales of Coffee this week have consisted chiefly of British Planta- 
tion descriptions, which have sold freely and at rather high prices. 

_ Rum, Brandy, and Hollands. —The orders for Rum appear extensive ; but the buyers 
expect to purchase on lower terms when the supplies become more abundant. Fine Rums 
are at 2s. 2d. per gallon; Brandy is heavy ; Geneva is in demand. 


104 Monthly Commercial Report.- [Juxy, 

Flax, Hemp, and Tailow.—The Tallow market has been heavy and declining. In, 
Hemp or Flax there is little alteration. 

Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 24.—Rotterdam, 12}.—Antwerp, 
12. 3.—Hamburg, 13. 13}.—Altona, 13. 34.—Paris, 25. 40.— Bordeaux, 26. Di 
Frankfort, 1501.—Petersburgh, 10.—Vienna, 10. 3.—Trieste, 10. 3—Madrid, 36.— 
‘Cadiz, 36.—Bilboa, 353. -- Barcelona, 35.—Seville, 351.—Gibraltar, 46.—Leghorn, 483, 
—Genoa, 25. 35.—Venice, 46.—Naples, 303.—Palermo, 118.—Lisbon, 46}.—Rio 
Janeiro 32—Oporto, 46.—Bahia, 36.—Dublin, 174.—Cork, 17}. 

Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. 0d.—In Bars, £3. 17s. 6d.—New 
Doubloons, £0. 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 9d.—Silver in Bars, standard, £0. Os. Od. 

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Sieck Companies, at the Office of 
WotFeE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill..—Birmingham Cana, 288/,—Coven- 
try, 1,080/.—Ellesmere and Chester, 1074/.—Grand Junction, 315/.—Kennet and Avon, 
291/.—Leeds and Liverpool, 404/.—Oxford, 7¢0/.—Regent’s, 28/.—Trent and Mersey, 
(4 sh.), 820/.—Warwick and Birmingham, 265/.—London Docks (Stock), 88/.—West 
India (Stock), 218/.—East London WaxvEr Works, 120/.—Grand Junction, —/.— 
West Middlesex, 66/.—Alliance British and Foreign Insurance, 94—Globe, 155/.— 
Guardian, 203/.—Hope Life, 51/.—Imperial Fire, 99/.—Gas-Licur Westminster Char- 
yered Company, 55/.—City, 0/.—British, 10 dis.—Leeds, 1957. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 


Announced from the 22d of May to the 23d June of 1828; eatracted from the 
London Gazciie. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


T. Curties, Nunwoith, Norfo!k, tanner 

W. Mogg, Wincanton, Somerset, dealer 

T. Llewellyn, Bridgend, Glamm gan, innkeeper 

J. Carr Overend, and T. C. Druce, Bread-street, 
warehousemen aid factors 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 105.] 
Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 


Abbot, N. Bermondsey, Southwark, cordwainer. 
(Whitely, Tokenhouse-yard 

Aainsworth, T. and P. Cort, Bradshaw, Lanca- 
shire, bleachers. [Milne and Parry, Temple; 
Ainsworth and Co., Manchester 

* Arkell, H. Charlton,Tetbury; corn-dealer. [Maske- 

lyne, Tetbury 


Baines, J. Mark-lane, wine-merchant, [Freeman 
and Co., Goleman-street 
Brookes, T. Cheltenham, builder. [Wyatt, 


Stroud; Evans and (o., Gray’s-inn 

Bell, H. Leeds, victualler. [Robinson, Leeds; 
Strangways and Walker, Barnard’s-inn 

Booth, W. Liverpool, shoe-factor, [Whitehead, 
Liverpool ; Taylor, Clement’s-inn 

Barker, H. New Broad-street-court, wine-mer- 
chant. [Simpson, Austin-friars 

Bird, E. senior, Cardiff, ironmonger. [Clarke 
and Co., Chancery-lane ; Savery, Bristol 

Bird, E. junior, Cardiff, iron-founder. [Clarke 
and Co., Chancery-lane ; Savery, Bristol] 

Brown, J. Bankside, Surrey, wharfinger, [Crow- 
der and Maynard, Lothbury 

Broadhurst, J. Macclestid, elsilk-manufacturer. 
(Lowe, Southampton-buildings; Brocklehurst 
and Co., Macclesfield 

Bailey, T. senior, Luornden, Leicester, miller. 
[Holme and Co,, New-inn; Bond, Leicester 

Barker, J. Shrewsbury, coffee-house-keeper. 

Philpot and Stone, Southampton-street ; 

X<ough, Shrewsbury 

Brightwen, I. and R. Brightwen, and I. Bright- 
wen, junior, Coggeshall, brewers. [Fyson and 
Beck, Lothbury 

Bower, W. late of Wilmslow, Cheshire, now of 
Jersey, cotton-spinner. [Hurd and Johnson, 
Temple; Hadfield and Gracie, Manchester 

Burnett, J, Stroud, innkeeper. [King, Serjeant’s- 
inn ; Newman and Son, Stroud 

Carr, S. Lincoln, corn-factor. [ILambert, John- 
street; Forbes and Co., Sleaford 

Cuff, J. and H. M. Morley, Regent-street, ‘silver- 
smiths. [Mayhew, Chancery-lane 


. | F 
Hunt, H. Brook street, Grosvenor-square,, drug- ; 


Cambridye, A. Bristol, and Prince Edward Island, 
merehant. [Cooke and Sons, Bristol; Clarke 
and Co., Chancery-lane 

Candler, J. Huddersfield, grocer. [Jaques and 
Battye, Coleman-street ; Battye and Hasp, Hud- 
dersticld 

Crucefix, R. T. Bouverie-strect, printer. [Arnot, 
Temple 

Dickinson, J. Chureh-passage, Guildhall, wool- 
len-warchouseman. [Freeman and Co., Cole- 
man-street 

Davies, W. and A. Morris, Crawford-street, 
linen-drapers, [Hardwick and Co., Lawrence- 
lane 

Davies, D. Liverpool, weollen-draper. [¥rod- 
sham, Liverpool; Adlington and Co., Bedford- 
row 

Douglass, J. St. Paul’s Church-yard, silk-manu- 
facturer, [Farden, Great James-street, Bed- 
ford-row 

Day, J. Quadrant, Regent-street, woollen-draper, 
[Lyddon and Bown, Carey-street 

Donaldson, J. Brighton, bockseller. [Wright, 
Little Alie-street 

Dickinson, T. Gouldsbrough, York, blacksmith, 
[Dawson and Hawkins, New Boswell-court ; 
Powell and Son, Knaresborough 

Elliott, W. Goswell road, wine-merchant. [May- 
hew, Chancery-lane 

Elger, J. W. Cambridge, baker. [Randall and — 
Son, Cambridge ; Fuller and Co.,Carlton-cham- 


bers , 
Bnock, J. Bath, grocer, [Fisher, Southampton 
buildings ; 
Foulds, H, Queen-street, Southwark, carpenter. 
(Watts, Dean-street ; 
Fletcher, D. Albemarle-street, woollen-draper. 

[Winter and Co., Bedford-row = 
Fagg, 8. R. St. Andrew’s-bill, Doctor’s Com- 
ee builder. [Stratton and Overton, Shore~ 
dite ; 
Gibbs, J. Crayford, miller. 
street, Cheapside 
Goodwin, J. Sturton, Lincoln, farmer. [Eyre and 
Co., Gray’s-inn ; Empson, Glanford-briggs 
Grey, W. Neweastle-upon-Tyne, ship-broker, 


(Fisher, Queen- 


[Swain and Co,, Frederick’s-place; Pybus, 
Neweastle 


Gordon, J. Manchester, merchant. [Adlington 


and Co., Bedford-row ; Law and Coates, Man- 
chester 


gist. [Hill, Welbeck-street 


1828.] 


Harrison, J. Manchester, manufacturer, 
and Johnson, Temple; Hadfield and 

' Manchester 

Hanslow, W. junior, Abingdon, grocer. [Ford, 
Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s - inn - Fields; 
Frankum, Abingdon 

Hart, W. Union-street, Newington, Surrey, dealer, 
[Matland, Lyon’s-inn 

Holbrook, G. Bristol, plane-maker. [Cary and 
Cross, Bristol; King and Whittaker, Gray’s-inn 

Hyde, J. Uffington, Salop, miller. [Philpot and 
Stene, Southampten-street; Keugh, Shrews- 


Hurd 
rave, 


* bur 
Jive, J. Cheltenham, victualler. [Bubb, Chel- 
tenham ; Blunt and Co., Liverpool 
Jenner, J. and J. W. Soppet, Greek-street, Jinen- 
drapers. [Ashurst, Sambrook-court 
nisi R. Oxford-street, linen-draper. [Jones, Size- 
ane 
Keene, R. Stroud, yictaaller. [Houseman, Wood- 
chester 
Kingsford, S. Thames-Ditton, miller. [Birkett 
and Co., Cloak-lane 
Knibbs, J. Oxford, innkeeper. [Locker, Oxford ; 
Gaines, Caroline-street, Bedford-square 
Kirkpatrick, W. and J. Gadsden, Austin-friars, 
provision-dealers. [Scott, St. Mildred’s-court 
we, W. Burton-upon-Trent, ironmonger. 
Bicknell and Roberts, Lincoln’s-inn ; Drewry, 
urton 
Lewis, G. Clarke’s-place, Islington, straw-hat- 


“ie peabe [Brooksbank and Co., Gray’s- 
nn 
Lauder, W. P. Sloane-street, surgeon. {Palmer, 
Gray’s-inn 
Lee, R. Kingsland-green, bill-broker. [Stratton 
and Overton, Shoreditch 
[1saacs, 


— A. Cutler-street, rag-merchant. 

ansel-street 

Miles, W. Regent-street, upholder. [Williams, 
North-place, Gray’s-inn-road 


Metcalfe, T. T. Leeds, surgeon. [Furbank, 
» Leeds; Stanmer, Coleman-street 
Milligan, J. Woolwich, brewer. [Nokes and 


Colquhoun, Woolwich 

Nightingale, J. Alsop’s-place, New-road, tailor. 
{Jobbing and Chambers, Bedford-street, Co- 
vent-garden 

Nash, T. Ipswich, currier. 
street 

Pearse, G. B. Cateaton-street, auctioneer. [Sa- 
ger, King’s-place, Commercial-road 

Pearne, C. Maidstone, grocer. [Ronalds, King's- 
arms-yard 

Pike, T. Paddington-street, stone-mason. [Hill, 
Welbeck-street 

Parsons, S. Bradford, Wilts, victualler. - [Dax 
and Son, Gray’s-inn; Stone, Bradford 

Robsen, M. Gieen-lane, Dalston, Cumberland, 
common-brewer, [Birkett and Co,, Cloak-lane ; 

* Blow and Ralph, Carlisie 

Robineon, R. S. Nottingham, lace-manufacturer. 

» [Wolston, Purnival’s-inn; Buttery, Nottingham 

Read, J. Mount-street, plumber. [Selby and 
Boulton, St. John-street-ruad 

Richards, W W liam-court, Great Guildford- 

» street, Southwark, iron-founder. [_Meymott and 
Son, Great Surrey-street 

Reid, W.- Ball-alley, Lumbard-street, watch- 

_ maker. [Spyer, Austin-friars 

Rolfe, M. Keutish-town, victualler, [Martineau 
and Malton, Carey-street 

Rose, H. Jerusalem Coffee-house, 

_ {Minehin, Harper-street 


[ Teague, Cannon- 


merchant, 


Bankrupts. 


105 


Rudd, J. Everingham, York, jobber. [Evans 
and Co., Gray’s-inn ; Homes, Pocklington 

Shearman, J. H. Park-street, Mary-le-bone, 
apothecary. [Townshend, Bucklersbury 

Stacy, J. Whitechapel ahd Stepney, currier. 
(Nias, Princes-street, Bank 

Sadler, W. Stockton, mercer. [Perkins and Co., 
Gray’s-inn; Raisbeck and Co., Stockton 

Strafford, G. and Co., Kemp-town, Sussex, builder 
(Bennett, Tokenhouse-yard ; Bennett, Brighton 

Smith, J. L. Worcester, cheese-factor. [Bever- 
ley, Temple; Moore, Ledbury 

Snell, S. Bristol, common-carrier. [Poole and Co., 
Gray’s-inn; Williams, Bristol 

Smith, T.C. St. James’s-street, bookseller. [Mey- 
mott and Co.,Great Surrey-street, Blackiriars 

Stevens, G. Newgate-street, silversmith, [Nor- 
ton, Jewin-street 

Smith, W.H. Cheapside, warehouseman. [Leigh, 
George-street, Mansion-house 

Segar, H Liverpool, factor. [Houghton, Liver- 
pool; Adlington and Co., Bedford-row 

Swindells, J. H. Stockport, bookseller. [Tyler, 
Temple; Lingard and Co., Heaton-Norris 

Salisbury. J. Liverpool, tobacco-manufacturer. 
Williamson, Liverpool; Kearsey, Lothbury 

Spencer, J. Royton, Lancashire, cotton-spinner. 

Battye and Co., Chancery-lane; Higham, 
righouse 

Scriven, T. West Cowes, Isle of Wight, hatter. 
[Hardwick and Guest, Lawrence lane 

Sammons, J. and W. Layton, Swinton, Notts, 

-laee-manufacturers. [Taylor, Featherstone- 
buildings; Payne and Daft, Nottingham 

Trasler, YT. Northampton, shoe-manufacturer. 
[Carter and Gregory, Lord Mayor’s-court 

Turner, W. Bristol, tailor. [Bicknell and Ro- 
berts, Lincoln’s-inn ; Harmar, junior, Bristol 

Taverner, J. Huddersfield, innkeeper. [Thomp- 
son, Stansfield, and Thompson, Halifax; Wig- 
glesworth and Co., Gray’s-inn 

Tillman, J. Bridport, Dorset, butter-factor. 
[Darke, Red-lion-square; Cann, Colyton 

Wharton, W. Manchester, iron-founder. [Milne 
and Parry, Temple; Ainsworth and Co., Man- 
chester 

Williams, J. Llandovery, draper, [Pearson, Tem- 
ple ; Arthnr and Co., Bristol 

Wilkinson, J. Sheffield - park, coal - merchant, 
[ Duncan, Gray’s-inn ; Broomhead, Sheffield 

Watkins, W. Bristol, instrunient-maker. [Vizard 
and Co., Lincoln’s-inn-Fields; Gregory, Bristol 

Wyrill, J. D. Methley, York, dealer. (Jaques and 
Battye, Coleman-street; Archer and Greaves, 
Ossett : 

Wheatley, R. Twycross, Leicester, victualler. 
(Nevill, Tamworth; Nicks and Co., Bartlett’s- 
bvildings 

Whatkins, W. B. Ardwick, near Manchester, 
merchant. [Church, Great James-street ; Pates- 
hall and Bellamy, Hereford 

Veysey, J. Exeter, linen-draper. [Smith, Wal- 
brook 

Viney, J. Bristol, cabinet - maker. 
Bristol; White, Lincoln’s-inn 

Underwood, R. Kidderminster, carpet-manufac- 
turer. Bigg, Southampton-buildings; Hallon, 
Kidderminster 

Underwood, W. Cowley-mills, Cowley, Gloucester. 

Bloxsome, Wells, and Bloxsome, Dursley ; 
hite, Lincoln’s-inn 


[Ambury, 


Woodford, J. Melcombe-Regis, ironmenger. 
fAlepamiax and Son, Careyestreet; Coombs, 
orchester 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


Rey. C, H. Cox, to the Perpetual Curacy of 
Benson, Oxford.—Revy. R. Garney, to the Senior 
Vicarage in Lincoln Cathedval.—Reyv. W. Higgin 
to the Living of Roscrea.—Rey, M. Dale, to the 
Lectureship of St. Sepulchre’s, London —Rey. C. 


* MLM. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 31. 


Paul, to the Perpetual Caracy of Knowle St. 
Giles’s, Somerset. —Rev. E. Cardwell, to the 
Rectory of Stoke Bruern, Northamp‘on.—Rey. 
W. A. Shirley, to the Vicarage of Shirley, Derby. 
—Rey. R. Grant, to the Vicarage of Bradford 


P 


106 


Abbas, with Clifton Maybank annexed, Dorset— 
Rey. E. G. Marsh, to the Vicarage of Sandon, 
Herts.—Rey. T. Brisland, to the Ministry of St. 
Paul’s Chapel, Winchmore-hill, Middlesex.—Rey. 
J. Drake, to be Chaplain to the Bishop of Ro- 
chester.—Rey. G. T. Spencer, to the Rectory of 
Roding Plombea, Essex.—Rey. H. C. Crewe, to 
the Rectories of Stanton-by-bridge and Swarke- 
stone.—Reyv. G. S. Penfold, to the District Rec- 
tory of Trinity, Mary-le-bone.—Rey. W. Garrard, 
to the Church and Parish of Stricathrow, Forfar. 
—Rey. P. Brotherson, to the Church and Parish 
of Alloa, Clackmannan.—Rey. G. Whitefoord, 


Ecclesiastical Preferments, §e. 


[Juxy, 


to the Living of Burgate, Suffolk.—Rev. A. 
Hanbury, to the Vicarage of Bures St. Mary, 
with Bures annexed, Suffulk.—Rey. E, Wy- 
mer, to the Rectory of Westwich, Norfork.— 
Rey. T. Talbot, to the Rectories of Tyvetshall 
St. Margaret, and Tyvetshall St. Mary, Norfolk, 
—Rev. J. Lingard, to the Incumbency of St. 
George, Hulme.—Rey. C. J. Glynn, to be Chap- 
lain to the Duke of Clarence.—Rev, E. Palmer, 
to be Minister of St. John’s Chapel, Deritend, 
Birmiugham—Rey. W. Macdonald, to be Arch- 
deacon of Wilts. 


Sa 


POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS. 


George Earl of Aberdeen, to be Secretary of 
State for Foreign A ffairs.—Lieut.-General Sir G. 
Murray, to be Secretary of State for the Colonial 
Department.—Viscount Lowther, to be First Com- 
missioner of the Woods and Forests and Land 
Revyenue.—Sir Henry Hardinge, to be Secretary 
at War.—Horace Twiss, esq., to be Under Secre- 
tary of Sate for the Colonial Department.—G. 
Banks, esq., Secretary to the Board of Control.— 
C. Arbuthnot, esq., to be Chancellor of the Duchy 
of Lancaster.—W. F. V. Fitzgerald, esq., to be 
Treasurer of the Navy, and President of the 


Board of Trade; and T. P. Courtenay, esq., Vice- 
President.—J. Calcraft, esq., to be Paymaster- 
General of the Forces.—J. W. Croker, and J. 
Caleraft, esqrs., to be Members of. the Privy 
Council.—Viscount Melville, Right Hon. R. Peel, 
Earl of Aberdeen, Right Hon. Sir G. Murray, 
Duke of Wellington, Right Hon. H. Goulburn, 
Lord Wallace, Right Hon. J. Sullivan, Lord Ash- 
ley, Marquis of Graham, Lawrence Peel, esq., 
and Right Hon. T. P. Courtenay, to be Commis- 
sioners for the Affairs of India. 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


CHRONOLOGY. 

- May 19.—The Right Hon. H. Goulburn, Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, in the Chancery Court, 
publicly made and subscribed to the declaration, 
that he would not exert an influence he might 
possess by virtue of his office, to the injury of the 
Protestant Church as by law established, agree- 
ably to the new act for Repealing the Test and 
Corporation Acts. 

24.--A Meeting of the British Reformation So- 
ciety, held at the Freemasons’-tayern, when Lord 
Mountcashel reported that “ that the converts of 
jast year, in Ireland, exceeded 10,000 1” 
-'26.—The Thames Tunnel again opened for pub- 
lic inspection and further proceeding. 

— A Pension of £3,000 per annum, voted by the 
Legislature to the late Mr. Canning’s son. 

98.—The Anniversary Meeting of the Pitt Club 
took place at the London-tayern, attended by 
about 300 persons. 

29,—The foundation stone of the Licensed Vic- 
tuallers’ Asylum, laid with masonic honours by 
the Duke of Sussex, in the Old Kent Road. 

— Sessions commenced at the Old Bailey. 

31.—A verdict given at the Sheriffs’-court 
against the Rev. Rawling Mollock, clerk of Tor, 
Devon, for crim. con. with the wife of Major Lin- 
dam, to the amount of £5,000 damages. 

June 2.—The Anniversary Meeting of the So- 
ciety of Arts, held at the King’s Theatre, for the 
purpose of distributing the rewards for 96 prizes, 
among which was one to Lord Newborough, for 
planting 3,700,000 forest trees; and one to Mr, 
Tower, for a shawl, gathered in the raw material, 
spun and wovein England, so that it is altogether 


of native manufacture, from the hair of four 
Cashmere goats, imported into this eountry some 
time since; it isa great beauty, and is to be pre- 
sented to the king. ' . 

— A farmer (Mr. Rolle) residing at Hilling- 
don, near Uxbridge, recovered from the hundred 
of Elthorpe, Middlesex, £200, for damage done 
by some unknown villains setting fire to his wheat 
ricks in November last, whist the family were at 
ehureh, 

4,—Sessions ended at the Old Bailey, when 15 
prisoners were condemned to death, 100 tran- 
sported, and several others imprisoned for various 
periods, ; 

5.—The Anniversary Meeting of the London 

Mechanics’ Society was held at the Freemasons’- 
tavern, when two prizes of £10 each, and asil- 
ver medal, were presented to the successful can- 
didates. 
’ — The Anniversary meeting of the Charity 
Children of the Metropolis, held at St. Panl’s, 
when upwards of 7,000 attended—more than £400 
collected at the door. ; 

-~ The British Catholic Association met at the 
Freemasons’-tayvern, the Duke of Norfolk in the 
chair, when the secretary read the report, the 
purport of which was to congratulate the Dis- 
senters on the Repeal of the Test and Corporation 
Acts, and to rescue the Catholic body from the 
charge of indifference, and to re-assert their un- 
shaken loyalty and patriotism, f 

6, A Meeting of the Shareholders of the Water- 
loo Bridge Company, was held at the Crown and 
Anchor-tayern, when it appeared fromthe balance 


sheet, that the payments within the last half year 


a ee ene as ee 


> 


1828.] 


had been within a, few pounds of the receipts, so 
that nothing remained to be divided; and that 
the whole payments since the bridge commenced 
amounted to £),059,821. 7s. 9d. 

9 —A motion was made in the House of Lords, 
“That it is expedient to take the laws affecting 
His Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects into con- 
sideration, with a view to such a final and conci- 
liatory adjustment, as may conduce to the peace 
and strength of the United Kingdom, to the sta- 
bility of the Established Church, and to the con- 
cord and welfare of all classes of His Majesty’s 
subjects.’’ After alengthened debate, it was ad- 
journed to next day, and lost by a majority of 45 
—contents being 137, non-contents 182. 


12.—A Deputation of the West India Mer- 
chants, headed by Lord Seaford, chairman of the 
committee, held a long conference with the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, at the Treasury, on the 
state of their affairs. 


14.—The 109th Anniversary of the Westminster 
Hospital, held at Willis’s Rooms, the Duke of 
Northumberland in the chair. It was announced 
‘that upwards of 200,000 poor persons had been 
restored to health by means of this institution. 

18.—The Battle of Waterloo celebrated by 
‘H.R.H. the Lord Admiral, in a grand acquatic 
breakfast and splendid regatta on the Thames, 


— The celebration of the Repeal of the Test 
Act, at Freemasons’-hall, the Duke of Sussex in 
the chair; it was attended by 400 friends of reli- 
gious liberty from all parts of the kingdom. 


19.—A Petition presented to Parliament, pray- 
ing the Jews to be admitted to civil rights, the 
same as Protestant dissenters. 

21.—A numerous meeting assembled at the 
Freemasons’-tavern, for establishing a college for 
the education of the youth of the metropolis, as 
ineuleated by the United Church of England and 
Treiand, the Duke of Wellington in the chair, 
owhen a collection of nearly £20,000 was made. 


MARRIAGES. 

At St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the Right Rey, 
Bishop of Jamaica to Miss M. H. Page.—At Horn- 
‘sey, Count Alexander Charles Joseph Vander 

urch, ebamberlain to the King of the Nether- 
lands, to Miss Elizabeth Cooper.—R. W. Bulkley, 
esq.,to Miss C. M. Hughes.—At Streatham, J. 
Goding, esq., to Lady Jane Coventry.—Captain 
Short (Coldstream Guards) to Miss E. S. M. Bar- 

well.—B. Granville, esq., to Miss M. S, Onslow, 
grand-daughter of the late Admiral Sir R. On- 
low, bart.—At St. George’s, Hanover-square, 
the Hon, E.S. Jerningham, second son of Lord 
Stafford, to Miss Smythe, niece of Mrs. Fitzher- 
rt; J. W. Bowden, esq., to Elizabeth, daughter 
Sir J. E, Swinburne, bart.; Hon. H, Walker, 

” dest son of Viscount Ashbrook, to Frances, 
on jet of the Rey. Sir T. Robinson, bart. ; 
aptain Hallowell, eldest son of Vice-Admiral Sir 
Hallowell, to Mary, daughter of Sir Murray 
axwell.—At Mary-le-bone, W. Marshall, esq., 

pd to Georgiana Christiana, daughter of G. 
P Tt, esq., Portland-place.—E. Curray, esq., 

to Louisa Lawrence, daughter of Sir J. Scarlett, 
M.P.—Frederick Deyon,esq., to Miss Ann Thynne, 

second daughter of G.F. Thynne, esq., of Poet's 
Corner, Westminster, ; 


- 
a 


Incidents, Marriages, &c. 


107 


DEATHS. - 

In Hertford-street, May-fair, the Rey. Lord 
Henry Fitzroy, brother to the Duke of Grafton, 
and one of the prebends of Westminster Abbey— 
Countess Rice, lady of the Rey. Count Rice, and 
grand-daughter of the late Count Zinzendorff.— 
At Chertsey, the wife of R. Clark, esq., chamber- 
lain of London.—The Countess Mary Justina, 
lady of Count Reuss.—In King’s-road, 78, Lady 
Mary, widow of Sir W. More, bart.—In Belgrave- 
street, Lord Forrester.—The infant daughter of 
Lord Loughborough.—In Brook-street, Grosve- 
nnr-square, at an advanced age, the Hon. Anne 
Seymour Damer.—Warner Phipps, esq., secre- 
tary to the Albion Insurance-—Admiral Sir Wil- 
lian Domett.—Matilda, wife of T. Campbell. esq., 
the poet.—Mr. T. Lane, an artist of talent; he 
fell through a skylight (at the Horse Bazaar, 
Gray’s-inn-lane) and was killed on the spot.—At 
Tunbridge-wells, Lord H. S. Churchill, third son 
of the Duke of Marlborongh.—Horatio Paget, 
third son of Rear-Admiral Sir C. Paget.—In the 
Fleet. 82, Mr. J. Amos ; he had been confined ten 
years for contempt of the Court of Chancery !— Miss 


~ Grant, eldest sister of the Right Hon. C. Grant.— 


In Goodman’s-fields, 75, Dr. Raphael Meldola, 
the learned and highly-respected Rabbi, High 
Priest of the Southern (Oriental, Spanisk, &c.) 
Jews.—At Kensington, Viscountess Nevill, relict 


“of Ralph Viscount Nevill, R.N.—83, the Rey W. 


Coxe, archdeacon of Berks.—In Park-street, 87, 
the Hon. Anne Robinson, sister of the late Lord 
Grantham.—In Somerset-street. the Dowager 


~ Lady Dunsany.—At Sydenham,68, J. P. Welsford, 


secretary to the Patriotic and Waterloo Funds.— 
At Windsor, Lord Mountsandford, accidentally 


- killed in an affray at that town.—At Kirklington- 


park, 83, Sir Henry Watkin Dashwood, bart.— 
Elizabeth Cockburn, wife of the dean of York, 
and daughter of Sir Robert Peel, bart.—86, Mr. 
P. Jackson, who was in the orchestra of Drury 
Lane Theatre in the early days of Garrick; his 
widow, born 1739, remains (Oxford) to lament his 
loss.—At Islington, 101, Elizabeth Coldthorp.— 
82, the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort.—C. Pratt, 
esq. ; he was thrown out of a phaeton in return. 
ing with sume friends from a fight between Bald- 
win and Neal; he only attained his majority on 
May 23, when he entered in possession of nearly 
£250,000 property ! 
MARRIAGES ABROAD. 

At Paris, Visconnt de Cussy to Miss Barbara 
Clara Middleton.—At the British Ambassador’s, 
at Paris, T. Nolan, esq., to Miss Juliana Blount. 
—At Paris, Chevalier Brant, late secretary of 
legation in London from the Emperor of the 
Brazils, to Augusta Elizabeth, daughter. of the 
Chevalier Kieckhoeffer, consul-general of the 
Brazils, in that city, 

DEATHS ABROAD. 

At Toulouse, Sir William Congreve, late head 
of the laboratory department, Woolwich. —At 
Rome, the Dowager Lady ‘Turner.—At Florence, 
the Russian Prince Nicholas. Demidow, whose 
immense fortune has su frequently furnished mat- 
ter of speculation; he is said at one time himself 
to have estimated his income at £1 per minute.— 
At Dresden, 68, Charles Marquis of Northampton. 

P2 


108 
—At Paris, the Marquis of Lauriston, marshall 


and peer of France.—At Trinidad, the Rey. Dr. 
Buckley, Roman Catholic Bishop of Gerren, Vicar 


Incidents, Marriages, he. ‘ 


Apostolic of the British, Danish, and Dutch West 
India islands and colonies.—At Florence, John 
Toke, esq., of Lincoln’s-inn, : 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES; 
WITH THE MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 


The Newcastle Exhibition of Paintings was 
opened June 1], at the new building ; the number 
of paintings is much greater than in any former 
display at that town, and, from the general view 
of them, the splendour and ability of the collection 
has never been equalled there. 

On the 29th of May, the custom of the cho- 
risters singing anthems from the summit of the 
principal tower in the cathedral was revived. 
The custom first arose from the monks having 
sung Te Deum from that elevated situation, as 
soon as victory was declared at the battle of 
Neyile’s Cross, in 1346. It was subsequently con- 
tinued in honour of the Restoration, but of late 
years had been disused. 

It has been estimated, by geological writers 
and coal viewers, that, at the present rate of con- 
sumption, the seam of coal now worked in Nor- 
thumberland and Durham coal-field, will not be 
expended, at the lowest calculation, within 500 
years. 

On the 24th of May, Mr. Fenwick, of Brink- 
heugh, near Weldon-bridge, nine or ten miles from 
Morpeth, deliberately shot bis son, a young man 
about 22 or 23 years of age, and immediately fled. 
The young man died shortly afterwards. We 
hear that Mr. Fenwicke has been taken. 

On the lst of June, the Ardincaple steam-ves~ 
sel, arrived at Newcastle from Edinburgh in 
twelve hours and a half, an instance of wonderful 
expedition. 

As the dredging machine, which is used by the 
Commissioners of the River Wear for cleansing 
the river, was at work near the bridge, Durham, 
on the 7th of June, it brought up the body of a 
sailor boy without a head. The body has been 
recognized as that of a boy who fell from out 
ofa boat, and was drowned, about four months 
since. He was one of the crew of a vessel be- 
longing to Little Hampton. His body was injured 
in several places, supposed to be by the keelmens’ 
sets, used in working their keels, 

Married.] At Durbam, Mr. Jackson to Miss 
Anderson; R. Palmer, esq., to Miss Blackett; 
Mr. R. Pearson to Miss J. Thompson,.—At New- 
castle, W. Bell, esq., to Miss Mary Whilhelmina 
Morrison; R. A. Purvis, esq., to Miss Atkinson. 
At Wilton, Mr. S. Garbutt to Miss Scarth. 

Died.) At Durham, Miss Heslop; 72, C. 
Herbert.—At Glanton, Westfield, Miss Winifred 
Frankland.— At Bishopwearmouth, W. Ferguson, 
esq.—At Sunderland, Mrs. Ann Hunter.—At New- 
castle, Mrs. Huntley.—At Houghton-le-Spring, 
the Rey. D. Crossthwaite.—At Eden, Mrs. Mark- 
ham. 

YORKSHIRE. 

On Saturday, the 24th of May, between three 
and four o’clock in the afternoon, a whirlwind 
passed for a considerable way up thecourse of the 
yiver wharf, to the northward of Bolton-abbey 


and in tite immediate vicinity of Bolton-park. Ta 
its progress, some trees were torn up by the roots, 
and huge branches were wrenched from others, 
and whirled in the ait like so many feathers, te 
an incredible distance. The waving of the tem- 
pest, and the crashing of the trees, were inde- 
scribably awful. ; 

A project is on foot for erecting a new theatre 
in Leeds, by subscription. 

In the first week or ten days in June, abont 
60,000 mackarel were brought into the port o 
Hull for sale. : 

Anti-slavery petitions have been sent to Parlia- 
ment from York, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, 
Sheftield, Whitby, Great Driffield, and other places 
in this county. 

A branch of the Yorkshire Horticultural So- 
ciety has been established at Wakefield. 

There is now living at Sund, in the East Riding 
of Yorkshire, a female, named Witty, 95 years of 
age, who recently spun halfa pound of line in one 
day ; and her activity is such, that she frequentiy 
walks about the neighbourhood withont a stick, 

A grocer at Sheffield has a steam-engine, of 
half-horse power, for the purpose of roasting and 
grinding coffee. M 

Ata public meeting of the inhabitants of Hedon, 
held on Thursday week, it was resolved to re-. 
strict their representatives to oppose any measure. 
tending to interfere with private credit and local 
measures. 

Six individuals,.on.the- 13th.of June, performed’ 
a voyage from Doncaster to Hull, in a pleasure 
boat of the following dimensions :—from head to- 
stern, 13 feet 3 inches ; width, 5 feet Zinches. If 
was propelled by two paddle wheels, similar in 
construction to those of a steam-boat, connect:d 
with each other by a crank, which may be turned 
by one or two hands. : 

May 30, the Annual General Meeting of the 
Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society took 
place, and we are gratified to find by the Report 
that itis in a flourishing state. It was ordered, 
that clerks or apprentices, under 21, be admitted 
to the meetings and lectures, on payment of two 
guineas annually, without entrance. 

The form of the building erecting for a museum 
at Scarborough is that of a rotunda, after a Gre- 
cian model, designed by Mr. Sharpe, of York. 
The stone is of a quality unrivalled in this king- 
dom for beauty, and exceeded only by marble. It 
is the same as that of the new church at Scar- 
borough, and the York Museum, being obtained 
from the quarry at Hackness. The situation is 
delightful, and commands a view of the sea, the 
harbour, the bridge, Oliver’s Mount, and’ the Hull 
road. , 

It was ascertained by the accounts produced by 
the Secretary of the Leeds Shyrack and Morley 


Savings’ Bank, at the Twentieth Half-Yearly 


[Juy, 


he En 


‘ 


1828.] 


Meeting, that since the commencement of its 
institution, 5,549 persons have paid into the 
bank the sum of £225,826. 3s. Zd., and have, as 
their occasions required, withdrawn the sum of 
3€123,079. 18s. 10d. The interest money with- 
drawn bears a very small proprortion to the 
interest accumulated, and, including such 
accumulation, there remains the sum of 
127,197. 1Ys. 9d. at the disposal of the 
present depositors, being an increase of 
£8,121, 12s. 7d. since last October. 

An Exhibition of Pictures and Sculpture, the 
works of living artists, has opened at Leeds, at 
the ‘‘ Northern Society’s’’ Gallery. The exer- 
tions of the committee, to provide a suitable dis- 
play of the productions of the fine arts, on the 
presert occasion, have been cordially seconded by 
the profession. The Exhibition consists of 522 
works of art: a greater number by nearly 100, 
than ever the Society were able to present to the 
public previously ; surpassing, as well in propor- 
tion as in the degree of excellence, those of former 
years, 

On Whit-Monday, the annual meeting and pro- 
cession of the teachers and scholars of the Leeds 
Sunday School Union took place, when between 
4 and 5,000 children were present. By the re- 
port, it appears that there are 62 schools, 1,812 
teachers, and 7,990 children in this Union; the 
increase during last year amounted to 11 schools, 
198 teachers, and 1,043 scholars. 

June 11.—The foundation of a new church was 
laid at.Lindley (Huddersfield) ; the ceremony was 
attended by twenty-three clergymen, and more 
than 5,000 spectators. 

Married.) At Hull, the Rev. W. Huntington 
to Miss Lambert; Mr. Crabtree to Mrs, Ann Har- 
rison, a buxom widow of 19, who had been twice 
married before.—At Knaresborough, the Rev. H. 
Milton to Miss Ann Hutchinson.—At Doncaster, 
the Rey. R. Hutchinsonto Miss Marsh.—At York, 
the Rey. T. Dayrell to Miss Maria Hawksworth. 
—At Richmond, G. L. Ridley, esq., to Miss Ann 
Thompson. 

Died.) At Halifax, J. Walter, esq—aAt Whit 
by, 90, Sarah Shepherd.—At Richmond, W. Close, 

.—At Searborough, R. Williamson, esq.—At 
Wilsden, 96, J. Piehiles; he has left 309 descen- 
dants, exclusive of 101 deceased. He was fol- 
lowed to the grave by 135 of his deseendants.— 
At Shepley, 104, Hannah Holmes. 


LINCOLNSHIRE. 

At ‘length, after boring 500 feet for water, a 
spring is evidently existing, the water of which, 
since the discovery, has actually risen above 300 
feet in the orifice. It indeed is probable that the 
water found does not flow from a main spring; 
but it is evident that one must exist in the adja- 
cent earth, and by boring a few feet farther, that 
will most likely be met with, 


NOTTINGHAM AND DERBY. 

_ Died.) At t > . '° 
Beet fr eee’ 72 AT ens dennt 
LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE. 

_ The gross receipts at the Ladies’ Bazaar, at 
Manchester, for the benefit of the National and 
Lancastrian Schools, amounted to £488. 178.; 
nearly 2,000 persons visited it, paying admission. 

The whole of the Soho Foundery, at Ancoats, 
Manchester, was destroyed by fre May 15; hun- 
dreds of hands have by this dreadful accident 


Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottingham, Derby, &c. 


109 


been thrown out of employment. It is estimated 
that the loss amounts to a great sum, and that the 
whole of the property belonged to Messrs. Peel 
and Williams. 

There has been of late a considerable ferment 
amongst the owners and occupiers of land in 
Wigan, in consequence of a demand having been 
made upon them by the rector, for tithe of hay, 
which has never been. paid in that parish in the 
memory of man; in consequence of which a meet- 
ing was held, Earl Balearras presided ; when it 
appeared, from a variety of ancient documents, 
that the tithe now demanded, had not been paid or 
heard of for several hundred years!!! After a 
long discussion a committee was appointed, and a 
subscription entered into, to defend any suits 
that the rector might institute against any of the 
parishioners, until the question be finally settled, 
If the rector should succeed in his claim, it is 
said, he will add about £1,500 a year to his in- 
come!!! 

In most of the dissenting chapels: at Liverpoul, 
the ministers have returned public thanks to God 
for the national mercy received in the Repeal of 
the Corporation and Test Acts. . 

No less than 153,156 spindles are now unem- 
ployed in the fown of Macclesfield. 


SALOP AND STAFFORD. 

The Right Hon. Charles Earl Talbot is ap- 
pointed Custos Rotulorum of the county of 
Stafford, in the room of the Marquis Stafford re- 
signed, 

Married.) Sir Henry Edwardes, bart., of 
Meole, to Miss Hope, daughter of J. ‘I’. Hope, 
esq., of Netley-hall. 

LEICESTER AND RUTLAND. 

There are three places of worship for Dis- 
senters now building in Loughborough, viz. the 
Independents, Methodists, and Baptists. June 7, 
the first stone of the new chapel for the General 
Baptists was laid; it will be the largest General 
Baptist chapel in England. 

Died.) At Husband’s Bosworth, 90, the Rey. 
J. Pinnock, rector of that parish, and vicar of 
Notton, Warwickshire. 


WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. 

May 29, at the High Bailiff's sumptuous din- 
ner at Birmingham, notice was taken of the re- 
cent failure of representation for that town, 
‘* which,” said Mr. Smith, foreman of the court- 
leet jury, “ is one of the most important manufac. 
turing stations in the world; a district containing 
half a million of inhabitants, employed in work- 
ing up the native produce of the country; and 
yet this is the population which the minister of 
the day, although inthe lap of commerce, thought 
right to neglect!” It was remarked that the 
rental of Birmingham is £300,000 ! its local rates, 
£55,000; its estimated capital, £10,000,000; and 
its advance to ‘intellectual weight” may be esti- 
mated from the fact, that about “ fifteen thousand 
ebildren” are constantly in progress of education ; 
and yet this grand emporium, “ with all its ap- 
pliances and means tv boot,” has no representa- 
tive, no special guardian in Parliament!!! 

By the report of the committee of the Birming- 


ham Eye Infirmary, made May 28, it appears 


that, since its establishment (only four years) 
7,000 individuals have experienced its benefits; 


110 


and that tlie small sum of £140 has, during tlie 
last year, been the means of preventing or curing 
blindness in 1,868 fellow beings!!! 

The silk trade of Coventry has slightly re- 
covered from its languor; ‘but the inhabitants 
appear confident that their former protecting du- 
ties must be revived before the depression is en- 
tirely removed. The Birmingham trade is suffer- 
ing under great stagnation. 

At a public meeting of the Protestant Dissenters, 
held at Northampton, May 23, it was resolved 
that “the Repeal of the Corporation and Test 
Acts was a measure most auspicious to civil and 
religious liberty, and that one of the most sacred 
institutions of religion has thus been rescued from 
a most gross and detestable profanation ; and that 
we pledge ourselves to conlinue all our exertions 
and influence to assist all our fellow subjects in 
obtaining a full and general repeal of all civil 
disabilities imposed on account of religious opi= 
nions,”’ 

Murried.| Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Wil- 
liams to Mary Anne, eldest daughter of Robert 


Harvey Mallory, esq., of Woodcote, near War- 
wick. 


Died.] G. Yates, esq., of Bordesley. 


WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 

The number of children belonging to the Sun- 
day schools at Worcester and neighbourhood, as- 
sembled on Whit-Monday, amounted to nearly 
2,800. 

A Common Hall was held at Worcester, for the 
purpose of petitioning Parliament, to alter the 
Jaws which allow the importation of French 
gloves. It appears that from July 5, 1826, up to 
May 30, 1828, no less than 2,168,928 pairs of 
French gloves have been imported into the port 
of London only! What an offering to recipro- 
city! particularly when itis compared with the 
afflicting fact, that the trade was never so de- 
pressed at Worcester as at this moment, where 
40,000 persons used to be employed in it, and who, 
as wellas all classes in the neighbourhood, are 
now feeling its fatal effects!!! 


Died.) At Worcester, 62,T. St. John, esq. 


GLOUCESTER AND MONMOUTH. 

The first show of the Gloucester Horticultural 
Society took place on May 23, and held out the 
most flattering prospects to those who have so 
meritoriously exerted themselves in promoting the 
undertaking ; this splendid show amounted to no 
less than 900 beautiful specimens. Much admi- 
ratiod was bestowed on the “ cactus speciosis- 
sima,” the “ musa paradisianea,” the “ phoenix 
ductifiera,” and the “ ficus elastica,’’ by all the 
beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood. 

The centre of the new bridge, at Over, having 
been struck, the fine proportion of the arch of this 
magnificent structure is fully open to public in- 
spection, and, notwithstanding the immense mass 
of stone embodied in it, amounting at present to 
not less than 4,000 tons, its elegance and light- 
ness are extremely striking. It is not only the 
widest span of any stone arch hitherto completed 
in the kingdom, buf with respect to its form it is 
perfectly unique, as, we believe, there is not anuo- 
ther in the world erected upon the same principle, 
The building is carried on with great expedition, 
as are also the approaches on both sides, and 


Provincial Occurrences: Warnick, Northampton, §c. 


[J ULY, 


there islittle doubt that the whole will open to 
the public by Christmas next. 

Married.] At Stroud, the Rev. W. A. Cave to 
Miss Eliza Wathen. : 


Died.| At Cheltenham, Miss Elizabeth Toby, 
mistress of the Alstone Infant and Sunday Schools. 
—At Painswick, Mrs. C. Townshend. 

DEVON AND SOMERSET. 

A numerous and highly respectable mecting of 
Protestant Dissenters took place at Exeter, May 
27, relative to the Test Act, &c., when several 
resolutions were unanimously agreed to, expres- 
sive of their satisfaction at the repeal of those 
acts, being fully persuaded that the exercise Of pri- 


‘vate judgment on all subjects connected with re- 


ligion, unfettered by the influence of any civil or 
ecclesiastical authority, is the unalienable right 
of every human being, they therefore resolyed,— 
“ That this meeting cherishes the hope that the 
legislature willin its wisdom shortly erase from 
the Statute Book every act which militates against 
the civil rights of the subject on account of his 
religion !!! 

Died] At Wrington, 80, Rev. W. Leeves, 50 
years rector of that parish ; said to be the author 
of the plaintive ballad, * Auld Robin Gray.”—At 
Bath, 91, Mrs, Ricketts, mother of the Viscount 
St. Vincent, and Countess of Northesk. 


NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 

The Norwich petition to the legislature against 
colonial slavery, has been signed by upwards of 
10,000 perfons, and is more than 150 feet in 
length! 

Married.] At Norwich, R. A. Bowers, esq., 


to Miss C. A. Sherman.—J. H.Stanway, esq., to 
Miss Sims. 


Died.] At Reepham, 100, Sarah Simmons.— 
Sir George Berney Brograve, bart,, of Worstead- 
house, the last male descendant of the ancient 
house of Brograye. 

CAMBRIDGE AND HUNTINGDON. 

The dispute relative to stocking the commons 
at Godmanchester ,still continues, as well as the 
barbarous mode of beating the poor animals with 
bludgeons. Great numbers of persons lately as- 
sembled, and became so infuriated and riotous, 
that the riot act was resorted to, and the mob at 
length dispersed. 

Died.] At Stukely, J. Torkington, esq., lately 
deputy recorder of Stamford.—At Huntingdon, 
H. Race, esq.; his death was occasioned by drink- 
ing cold water, when heated by playing at fives. 

HANTS AND SUSSEX. 


Married.| At Millbrooks, B. Langa, esq., to 
Eleanor Judith, eldest daughter of Sir J. P. Mil- 
banke, bart.—At Lavington, S. Wilberforce, esq., 
third son of W. Wilberforce, esq., to Miss Emily 
Sergent. ' 


Died.| At Portsea, 80, the Rey. J. Harrison. 


WALES. ; 7 
One of the most awful occurrences, that it has — 

fallen to our lot to record for some weeks, took 
place on Tuesday afternoon, at one of the pits of 
the Dee Green colliery, near flint, belonging to 
Thomas Eyton, esq. ‘The circumstances attend- 
ing this dreadful accident, asfar as we have been 
able to collect them, are as follows:—The fire- — 
damp had collected ina part of the pit unobserved = 


-by the workmen, .and a boy ineautiously taking’a 


lighted candle towards the spot, it instantly ig-- 


1828. 


nited, and a tremendous explosion followed.— 
There were at the time upwards of thirty indi- 
viduals (men and boys) in the mine, and out of 
this number, nine were killed on the spot, and 
eleven others dreadfully wounded ; most of these 
had their limbs broken, and were so shockingly 
scorched, that it is feared some of them will not 
survive. The explosion was so loud, that it was 
heard at a great distance, and so powerful, that 
it blew up the machine which covered the mouth 
-of the pit. Weare sorry to relate, that some of 
the unfortunate men have left large families to 
deplore their fate, and who, by this accident, are 
not only bereaved of their husbands and fathers, 
but of their only support. The men who fortu- 
nately escaped were only preserved by being in 
another part of the pit where there was an air 
pipe. The afflicted wife of one of the poor men 
who was killed (and also her son) had given birth 
to an infant only a day or two before. 

The effect of an earthquake was severely felt 
about ten at night of June 2, at Ishmael, about 
three miles from Milford; it continued twenty 
minutes, with a rumbling noise like distant thun- 
der, <A solid body of grey rock was entirely rent 
asunder, and separated into a thousand pieces, 
throwing large masses of it to a great distance; 
the adjacent rocks, and part of a hill, on which 

' there was a thriving plantation of timber over- 
hanging, were separated from the main land by 
this dreadful convulsion. 

Married.| W. Crawshay, jun., esq., of Cy- 
fartha-castle, Glamorgan, to Isabella, eldest 
daughter of T. Johnson, esq., Penmyarth, Bre- 
con.—At Llantrynach, near Brecon, W. H. West, 
esq., to Miss F. Clifton—At Llangunnon, W. 
Bonville, esq., to Miss E. Johnes.—W. Richards, 
ons of Kinnerton-lodge, Flint, to Miss P. G. Rus- 
sell. 


Died.) W. W. Jones, esq., of Gurrey, near 
Liandilo.—At Haverfordwest, Mrs. Colonel Phi- 
lips, of Williamston, grand-daughter of Dr. Ewer, 
bishop of St. Asaph. 


— SCOTLAND. 


On Thursday night, May 15, betwixt 11 and 
12 o’clock, the Clydesdale steam-packét took fire 
when crossing the channel from Glasgow for Bel- 
fast, about an hour and a half's sailing from 
Corsewall Point, on discovering which the master 
determined to run the vessel for the Light-house, 
where they arrived, and landed the whole of the 
passengers in safety, about 60, The fire was dis- 
covered aft the funnel, and, notwithstanding 
every exertion was made with the fire-pipe and 
boat’s buckets, it increased, and made rapid pro- 
gress towards the stern, which rendered the 
steersman’s situation very precarious ; he, how- 
ever, was true to his charge, and, notwithstanding 
bis dangerous situation, was most attentive to the 
master’s orders, who took his station at the bows 
ofthe boat, and directed the steersman how to 
Buide the vessel. A considerable time before the 
“packet reached the shore, the engineer and fire- 
men were driven from the engine-house by the 
violence of the fire, the engine was left by them 
plying, and fortunately it continued to ply till the 
‘vessel reached the shore. 

_ A gentleman in Liverpool has recently address- 
ed a letter to bis friend in the stewartry of Kirk- 
eudbright, on a subject which he deems of ‘vital 


Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 


lll 


importance to the inhabitants of Galloway. He 
incloses the last year’s importation of live stock, 
young and old, brought into the port of Liverpool, 
by steam, from Ireland (38,052 oxen, cows, and 
caves ; 132,531 sheep, and 138,574 pigs) the greater 
part of which were in condition for the butcher. 
“ These,” adds he, “are sold at our Smithfield 
every Monday; and the concourse of butchers 
from every part of the north and middle districts 
of England is immense. The cattie are sold by 
brokers for ready money; and the Irish droyer 
returns to Ireland in two or three days after his 
sale. Compare this with your wretched and 
ruinous system of droving; and advertise for 
steam-boats, and send your best cattle by them 
to Liverpool; one from Kirkcudbright every Fri- 
day, would arrive here on Saturday or Sunday; 
the cattle might be sold on Monday, and the seller 


might attend Dumfries market the Wednesday 


following with gold or bank bills in his pocket. 
This is no wild scheme—it may be made to work 
as soon as you have either cattle or sheep to send 
here in good condition. You have the best breed 
of cattle in the world, and you send them farther 
for a market than any other people do.” 

An earthquake was felt on the afternoon of the 
20th of May, at Wanlockhead (Dumfrieshire) ; it 
was heard and felt by the miners that were at 
work in the bowels ofthe earth. Several of them 
ran for their life, conceiving that the “ drift” had 
“rushed.” and that they had every chance of be- 
ing entombed alive. The account they gave of it 
was, that it much resembled the noise caused 
when a quantity-of stones or gravel is thrown 
downa “sump.’’ The sounds were twice repeat- 
ed, after an interval of five minutes. In the vis 
cinity of Dumfries similar motions were felt, 
which made the stones rattle against each other. 

Out of 700 parishes in Scotland, 490 have com- 
pulsory assessment; and the whole kingdom is 
assessed at £47,000, and yet the peasantry are 
much better off than in England. 

A dreadful accident has just happened at the 
church of Kirkaldy, at the communion Sabbath. 
When the clergyman was expected to'make his 
appearance, a part of the great range of galleries 
yielded to the pressure of the multitude, and fell 
with a terrific crash upon the hapless assemblage 
underneath, by which 30 persons lost their lives. 

One and twenty individuals have perished by 
the wreck of a passage-boat in a bay off Trisniss 
Isles, near Staffa, coming from Muli. 


Died.] At Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart, esq., 
the distinguished philosopher and metaphysician, 


IRELAND. i 

The boiler of the steam-boat Corsair, which 
plies between Belfast and Liverpool, lately burst 
with tremendous violence as it was about to start 
from the quay of Belfast. ‘The cause of the ex- 
plosion was owing to the pipe, which conveys the 
waste steam from the safety valve, being too 
small for that purpose. The engineer waa thrown 
down three times by the force of the explosion, 
and his body so dreadfully lacerated, that little 
hopes were entertained of his recovery. A pas- 
senger, who was below at the time, also suffered 
very severely. 


Died.) At Limerick, the Hon. R, Howard, 
brother to the Earl of Wicklow. 


[418.4 
DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 
From the 26th of May to the 25th of June, 1828. 


p | Bank [3 Pr. Ct.|/3 Pr. Ct./33Pr.Ct.|3$Pr.Ct.|N4Pr.C, Long India | India | Exch. |Consols 
= Stock. | Red. |Consols.|Consols.| Red. Ann. Annuities. | Stock. | Bonds, | Bills. |for Acc. 
26 = — _— = = = — _ = —s 
27 — — — sow —_ =— _ —_ _ _ — 
23 | 2063 | 84§ 3] 85g § | 923 922 § | 1023 3 193 249 — | 6163p ft: 3 
29 — _ _ — _ _ _ — _ _— _ 
30 | 2063 7 | 842 § | 858 % | 92% 3 | 925 3 | 102 i 19 3-16 _ 97 99p | 61 63 864 
31 | 2074 | 85 853 86 | 92g 3 | 92% 3 | 102} 194 — — | 6163p oat 
Jun. 
1 st =m = = =. = ee — = = 
2 | 2074 3 | 854 3 | 85% 63] — © | 934 1022 3.| 194 3-16 = = seis 863 
3 | 2073 82 852 61/8 3 | 94 93% 1024 3 19 5-16 250 97 99 61 63 86 
4 | 207% 84) 85g 3] 86g 2 94 93. 1023 3 19. 5-16 2491 99p 59 62 | 86 
5 | 208 854 6 | 865 Z| 94 933 4) — 19t 5-16 | 2492 | 97 59 Glp | 86 
6 | 208 852 63 — | 934 42 | 938 4] — 19 5-16 — — {603 | 86% 873 
7 | 20913] 86g 3) — See Pare eS = — |9899p|603 | 87h § 
8 pia ass es ee ca = 22 sacs ahs aS pa 
9 | 2092 10) 86% 7 _ _ 94 i — 19 7-16 3 _ 98 99 60 3 86: 
10 | 2098 3] 85) 87} — | 945 3 | 948 — | 197-16 2 | — | 99p | 603p | 87 
1] —_ _ _ — _— = - _— _ _ 
12 2093 a, 86% 874; — 95 of 5 —_ 193 9-16 = 99 60 3 87% 88 
13 | 2093 10| 874 — | 958 95 = 19} — | 100 60 63p | 884 2 
a 209. : 873 _— — 95 — 19 9-16 § = 100 1 62 64 884 
5 = aan Je sd sas _ = — SN) Ea =, 
16 | 210 87. _ _ 95 _ 19§ — 100 1 63 65 88 
17 | 2093 87 _ 954 § | 94% 5 — 193 — 100 1p |} 63 5 
18 | 210 87. — 95. 95 — 19 11-16 _ 101 63 66p | 88 
19 | 2092 10) 87 — 954 § | 95h 3 _ 19} 13-1 — —_ 63 66 88 
20 | 210 87 _ 95 944 5 _— 19 11-16 % _ _ 64 67p | 88 
21 | 210 87 _ — 944 5 _ 19 11-16 $ — _ 64 66p | 88; 
22 -- _- _ _ _- _ — _ _ _ 
23 | 2113 ary 883] — | 953 953 #] — 193 13-16 — | loop | 6466p | 883 89 | 
24 _- _ _ _ _ — _ _- ¥ 
25 |2103 104| 873 3] — | 953 954 = 19 11-16 ¥ — | 101 2p| 6466p | 883 


E, Eyton, Stock Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street, 
a ence 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 
From May 20th, to June 19th, 1828. 


By Writiam Harris and Co. 50, High Holborn. 


De Luc’s 


Barometer. Hygro. 


Atmospheric Variations. 


9 A.M. | 10 P.M. : .M. | 10 P.M. |9A M.| 2P.M.}10 P.M. 


Fair 
Fine 
Clo, «© 


Jox 


The Quantity of Rain fallen in the Month of May was I inch and 23:100the, 


q THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


Neo Series. 


Vou. VI] AUGUST, 1828. [No. 32. 


SELECT VESTRIES. 


In the constitution of the vestries in which the local affairs of its 
parishes are managed, England exhibits as much whimsical variety as 
France did in her provincial laws previously tg their consolidation by 
Napoleon into one national code. Just as accident may determine it, 
these vestries will be found to be sometimes what is termed parish—at 
_ others, select. Select vestries may have their origin either in ancient 
usage or statutory enactment; and those originating in the latter again 
differ in their constitutions, according as they happen to be established 
in conformity to an act of parliament general in its application, or are 
regulated by those of a private and local character. 

“ Heretofore,” says Tomlins, “the bishop and priests sat together in 
vestries to consult of the affairs of the church—in resemblance of which 
ancient custom the minister, churchwardens, and chief men do at this 
day make a-parish vestry.” A parish vestry, then, is nothing more than 
an assembly for parish purposes of the minister, churchwardens, and as 
many of the individuals assessed to the church-rate, or paying scot-and-lot, 
as like to attend. The votes of the majority constitute the voice of the 
meeting ; but, by the 58 Geo. III., c. 69, due notice of every meeting is 
required to be given by publication on the church-door ; and the num- 
ber of votes to each individual rendered proportionate to the amount of 
his property assessed. The extreme number is, however, in every case, 
restricted to six. 

Vestries of this last description are what the law terms of “ common 
right ;’ but all select vestries, not originating under the provisions of an 
act of parliament, are at this day supportable only on the ground of long 
usage. In general, these are nothing more than an annual delegation of 
the management of the parish affairs to a body chosen by the parishioners. 
A custom allowing the vestrymen peculiarly to supply the vacancies in 
their own body, can be sustained only in ancient prescription. 

_ The statutory provision, in virtue of which the rest exist, may now be 
considered as comprised under Mr. Sturges Bourne’s act, the 59 Geo. III., 
¢. 12, and the several local acts peculiar to each. By the former, a power is 
given to any parish in the kingdom, not regulated by private acts, to put 
its affairs under the management of a vestry, composed of the clergyman 
and the substantial householders of the parish, in numbers not exceeding 
twenty, nor less than five. By the provisions of the act, the office is 
M.M. New Series. Vou VI. No. 32. Q 


114. —. Select Vestries. [Aveust, 


merely annual—the election of the members is reposed in the inhabitants 
generally in vestry assembled—and before these a summary of the trans- 
actions, together with all the accounts of the vestry, is strictly required 
to be laid in the months of March and October of every year. 

The constitutions of the latter--those which exist by local acts—(and 
with them it is we have to deal), of course, display some variety in their 
details ; but the black-letter of close corporations is the character in 
which all are inscribed. Self-election, self-accountability, self-aggran- 
disement, are their prominent features; and, were the objects of their 
enactments to be collected from their results, the appropriate title of 
such would be—“< An Act for encouraging the Mismanagement of 
Parish Affairs, and promoting sinister Interests in the Vestrymen.” 

Exposed to their almost indefinite taxation, in few instances have the 
parishioners the poor privilege of appointing the parties by whom they 
are to be taxed. Thus, by the 10 Ann., c. 11, s. 20, power having been 
given to the commissioners for the erection of fifty new churches in Lon- 
don and Westminster, appointed thereunder to convert into distinct 
parishes the district for each church, the appointment of the vestrymen 
for every such parish is delegated to them. It is true that a preliminary 
consent is required to the exercise of their power; but from whom will 
it be supposed this consent is to proceed? Absolutely, not from the 
parishioners, the management of whose own affairs is thus forced out of 
their hands; but from the bishop or ordinary, who, God knows, are too 
much occupied in collecting the revenues of the church to leave thenr 
much time to examine into the qualifications of vestrymen. Nor was it 
even intended that this sorry check should extend beyond the original 
constitution of the body. When once established, all power of future 
replenishment is quietly left to itself. Thus, again, with the Spitalfields 
Act, the 2d Geo. II., c. 10, the rector, churchwardens, overseers, and all 
other persons who have served or fined for those offices, are, so long as 
they continue householders within the parish and pay the poor-rate, 
declared to be vestrymen for the time being. “ All other persons who 
have served or fined for those offices,” undoubtedly sounds like an 
approximation to an open system. But it so happens that the original 
nomination to these offices lies only with the vestrymen ; and as no man 
can serve who is not first nominated, and no man is like to be nominated 
who is not like to prove a good vestryman, it is obvious this leaves the 
power of self-perpetuation pretty nearly as perfect as it exists under the 
operation of the statute of Ann. It is necessary to add, that, when once 
appointed, they are generally appointed for life. 

Thus, self-elected, these petty oligarchies are compelled to render no 
account of their government. .An auditor of accounts does, indeed, 
sometimes figure as a part of the establishment ; but the auditor, instead 
of being the accountable servant of the public, is simply a component 
member of the body. In rendering an account of their stewardship to. 
him, the parties to account may indeed acquire the opportunity of 


placing before themselves, in a penitential review, the items of therown _ 
extravagance ; but facilities in obtaining absolution conduce only to — 


greater offences ; and, indeed, if the course of one father confessor is to 
be taken as the sample of that of the rest, the confession is not conducted 
with the strictest regard to particularities; for, at a meeting of the 
parishioners of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, at which some most profligate 
articles of expenditure on the part of the select were dragged to light, 
the auditor himself admitted that he had audited the accounts in question, 


ie a ee ee 


xe8 


1828.] Select Vestries. 115 


but “ only examined the sum total.” Moreover, it seems even this most 
exquisite mode of accounting is liable to be altogether prevented by such 
slight occasional accidents as the loss of the parish books. The vestries of 
St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and St. George’s, Bloomsbury, having steadily 
resisted all demands for an inspection of their books, at a meeting of the 
parishioners, held at the Freemason’s Tavern, 23d June, 1828, a 
motion was made by a Mr. Everard, and, we need hardly add, carried 
unanimously, “ That we will unremittingly persist in our endeavours 
to discover the books of this parish, which are stated to be mislaid.” 

But not only is there an utter want of express provision for securing 
accountability to the public—vestrymen have even arrogated to them- 
selves a kind of right to conduct all their affairs in secret. Vestry 
meetings thus become, for the most part, mere private meetings ; and 
all attempt at public investigation is resisted as an impertinent intrusion 
on their sequestered privacy. Indeed, some of the vestrymen seem to 
treat the privilege of misrule as their personal freeholds ; and the mem- 
ber for Middlesex, as one of them, did not scruple to oppose the Mary- 
lebone bill, as “ an attempt to invade and overthrow established rights.” 
Previously to the introduction of that bill, every attempt was made by 
the parishioners to secure, by amicable adjustment, their just represen- 
tation in the vestry, and a control over the parish funds. ‘ The hauteur 
of this self-appointed body,” say the committee, in their Report, “founded, 
as your committee suppose, on the unconstitutional notion of vested 
rights, has been an insuperable barrier to the accomplishment of ‘this 
desirable object.” And, again, they complain that having, at a conside- 
rable time back, addressed to the vestry a respectful letter, requiring 
an answer, “from that time to the present, the vestry have not conde- 
scended to notice or even acknowledge its receipt ;’—and they add, after 
alluding to a previous charge of some equal act of rudeness, “‘ The com- 
mittee, therefore, feel that the personal charge then made against the 
members of the vestry of inattention to, and disregard of, the opinions and 
wishes of the parishioners, has been fully justified; and they ought to 
bear in mind that acts of parliament do not exempt from courteous and 
gentlemanly conduct those whom they invest with petty authority or 
irresponsible power.” 

Absolutely without security for the mode of their exercise, the powers 
thus entrusted to the select are of no insignificant extent. With them 
lies the whole management of the parochial poor. To their superinten- 
dence frequently falls the erection of workhouses and infirmaries. 
Churches and chapels may almost be said to rise at their bidding, or 
become repaired in all the decorations of costly magnificence—land is 
sometimes bought and sold—streets laid out and paved—in a word, the 
entire parochial affairs of extensive districts are submitted to their abso- 
lute control. That the most ample provision of funds may be placed at 
their disposal, they are left to impose parochial rates, with no other check 
than the legal appeals of the individuals liable to their payment ; and, 


_ when these cannot be strained into an adequate provision for their more 


magnificent undertakings, they often contrive to cajole parliament into 
large grants for their assistance out of the public money—the entire 
administration of which is left to themselves. To sum up our brief’ out- 
line both of the functions of the select, and their complete irresponsibility 
in their exercise, with the apt illustration of Mr. Peel—« they are so 
many little parliaments, in their several parishes.” 


Q 2 


116 Select Vestries: [ Aveusrs 


Founded, then, on principles proved, even to the demonstration of an 
axiom, to be vicious, select vestries of the class we have just described 
bear in their very establishment the sentence of their condemnation. 
With the development of those principles, we might here, therefore, close 
our case against them ; but, beside that the evidence is too entertaining 
to be lost, the subject is of such importance that we proceed to point out 
some of the most prominent evils to which the system is exposed. 

These may almost all be comprised in extravagance in the expenditure 
of the parish funds. Select vestrymen will doubtless dispute in what 
extravagance consists. We deem it, therefore, necessary to state that by 
extravagance we here mean the incurring of a single expense unwar- 
ranted by the strictest necesssity, and the payment for a single article 
of one solitary shilling more than the sum at which the most unlimited 
competition has proved that it can be obtained. This is just, however, 
the very extravagance to which bodies constituted like select vestries 
are peculiarly exposed. From an almost unlimited command of funds 
(their own contribution to which is too small in relation to the aggregate 
to operate as a check), their whole expenditure is necessarily placed on 
the most lavish scale. But the members of corporations, be the descrip- 
tion what it may, always fall into the most exaggerated notions of their own 
magnificence, and regulate, in consistence with this estimate, the whole scale 
of their expenditure. Corporation expenses, of course, we allude to—for the 
corporative and private expenses of the members of corporations are twa 
very different things. In corporation expenditure, however, is frequently 
involved the promotion of the personal comfort of the members. This 
may be more or less direct, according to circumstances. Thus, if a Lon- 
don tradesman slip into an alderman’s gown, and have to visit Greenwich 
on any such corporation business as that of eating white bait at the Ship, 
it is manifest that his comfort would be directly promoted by exchang- 
ing his quondam place on the outside of the Greenwich stage for a seat 
in some gilded civic barge. It is almost as obvious that his comfort 
would be remotely increased by his having to perform his Sunday devo- 
tions in a splendid church, decorated with altar-pieces, carvings, cloths 
of crimson, and all the et cetera of magnificence, rather than having to 
squat himself down in some plain, unadorned, meeting-house-lookin 
kind of a chapel, where the seats were all hard, and the prayer-books 
thumbed. It may be pretty well imagined that, in either case, with the 
requisite command of the funds, he would not be long in obtaining that 
which he would think no more than justly due to his dignity ; and, 
even supposing him destitute of the usual quantity of selfishness, the 
latter is an expense into which a thousand other considerations might 
conspire to prompt him. As it is with other corporations, so is it 
with select vestrymen ; and as we may assume that the infinitely greater 
proportion of all the various expenses to which these principles would 
give rise would be unwarranted by the occasion, the institution of select 
vestries, by multiplying the subjects of expense, affords a direct encou- 
ragement to extravagance. Now we do not know what may be the pre- 
cise connecting link between vestry-feasting and church-jobbing; but, 
somehow or other, these are two subjects of expense in which the select 
have always shone most conspicuous. It appears, from a paper contain- 
ing a statement of some of the earlier abuses of the select vestries of St. 
Martin’s, St. Ann’s, and St. Clement’s, “ that they went in pursuit of a 
wretched shoe-cleaner, by whom some miserable woman was illegitimately 
pregnant, for fear the woman and child should become chargeable to the 


. 


* 


7 


1828.) © Select Vestries: 117 


parish ; but, after three days close search, they lost their labours, though 
they went to divers taverns; and the bill incurred, on this righteous 
occasion, came but to 43/.”* Money has assuredly fallen in value since 
that period ; but we have understood that the amount of the dinner bill in 
this transaction is not very far below the average of the sum at which 
parish officers are willing to take upon themselves the whole support of a 
bastard. The following extract from the parish-books of St. Paul’s, Covent 
Garden, forced from the reluctant vestry, will shew that, after centuries 
of gorging, the appetites of vestrymen have not slackened :— 


Mr. Richardsan’s dinner .....)......0.0c0c-+0e+eeeeeeeee ees £93; & 30 
Messrs. Hodgson and Gann’s Easter dinner............ 47 11 0 
Mr. Joy’s visitation dinner ......0...0eeeeeeeeeeeee cerns 25 8 0 
Wie Macros woken in. see das. |: cdo ameiae Saray soe ifcat & 
Hodgson and Gann’s venison feast ....++c..0seereeeees 30 ..-& DO 
Dinner on auditing accounts............-..ecssee sees eee ll 4 0 
Hodgson and Gann’s dinner on auditing accounts... 40 4 0 
Mr. Richardson’s visitation dinner ........---.+.s+0++++ 22 0 
Mr. Joy’s St. Thomas’s-Day’s dinner .........-.4:--65 2010 0 


Venison feasts may strike our readers as somewhat singular for simple 
vestrymen. Venison, however, is perfectly in keeping with rose-water, 
which another party of select vestrymen seemed to fancy a necessary 


_ subject of expense on a visit they had to perform to a few pauper chil- 


dren at Norwood. At one of these feasts to the Marylebone vestry, the 
bill actually amounted to 452/.!—of which the honest vestrymen carried 
only 93/. to account, under its proper head:—the rest was amusingly 
distributed among the titles “ paving-rate (paving the stomach, we pre- 
sume), clothing and provisions for the poor !”’ Truly, the poor are likely 
to be clad in fine linen and sumptuously fed under the blessed vestry of 
Marylebone! The thirst of vestrymen would seem to attend them even 
into the sacraments of religion. In his late measure for the regulation of 


the Irish “ select,” Sir John Newport informed the House of one parish 


in which, from the year 1812 to the time at which he was speaking, from 
211. to 36/. had been annually charged for wine for the sacramental table. 

Of the great itching for church jobbing displayed throughout the 
whole history of select vestries, the instances are so numerous that our 
only difficulty lies in the selection. The parish of St. Mary-le-bone, and 
one or two parishes in Ireland must serve us as samples. In the first, 
the present rectorial church was, in the year 1813, resolved to be built 
as a chapel, and was accordingly contracted for at 19,8101. It was com- 
pleted to its cupola and vane, when it appears to have flashed across the 
imagination of some sagacious vestryman, that a church was the be- 
fitting thing instead of a chapel. Into achureh it was accordingly voted 
it should be converted, and a church it became ; although to accomplish 
this a considerable part of the finished building was pulled down, and 
the cost, instead of amounting to nineteen thousand and odd pounds, 
just came to 72,8501. When completed no less an adornment would 
suit the magnificence of the vestrymen than a transparency, by West, 
at a cost of 800/., and a figure of Rossi at 3001. In their eagerness 
for a painting of the great artist, however, it seems to have been for- 
gotten that transparencies required light, until when it came to be put 
up, it was discovered they had no place appropriated for it—from some 
eee aT 


* Considerations on Select Vestries, ‘p. }3 ;—a small pamphlet, containing a collection 
of many of the abuses of select vestries. . 


118 Select Vestries. [Aveusr, 


cause or other the figure did not suit the fancies of the vestrymen. 
Both were accordingly removed, and the committee reported that at the 
moment they were sitting, the latter had been sent to some parish stone 
yard, and from all outward appearance, there it seemed likely to find 
“its long home.” Other internal decorations were upon a scale of 
equal magnificence. There were actually expended for 


PPG MPMre SIT (16 ies bes -segsebee datedesoeec cts Tees £321 0 0 
Breaaiae desk. 5. 2.5.0. .s0esers eave Reco te sia AN) ee Be 139 0 O 
lerk soci tion sie ee Oe Socks aeeee a eal ea tek eek oes 9817 6 
Altar, including two chairs, 2131! ! ........ce eee. 628 5 0 
Curtains for organ gallery. . 2.00...) ..idie.ccste vee 92 14 0 
Ditto for churchwardens and overseers pews ...... 166 0 O 


and, in 1826, 1650/. were spent in further alterations at this church! ! 

In the parish of St. George, Dublin, an estimate of 16,000/. for 
building a church was, under much the same system, swelled into 57,0001. 
«* In another place,’’ we quote from Sir John Newport, “ the privileged 
and select made a tax to repair the bishop’s throne, to provide a clothes- 
horse for his closet, and brushes, ewers, basons, &c. ; and, indeed, every 
species of article for the toilette of a finished gentleman.” In another 
parish, a sum of one hundred guineas was voted out of the rates, to 
purchase a piece of plate for the curate ; fifty pounds were also voted to 
the parish clerk, and the same to a vestry clerk, which was double the 
amount authorized by law. In another parish, where there was scarcely a 


congregation of a dozen persons, the organist received in ten years 850/.: _ 


and the bellows blower was also a pensioner, he had 15/. a year; and 
there was a vestrymaid at 20/. besides three servants to attend the 
church.” What particular function in the vestry the maid performed, 
the vestrymen can tell better than ourselves. In some instances expenses 
have been incurred, not only without a pretence for justification, but 
under circumstances, which had they previously existed, afforded the 
most substantial ground for their discontinuance. Thus, in the town of 
Wexford, a sexton and beadle having discontinued the practice of bell- 
ringing, for want of a bell to ring, their salaries were immediately raised 
from 10/. to 20/.; and “in another case,’ says Sir J. Newport, “ an 
increased salary was given to a parish clerk, and a compensation given 
to another clerk for having been removed.” 

But while the subjects of expense become thus almost unlimited 
under the costly administration of the select, instead of every article 
being obtained at the cheapest rate, they seem to think that in the 
abundance of their wealth they can never sufficiently pay for what they 
do procure. It is pretty manifest that whenever any member of their 
body is, either in his own person or that of his friends, a dealer in any of 
those subjects, his claim for supplying it, is sure to be listened to by a 
class of individuals who may all in their turn have similar claims to 
prefer ; and thus, instead of the supply being arranged on a competition 
price, monopoly is left to make its own charge for every thing. But the 
charge of monopoly has no other limit than the disposition of the pur- 


chasers ; and as the purchasers in this case are certain to be the easiest 


dealers in the world, the price at which the parish will purchase every — 


article of expense will be somewhere about the maximum of exorbitance. 


In Ireland we find accordingly parish carpenters allowed to charge Zz 
interest on the repairs of their own houses, occupied by them in the — 


character of clerks. In England we find the parish of St. Mary-le-bone 


1828.] Select Vestries. 119 


borrowing large sums of their own body at the rate of five per cent. when 
they could get it elsewhere for four and even three-and-a-half per cent. 
“In 1825,” says the Report, “ they purchased land illegally of a member 
of their own body for 4,000J. without having any use for it ; and many 
years afterwards they appropriated ‘it to uses not recognized by any 
local act.” Proofs, the committee goes on to add, “ were also given of 
other dealings with members of their own body and their nearest rela- 
tions, the latter being in contravention of their own by-laws. No 
wonder then that debts should accumulate ; and but for the fact being 
in evidence before the House of Commons, it might be doubted that 
since 1811, the enormous debt of 227,000/. has been incurred and still 
exists, against the parish, while the rates have been increased fifty and 
sixty per cent.” No wonder, indeed, the committee may well say ; and no 
wonder that, under a similar principle of management, we find in the vestry 
accounts of St. Paul’s Covent Garden, such small items of overcharge as 
that of forty per cent. on iron bedsteads for the use of the paupers, and 
153/. on a bill of 212/. 4s. 3d. paid without a cavil to the parish surveyor. 
Nor let it be supposed that occurrences of this description are the mere 
result of accident. Again at work at the church, in the year 1822, the 
select vestry of Spitalfields caused estimates of the expense of certain 
proposed repairs to be delivered in to them. One sent by the surveyor 
fixed the cost at 24,000/. others, however, set it down at a lower amount, 
- and among them one from a Mr. Benson, in which he offered to do all 
that was wanted for a sum not exceeding 19,000/., and to give security to 
__. any amount for the due performance of his contract. “ The committee, 
however,” says the author of the “Considerations,” &c. from which we have 
previously quoted, “ went on without regard to either estimate, and 
finally expended the sum of 6,993/. 19s., a sum they found themselves 
unable to raise sufficient money, by rates, to pay, consequently they 
borrowed the sum of 5000/. of themselves, at five per cent., when all the 
money lending world would have advanced the sum at four per cent.” 
Thus much for our charge of extravagance. We apprehend it will be 
conceded to us that we have brought it home to the very letter of our 
definition. 
_ Supposing, however, select vestrymen to be utterly devoid of any 
ing so anomalous in human nature as sinister interest, we should still 
contend that their administration is likely to be extremely inefficient to 
its purposes. The interests which they have involved in it, are far from 
_ being sufficient to insure activity in the exercise of their trust ; and con- 
sequently their whole government becomes marked with the extreme of 
slovenliness. At a meeting of the parishioners of St. James, Westmin- 
ster, touching the abuses of their vestry, at which Sir Francis Burdett 
resided, it appeared that there was one deficiency in the accounts of 
‘15,1581. 5s. 5d., and also several others amounting to upwards of 11,0001. 
Of none of these could any satisfactory explanation be given; and Mr. 
Byng was very indignant at the bare supposition that the vestrymen could 
have pocketedthem. Whether Mr. Byng was justified in his indignation, we 
_ do not dare to say. We certainly do not imagine Mr. Byng to have been 
_ the thief, nor, indeed, could we put our finger on any other individual 
member of the body as the object of suspicion, any more than had we, 
before his apprehension, been simply told that an extensive forgery had 
__ been committed in Berners-street, we should have dreamed of walking 
_ into the bank there, and pointing out Mr. Henry Fauntleroy as the 
culprit. The justice of Mr. Byng’s indignation is, however, little to our 


120 Select Vestries. [Aveusr, 


purpose. We quote the illustration simply to show that general care- 
lessness with which vestry affairs are managed, when to say nothing of 
the smaller deficiencies, a deficiency of upwards of 15,000/. actually 
escapes even the notice of its existence. With the best intentions in the 
world, it is impossible but that such slovenliness in the conduct of their 
affairs, should expose them to every species of imposition.. In the 
accounts of the parish of St. Martin, for the year 1822, there occurs a 
charge of eighty pounds for carving the legs of a table ; which are after- 
wards covered up in crimson velvet. Now, so wanton a piece of folly 
seems hardly capable of being accounted for on any other supposition 
than that of the vestrymen becoming the dupes of others.—Certain it is 
that the mode of management, inseparable, as we contend, from the 
system itself, is a premium upon every species of imposition and reguery 
whether from within or without. 

As is usual in all rotten systems, the principles by which this select 
vestry system is supported, are, if possible, still more hollow than the 
system itself. : 

The whole proceed upon the general assumption that parishes are 
incapable of the management of their own affairs. To this general 
assumption we have only to oppose the demonstration oe and again 
made manifest, that none other than lunatics and imbeciles are so inca- 
pable ; and as parishes en masse (except in so far as after the publication 
of this our article they continue unresisting to this iniquitous system) 
are neither one or the other, so neither will they be found incompetent 
to the conduct of their own business. The best management is that of. 
all interested in obtaining it—the worst, that in which those most liable 
to be affected by its results, are excluded from its participation. 

But it by no means follows that because parishes get rid of their 
present vestry system, that they should not delegate the particular 
management of their concerns to individuals chosen by themselves, and 
officially accountable to them. Of course the most obvious method of 
securing the perfect dependence on themselves of their representatives, 
would be by the frequency of their election, and proper mode for accoms 
plishing its perfect freedom. The paltry objection urged against annual 
elections, about its tendency to disturb the peace of parishes, is abun- 
dantly answered by fact.- At oné of the meetings at St. Mary-le-bone _ 
parish, at which. this ‘was started, Sir Francis Burdett stated it to be 
wholly refuted by the practical operation of a system of ballot election in 
the opulent and extensive parish adjoining; and we never yet heard’ 
that any of the elections in parishes which had placed themselves under 
the operation of Mr. Sturges Bourne’s Act, had been characterized as 
engendering disorder. It must be remembered, however, that tran- 
quillity may be purchased at too high a price; and we -know few 
individuals who would not prefer a little struggling to a good deal of 
robbery. Undoubtedly with the requisite securities, parochial affairs 
may be better managed by individuals, than by the parishioners en masse; _ 
but the constitution of these securities is of all political problems the 
most difficult. The provisions of Mr. Sturges Bourne’s Act undoubtedly 
go far to afford them ; and, perhaps, vestries established in conformity 
with these, may be improvements even upon thé open parish vestries we 
have described. Bat, at all events, it is sufficiently manifest, that of all 
systems hitherto devised, that of close vestries is the most cunningly 
framed to’ défeat the object for which it was established—the good admi- 
nistration of the affairs of a parish. 


1828.] Folagh vy 


THE EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA: 
No. Ill. 


Tue Waite Derit; or, VirrortA CoroMBona. 


Ir nothing else were essential to the composition of a perfect drama of 
the high tragic class, but a grand and vigorous conception of character, 
and a clear and consistent development of it; a deep knowledge of the 
secret places of the human heart, and a subtle power of drawing thence 
and displaying the passions and affections that lurk there; a dramatic 
skill capable of constructing scenes in imitation of human life, in which 
all these shall be displayed in a manner to produce upon the reader or 
spectator all the (seeming) effect of actual reality ; and, united to all 
these, an imaginative power of thought and of style capable of clothing 
them all in a poetical form, so as to lift above the level of our actual ex- 
perience the mere circumstances with which they are connected, and 
thus cause the sympathy we feel with them to fall within the limits of 
pleasure ;—if, we say, these things, and these alone, were sufficient to the 
composition of a perfect tragic drama, the one that we have chosen for 
the subject of this paper might be pointed to as one of the very finest in 
existence. But there is wanting, besides the qualities and powers above 
alluded to, that of so arranging every individual part of a composition of 
this nature, with reference to every other part respectively, and so uniting, 
and, as it were, welding together the whole, that an effect shall be pro- 
duced which never was, nor can be produced by the contemplation of any 
real set of circumstances whatever. This, we imagine, is the great secret 
of producing a perfect dramatic work of the class in question ; and the 
power which it refers to is what none—no not one—of our English 
dramatists ever did possess—or at least exercised—in a very high degree: 
Perhaps the possession of such a power in a very high degree, is incom~ 
patible with that of the other qualities before alluded to, and which our 
dramatists have possessed and exhibited more than any others that ever 
lived ; we say, the possession of it: for the evxercise of it, if possessed, 
would assuredly be compatible with the fullest possible exercise of all the 
others. We cannot pretend to determine how this may be; but thus 
much we will venture to assert, that the peculiar power in question has 
not been exercised to any thing like perfection, in any one drama that we 
possess ; and further we will state, that (with the exception of Shaks~ 
peare’s alone) it is the least evident, precisely in those dramas where all 
other dramatic powers are the most so. Finally, im connection ‘with this 
point, it may perhaps be said that this peculiar, and most rare of all 
dramatic endowments, is exhibited in Shakspeare’s plays, there precisely 
the most, where all others are the most exhibited also: for instance, in 
the Hamlet, the Othello, the Macbeth, and the Romeo and Juliet. 

' Turning at once to the, in many respects, splendid drama before us, 
we may safely state that, (still excepting the works of Shakspeare) there 
_is nothing at once more grand and vigorous in conception, and more bold, 
Spirited, and true in execution, than the chief character, Vittoria Corom- 
bona; and that out of no other character have more admirable and 
effective dramatic scenes been constructed; and further, that among 
Jemale characters, there is nothing in our language comparable with this 
one, except the Lady Macbeth: and if ¢hat is upon the whole superior to 
the Vittoria in positive and permanent dramatic effect wpon the imagina- 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No. 32. R 


122 The Early English Drama: [Aveusr, 


tion and memory of the reader, it is only because the former is much 
shorter and more simple, and consequently, from a less necessity for 
detailed development, makes its appeal more explicitly, and goes to its 
mark and hits it more palpably and openly. Ambition is in both cases 
the moving spring of action in these two characters; and in the case of 
Lady Macbeth, there is a grandeur and simplicity of moral purpose, 
added to a directness in the pursuance of that purpose, which produce a 
unity of effect on the reader altogether noble and complete. She wills to 
be a queen—she wills, and it is done: and, during the brief course of its 
accomplishment, we no more think of disputing that will, or carping at 
the mode or the means by which it acts, than we do at those of a super- 
naturally endowed being. Nay, we donot even feel morally shocked at 
her crimes ; the very blood that is upon her does not shew like blood, 
but rather like a sacrificial offering that she stoops for, and scatters 
abroad, upon the altar of the great object of her adoration—mortal 
power. With Vittoria Corombona it is different: she, like Lady 
Macbeth, would be a queen; but she has not the resistless force of mind 
from which springs a resistless will. She has less of moral power in her 
composition, but infinitely more of passion. 

But we must now revert to our plan, of letting that with which we 
would make the reader acquainted be in some sort its own exponent. In 
the present instance we shall confine the details of our examination almost 
entirely to the above-named character, and to the one (Isabella) which 
is introduced as a moral contrast to it: for the play is so overloaded with 
matter, that our limits would forbid our doing more than this, even if 
the nature of a great portion of the rest of the play did not make our so 
doing more than unnecessary. In fact, the merits of this drama, great 
and striking as they are, are for the most part included in these two cha- 
racters, and one other—Flamineo. 

At the opening of the play, Vittoria Corombona (the White Devil), is a 
Venetian lady of a high family and of great beauty, who is married to a 
foolish lord of the court (Camillo), whom she despises, without, however, 
feeling a passion for any one else; while Brachiano (reigning Duke of 
that place), is devoured by a guilty love for Vittoria, though he is mar- 
ried to the young and gentle Isabella. This latter is absent at the com- 
mencement of the.drama, and during this absence, Brachiano plots with 
Flamineo (his secretary, and brother to Vittoria), to gain the love and the 
possession of Vittoria. The lady, urged by ambitious views alone, is 
soon found to be “ nothing loath,” to the prospects of aggrandisement 
that seem opening to her; and the first act ends with an interview 
between her and the duke, in which the views of both seem pretty nearly 
to coincide, as to the immediate necessity of getting rid of the superfluous 
wife of the one party, and husband of the other. The lady (as, we are 
afraid it must be admitted, is the natural course in matters of this kind) 
is the first to see her way clearly in this particular, and the first who has 
the courage to point it out. With a mistaken view to heighten the © 
dramatic effect of this otherwise finely-executed scene, there is a super- 
fluous horror communicated to it, by making the virtuous mother of 
Vittoria a secret, and towards the end an oven witness, of her daughter’s- 
first but fatal step towards guilt. This we must look upon as an instance _ 
of that disposition to “ o’er inform” and overload their scenes, which was 
among the most conspicuous faults of our best early dramatists ; a fault, © 
however, which we would not willingly have had them without ; since 
it arises, in almost every instance, from an affluence of mind and of — 


1828.] The White Devil; or, Vilteria Corombona. 123 


resources, and often leads to most curious and interesting results. With- 
out this disposition and habit we should have had a few better plays than 
any that we now possess, as dramatic compositions ; but ex revanche, we 
should have had incalculably less in amount of that wonderful display of 
dramatic power, and of poetic beauty, which may now be looked upon 
as the chief boast and glory of our national literature. Other nations 
may have approached or equalled us in other departments of literary 
wealth and achievement ; but in this one we stand absolutely alone, and 
shall ever stand so; because no circumstances can, in the very nature of 
things, recur, to make such a display possible. We shall extract, from 
the fine scene above alluded to, the passage in which Vittoria first opens 
her true character, and the nature of her after views :— 


Vit. To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace 
A dream If had last night. 
Brach. Most wishedly. y 
Vit. A foolish, idle dream : 
Methought I walk’d, about the mid of night, 
Into a church-yard, where a goodly yew-tree 
Spread her large root in ground. Under that yew, 
As I sat sadly leaning on a grave, 
Chequered with cross-sticks, there came stealing in 
Your duchess and my husband ; one of them 
A pick-axe bore, th’ other a rusty spade ; 
And in rough terms they ’gan to challenge me 
About this yew. 
Brach. That tree? 
Vit. This harmless yew. 
They told me my intent was to root up 
That well-grown yew, and plant in its stead 
A wither’d black-thorn ; and for that they vow’d 
To bury me alive. My husband straight 
With pick-axe ’gan to dig; and your fell duchess 
With shovel, like a fury, voided out 
The earth and scattered bones. Lord! how, methought, 
I trembled! And yet, for all this terror, 
I could not pray. 
Flam. No! the devil was in your dream ! 
Vit. When to my rescue there arose, methought, 
A whirlwind, which let fall a mighty arm 
From that strong plant ; 
And both were struck down by that sacred yew 
Into that shallow grave, that was their due. 
Flam. Excellent devil! 
She hath taught him, in a dream, 
To make away his duchess and her husband. 
Brach. Sweetly shail I interpret this your dream. 
You are lodged within his arms that shall protect you 
From all the fevers of a jealous husband ; 
From the poor envy of our phlegmatic duchess ; 
V’'ll seat you above law, and above scandal ; 
Give to your thoughts th’ invention of delight, 
And the fruition ; nor shall government 
Divide me from you longer than a care 
To keep you great. You shall to me at once 
Be dukedom, health, wife, children, friends and all. 


R 2 


124 ‘ The Early English Drama: © \ [Aveust, 


Flamineo, who figures in this scene, is the most candid of younger 
brothers. Hear how he justifies himself to his mother for the part he is 
taking in bringing about the dishonour of his sister :— 


Flam. I would fain know the mass of wealth 
Which you have hoarded for my maintenance, 
That I may bear my beard out of the level 
Of my lord’s stirrup. 
Cor. What! because we are poor, 
Shall we be vicious ? 
Flam. Pray, what means have you 
To keep me from the gallies or the gallows ? 
My father proved himself a gentleman, 
Sold all his land, and, like a fortunate fellow, 
Died ere the money was spent. You brought me up 
At Padua, I confess ; where, I protest, 
For want of means (the university judge me), 
I have been fain to heel my tutor’s stockings 
At least seven years. a 7 
~ * And shall I, 
Having a path so open and so free 
To my preferment, still retain your milk 
In my pale forehead? No—this face of mine 
TPilarm and fortify with lusty wine, 
*>Gainst shame and blushing. 
Cor. Oh, that I ne’er had borne thee ! 
Flam. So would I: 
I would the common’st courtezan in Rome 
Had been my mother rather than thyself. 


* * ” * « a 


The duchess comes to court !—I like not that. 

We are engaged to mischief, and must on, 

As rivers, to find out the ocean, : 

Flow with crooked windings beneath forced banks ; 

Or as we see, to aspire some mountain’s top, i 

The way ascends not straight, but imitates : 

The subtle foldings of a winter snake. : 
) 


i i i i 


This is the way in which our early dramatists dared to look upon the 
truth as it is in human nature ; and, looking upon it, dared to tell it. 
They, and they only, are the wizards alluded to by the greatest of their 
band, who, it was said, “ could almost read the thoughts of people.” 3 

The secoud act opens with the arrival of the duchess, attended by her ; 
brother the Duke of Florence, and the Cardinal Monticelso, who are 
come to remonstrate with Brachiano against the treatment of his duchess, 
and his supposed guilty intimacy with Vittoria. Brachiano treats them 
all with indignant scorn; and then, being left alone, Isabella (the 
duchess) enters. The scene which ensues is beautiful beyond descrip- 
tion. We shall give it nearly entire. It is by the development of cha- 
racters like that of Isabella, through the medium of scenes like this, that 
Webster, and the writers of his age, have given themselves the title to 
make those frightful exposures of human nature, one of which we have 
just quoted, and more of which will presently occur in this play. If 
they could have seen but one side of the picture (no matter which) they 
would not have ventured to expose that one, because they would not have 
felt the right to do so. But seeing both, they had not only a right, but 
were bound to shew the bad with the good. 


1828.] 


The White Devil ; or, Vittoria Corombona . 125 


Enter ISABELLA. 


Brach. You have charm’d me. 
You are in health we see. 

Isa. And above health, 

To see my lord so well. 

Brach. So! I much wonder 
What amorous whirlwind hurried you to Rome ? 

Isa. Devotion, my lord. 

Brach. Devotion ! 

Is your soul charged with any grievous sin? 

Isa. ’Tis burthen’d with too many ; and, I think, 
The oftener that we cast our reckonings up, 

Our sleeps will be the sounder. 

Brach. Take your chamber. 

Isa. Nay, my dear lord, I will not have you angry : 
Doth not my absence from you, now two months, 
Merit one kiss? 

Brach. 1 do not use to kiss: 
If that will dispossess your jealousy, 
Tl swear it to you. 

Isa. Oh, my loved lord, 
I do not come to chide! My jealousy ! 
I am to learn what that Italian means. 
You are as welcome to these longing arms 
As I to you a virgin. 

Brach. O, your breath ! 

Out upon sweetmeats and continued physics ; 
The plague is in them ! 

Isa. You have oft, for these two lips, 
Neglected cassia, or the natural sweets 
Of the spring violet. They are not much withered. 
My lord, I should be merry: these your frowns 
Shew in a helmet lovely ; but on me, 

In such a peaceful interview, methinks 
They are too roughly knit. 

Brach. O, dissemblance ! 

Do you bandy fashions with me? have you learn’d 
The trick of impudent baseness, to complain 
Unto your kindred ? 

Isa. Never, my dear lord. 

Brach. Must I be hunted out? or was’t your trick 
To meet some amorous gallant here in Rome, 
That must supply our discontinuance ? 

Isa. \ pray, Sir, burst my heart ; and in my death 
Turn to your ancient pity, if not love. 

* # * * 


Brach. 
Now all the hellish furies rack his soul 
First made this match! Accursed be the priest 
That sang the wedding-mass !—and even my issue 

Isa. O'! too, too far you've curst ! 

Brach. Your hand I'll kiss. 
This is the latest ceremony of my love. 
Henceforth I'll never lie with thee: by this— 
This wedding ring, I’ll never more lie with thee. 
And this divorce shall be as truly kept, 
As if the judge had doom'd it. Fare you well! 
Our sleeps are severed. 

Isa. Forbid it the sweet union 


126 The Early English Drama: [Aveust, 


Of all things blessed! Why, the saints in heaven 
Will knit their brows at that. 
Brach. Let not thy love 
Make thee an unbeliever. This my vow 
Shall never, on my soul, be satisfied 
With my repentance. Let thy brother rage 
Beyond a horrid tempest or a sea-fight : 
My vow is fixed. 
Isa. O, my winding-sheet ! 
Now shall I need thee shortly. Dear, my lord, 
Let me hear once more what I would not hear. 
—Never? 
Brach. Never. 
Isa. O, my unkind lord! may your sins find mercy 
As I, upon a woful widow’d bed, 
Shall pray for you, if not to turn your eyes 
Upon your wretched wife and hopeful son, 
Yet that in time you'll fix them upon heaven. 
Brach. No more! Go—complain to the great duke. 
Isa. No, my dear lord ; you shall have present witness 
How I'll work peace between you. I will make 
Myself the author of your cursed vow: 
I have some cause to do it—you have none. 
Conceal it, I beseech you, for the weal 
Of both your dukedoms, that you wrought the means 
Of such a separation. Let the fault 
Remain with my supposed jealousy ; 
And think with what a piteous and rent heart 
I shall perform this sad, ensuing part. 

Accordingly, she does perform this part; and the cruel duke permits 
her todo so; and then she departs from Rome again, with these con- 
cluding words, which are the last we hear from her :— 

« Unkindness, do thy office! Poor heart, break ! 

These are the killing griefs, which dare not speak !” 
Brachiano now, through the agency of Flamineo, and other of his crea- 
tures, brings about the immediate death of his duchess and of Vittoria’s 
husband ; but he cannot prevent the arraignment of his paramour, which 
takes place at the commencement of Act III. in presence of the Cardinal 
Monticelso, and the Duke of Florence, who act in the double and dis- 
cordant capacities of her accusers and her judges too. This scene is a 
long, but most admirable one ; and the part which Vittoria plays in it is 
perhaps the finest specimen extant of “a bold bad women,” outfacing 
her enemies, and triumphing in spirit and effect, even in the midst of her 
conscious guilt. To hear her talk, you would suppose that she had a 
conscience white as innocence :— 

“ Condemn you me for that the duke did love me? 

So may you blame some fair and crystal river 

For that some melancholic, distracted man 

Hath drowned himself therein. a ae ei 

* * * * x # 

Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find 

That beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart, 

And a good stomach to a feast, are all, 

All the poor crimes that you can charge me with. 

In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies : 

The sport would be more noble.” 


1828.] The White Devil ; or, Vittoria Corombona. 127 


She is condemned to be confined in “ a house of converts ;” and then 
she breaks out into that towering passion which so well becomes her 
truly high and proud (for we will not call it masculine) spirit. Still, 
however, she sticks to her text of innocence, to the last :— 


Vit. Instruct me, some good horse-leech, to speak treason ! 
For, since you cannot take my life for deeds, 
Take it for words! O, woman’s poor revenge, 
Which dwells but in the tongue! I will not weep. 
No—I do scorn to call up one poor tear 
To fawn on your injustice. Bear me hence, 
Unto this house of ——-what’s your mitigating title ? 
Mon. Of converts. 
Vit. It shall not be a house of converts. 
My mind shall make it honester to me 
Than the pope’s palace, and more peaceable 
Than my own soul. Though thou art a cardinal, 
Know this—and let it sometimes raise your spite— 
Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light. 


This reverse in the fortunes of Vittoria is as brief as it was sudden and 
unlooked for. It seems to have been used by the poet, partly with the 
view of aggrandising her after rise to the highest pitch of her ambitious 
hopes; but chiefly as the means of shewing forth his own splendid 
powers of execution in the scene we have just described. It is followed 
by the immediate news of Isabella’s death, and also of Camillo’s ; and by 
the secret determination of the Duke of Florence to work a full revenge 
upon Brachiano, who is more than suspected of their murder. The first 
step he takes towards this end, is not a very intelligible one ; and, in fact, 
it is one of those instances which occur in almost all our old plays, of the 
absolute indifference which their authors felt, as to the construction of 
their plots. To serve a momentary end, they never scrupled to involve 
the whole web of their work in a seeming difficulty ; because they knew 
that on any, or on no pretence of either propriety or necessity, they could 
in a moment bring matters right again. In the present instance, having 
got Vittoria into prison, for no very obvious end but that of producing a 
scene, he now makes Florence excite Brachiano’s jealousy towards her, 
for much the same purpose. This scene is scarcely less admirable than 
the former ; and it shews Vittoria in a new and still more striking point 
of view. In the first, we had little but a high and impenetrable boldness, 
standing in the place of ail other qualities, and (for the moment) satisfac- 
torily supplying them all. In the scene we are now alluding to, there is 
much of what was present in the former, and in addition, a passionate 
semblance of insulted and outraged affection, which lifts it to a pitch of 
true tragic dignity. We must not venture to extract from the scene 
alluded to, but proceed in our abstract of this portion of the play. 

After this passionate and most spirited scene, the Duke and Vittoria 
are reconciled, and she is rescued from her confinement, and attains her 
highest aim by marrying him. ‘The guilty great ones, having now, at 
the end of the fourth act, reached the haven of their hopes, the fifth act 
s with preparations for that fall which, as may be supposed, is the 

ophe of the tragedy. The Duke of Florence, disguised as a Moor, 
es at the court of Brachiano, accompanied by two other conspirators, 
hom have sworn his death. In this last act there is a vast fund 
extraneous matter, most of which we shall pass over, in conformity 
with our plan of considering and setting forth the character of Vittoria 


128 ~ The Early English Drama: [Aueusr, 


Corombona almost exclusively, as that on which not only the whole 
interest of the action turns, but which connects and holds it together, 
and in some sort forms it into a consistent whole. The object of Florence 
and the conspirators is soon attained. They contrive a subtle poison, 
with which they sprinkle the helmet of Brachiano, just as he is arming 
himself to engage in a tournament ; and before the fight is over he rushes 
in and finds what has been done, and that death is upon him. There is 
an affluence of passion and of poetry in nearly all the remaining scenes 
of this play, which is prodigious. We must give a few extracts as we 
proceed. The whole of the death scene of Brachiano is full of rare and 
various beauty. The following are parts of it :— 


Brach. Tear off my beaver ! 
Flam. Are you hurt, my lord? 
Brach. O, my brain’s on fire ! 


Enter Armourer. 

‘The helmet’s poisoned. 
Armour. My lord, upon my soul 
Brach. Away with him to torture! 


There are some great ones that have hand in this, 
And near about me. 


Enter VITTORIA. 
Vit. O, my lov'd lord poisoned ! 


* * * * * * 


Enter Two Physicians. 


Brach. O, I am gone already! The infection 
Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart, 
There’s such a covenant ‘tween the world and it, 
They’re loath to break! 

Gio. O, my most lov’d father ! 

Brach. Remove the boy away: 

Where’s this good woman? Had I infinite worlds, 
They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee ? 
What say ye, screech-owls! is the venom mortal ? 
Phy. Most deadly. 
Brach. Most corrupted, politic hangman ! 
You kill without book ; but your art to save 
Fails you as oft as great men’s needy friends. 
I, that have given life to offending slaves 
And wretched murderers, have I not power 
To lengthen out mine own one twelvemonth ? 
Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee. (To Vittoria.) 
This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence. 

Duke of F Sir, be of comfort. 

Brach. O, thow soft, natural death! that art joint twin 
To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet 
Stares on thy mild departure ; the dull owl 
Beats not against thy casement ; the hoarse wolf 
Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse: 

While horror waits on princes. 
Vit. O, I am lost for ever ! 
Brach. How miserable a thing it is to die 
_’Mongst women howling !—What are those ? 


1828.] The White Devil ; or, Vittoria Corombona. 129 


Flam. Franciscans. 
They have brought the extreme unction. 

Brach. On pain of death let no man name death to me ! 
It is a word most infinitely terrible. 


There is a terrible beauty in the passages marked in italics; and the 
last of them includes one of the finest natural conceits (so to speak) that 
passion ever produced—“ On pain of death let no man name death to me.” 

Brachiano now retires in agony to his chamber ; and the scene pre- 
sently changes to that place, where he is lying on a bed distracted, 
attended by Vittoria and others, and by two of the conspirators, disguised 
as priests. There is an exquisite little passage here, which we must stop 
to give. The seeming priests present a crucifix to Brachiano in his 
extremity :— 


Lod. Pray give us leave: attende, domine, Brachiano. 
Flam. See—see how firmly he doth fix his eye 

Upon the crucifix! 
Vit. O, hold it constant. 

Tt settles his wild spirit ; and so his eyes 

Melt into tears. 


It is almost impossible for those who are acquainted with Kean’s 
acting, to read this exquisite touch of natural pathos, without seeing (in 
imagination) that great artist embody it into a visible picture. 

At length, as Brachiano draws near his end, the conspirators, in their 
adopted character of priests, require the royal patient to be left alone 
with them ; and then occurs one of those terrible scenes, of which there 
are several in the drama of this age, where revenge is made to pursue its 
victim even beyond the limits of life. All but the murderers having 
left the chamber, they rouse Brachiano from the momentary trance into 
which he has fallen, and triumphantly proclaim to him, with every 
species of outrage and indignity, who it is that has given him his death ; 
they then, on his unexpectedly crying out for help, strangle him at once, 
and all this portion of the catastrophe is at an end. It only remains now, 
to inflict “ poetical justice” on Vittoria, and her still more guilty accom- 
plice and brother, Flamineo. The character of this latter is brought out 
with infinite force and effect in this concluding act of the play ; so much 
so, that it merits particular attention and examination, and would have 
obtained them from us if our limits had permitted. Vittoria, having 
been appointed by Brachiano sole Regent of the Dukedom during the 
minority of his son, Flamineo determines on instantly ascertaining in 
what manner she means to reward his services, by which, chiefly, she has 
been lifted to her present state and station. After a momentary feeling 
of remorseful pity, called forth by the sight of his mad mother, and the 
corse of his brother, killed by him in a quarrel, he continues :— 


“ This night I'll know the utmost of my fate ; 

T'll be resolved what my rich sister means 

To assign me for my services. I have lived 
Riotously ill, like some that live in court ; 

And sometimes, when my face was full of smiles, 
Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast. 
Oft gay and honoured robes those tortures try : 
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.” 


M.M. New Serics—Vou. VI. No. 32. Ss 


130 The Early English Drama: | [ Aveusr, 


He then sees a vision, which (though stage directions are given for 
its appearance, &c.) should no doubt be regarded as a creation of his own 
diseased imagination. On its disappearance—that is to say, on his mind 
recovering its wonted state—he goes on— 


“ He’s gone! and see, the skull and earth are vanished! 
This is beyond melancholy: I do dare my fate 

To do its worst. Now to my sister’s lodging, 

And sum up all these horrors: the disgrace 

The prince threw on me ; next the piteous sight 

Of my dead brother ; and my mother’s dotage ; 

And last, this terrible vision: all these 

Shall with Vittoria’s hounty turn to good, 

Or I will drown this weapon in their blood.” 


He then proceeds at once to the chamber of Vittoria, who receives him 
in the presence of her maid Zanche, a Moor. The two scenes which now 
ensue, are inferior to none which have preceded them, for force of passion, 
truth of character, and vigour and vividness of style. They are, in fact, 
written throughout with a wonderful degree of force and spirit ; and 
there is a vein of horrid lightness and jesting runs through them, which 
greatly adds to the effect as it proceeds, and adds a frightful horror to 
the catastrophe which ends the whole. 


VITTORIA and ZANCHE enter the chamber, followed by FLAMINEO. VITTORIA 
has a book in her hand. 


Flam. What! are you at your prayers? Give o’er. 

Vit. How, ruffian ? 

Flam. I come to you’bout worldly business: 
Sit down—sit down. Nay—stay, blouze! you may hear it; _ 

(To Zanche.) 

The doors are fast enough. 

Vit. Ha! are you drunk? 

Flam. Yes, yes—with wormwood water: you shall taste 
Some of it presently. 

Vit. What intends the fury? 

Flam. You are my lord’s executrix, and I claim 
Reward for my long service. 

Vit. For your service? 

Flam. Come, therefore ; here is pen and ink ; set down 
What you will give me. 

Vit. There! (She writes.) 

Flam. Ha! have you done already ? 
°Tis a most short conveyance. ' 

Vit. I will read it: "es 


“I give that portion to thee, and no other, 
* Which Cain groaned under, having slain his brother.” 


On this a most extraordinary scene follows. Flamineo presents two 
cases of pistols, and pretends that his talk of worldly reward was a mere 
fetch, and that his real business with her is one of still more vital interest 
to both of them. He declares that Brachiano had obtained a vow from 
him, that Vittoria should not survive him; and that he (Flamineo) had 
sworn not only to sacrifice her, but himself also, to the manes of th 
dead lord—and the rather, as it was little to be supposed that they 
be allowed to live after their protector’s death—he himself not bentigmalble 
to escape the malice of his enemies, even in the bosom of his own court. 


1828.) © The White Devil; or, Vittoria Corombona. 131 


On this Vittoria seems to change, and declares that she is ready to make 
the great and final sacrifice. It is a fine trait of her character, that 
though this declaration is a mere pretence, the terms in which she makes 
it, rise to the highest pitch of poetical beauty and passion :— 


“JT am now resolved. Farewell affliction ! 
Behold, Brachiano! I, that while you lived, 
Did make a flaming altar of my heart 

To sacrifice unto you, now am ready 

To sacrifice heart and all.” 


So profound is the power of deceit in woman’s heart, that she deceives 
even herself. She, and she alone, can “lie like truth.” Vittoria in 
this instance knows—nay, she knows that the persons whom she is ad- 
dressing know also—that Brachiano was never any more to her than a 
stepping-stone to her love of power and station: and yet she speaks of 
her love for him, as if it were a thing as much beyond measure as 
beyond dispute. 

Vittoria professes her readiness to die, and only desires that (being 
“ the weaker vessel”) Flamineo shall set her the example, which she 
swears to follow on the instant. Flamineo, in his turn, seems to be 
deceived by her protestations, and gives the pistols to Zanche, desiring 
her to direct two of them at him, and reserve the others for her mistress 
and herself. The Moor eagerly executes her office, and Flamineo falls ; 
and the women instantly run and trample upon him—loading him, while 
he yet lives, and seems to writhe in death’s agonies, with all the 
triumphant contempt that the seeming success of their trick over his 
entitles them to use :— Me ramthein 


Vit. What! are you dropt? 
Flam. Ym mix’d wita earth already. As you're noble, 
Perform your vows, and bravely follow me. 
Vit. Whither ?—to hell? 
Zan. To most assured damnation? 
Vit. O thou most cursed devil ! 
Zan..Thou art caught ay tynt cai 
Vit. In thme own engine. I tread the fire out 
That would have been my ruin. 
* * * * * * 


Think whither thou art going ! 
Zan, And remember what villanies thou hast acted ! 
Vit. This thy death 

Shall make me, like a blazing, ominous star, 

Look up and tremble. 
Flam. O, I am caught with a springe ! 


This kind of colloquy goes on a little longer, and then suddenly 
Flamineo starts up, and it appears that he is the successful tricker after 
all :— 


Flam. O cunning devils! Now I’ve tried your love, 
And doubled all your reaches! I am not wounded. 
The pistols held no bullets: *twas a plot 
To prove your kindness to me; and [ live 
To punish your ingratitude. 1 knew, 

e time or other, you would find a way 
To give me a strong potion O men 


S 2 


* 


132 ot The Early English Drama: [Auausr, 


That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted 

With howling wives, ne’er trust them ; they'll re-marry, 
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet—ere the spider 
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs ! 


What Flamineo’s further projects were, either of revenge or aggran- 
disement, does not now appear ; for the final catastrophe is at hand ; and 
there is no disputing that the characters, both of Vittoria and of Flamineo, 
rise higher as it falls on them, and that they do not quit the scene with- 
out leaving upon us a sort of fearful respect, mixed with the horror that 
their accumulated guilt excites. In the midst of the scene just described, 
Ludovico and Gasparo, the murderers of Brachiano, enter the chamber by 
force, and immediately proceed to accomplish their bloody errand. They 
begin by naming the name of Isabella, which instantly exposes who they 
are. At first, while their object and determination seem uncertain, 
Vittoria quails before them ; but the instant she finds that her death is 
at hand, she meets it as a queen and a bride. They first bind Flamineo 
to a pillar, and then proceed to their work of slaughter, as coolly and 
deliberately as it is pursued in the shambles. The effect of this on the 
reader is prodigious ; for the merely horrible and painful nature of it is 
in a great measure counteracted, by the mode in which all parties comport 
themselves. Ludovico, the chief agent throughout all this business of 
revenge, is (it should have been mentioned before) a desperate man, of 
good family, and once of good fortune, who had loved Isabella before 
she was wedded to Brachiano. This, and the insults that his miscon- 
duct and misfortunes have brought upon him, are the incentives to his 
conduct :— 


Lud. Sirrah ! you once did strike me: I'll strike you 
To the centre. 

Flam. Thou’lt do it like a hangman—a base hangman— 
Not like a noble fellow ; for thou see’st 
I cannot strike again. 

Lud. Dost laugh? 

Flam. Wow dst have me die as I was born—in whining? 

Gas. Recommend yourself to heaven. 

Flam. No; I will carry my own commendations thither. 

Lud. O, 1 could kill you forty times a-day, 

And use’t four years together !—’twere too little. 
Nought grieves, but that you're too few to feed _ 
The famine of our vengeance. What dost think on? 

Flam. Nothing—of nothing. Leave your idle questions ; 
Imi the way to study a long silence. 

To prate were idle: I remember nothing : 
There’s nothing of so infinite vexation 
As man’s own thoughts. 

Lud. O, thou glorious strumpet! ( To Vittoria. ) 
Could I divide thy breath from this pure air 
When’t leaves thy body, I would suck it up, 

And breathe’t upon a dung-hill. 

Vit. You my death’s man! 
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough ; 
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman. 

If thou be, do thy office in right form: 
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness. 

Lud. O, thou hast been a most prodigious comet ! 
But [ll cut off your train. Kill the Moor first. 

Vit. You shall not kill her first. Behold my breast ; 
I will be waited on in death; my servant 
Shall never go before me. 


1828.] The White Devil; or; Vittoria Corombona. 133 


Gas. Are you so brave? 
Vit. Yes; 1 shall welcome death 
As princes do some great ambassador : 
I'll meet thy weapon half way. 
Lud. Thou dost tremble. 
Methinks fear should dissolve thee into air. 
Vit. O, thou art deceived ; I am too true a woman : 
Conceit can never kill me. I'll tell thee what— 
I will not in my death shed one base tear ; 
Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear. 

Almost immediately after this, they receive their death at the hands of 
Ludovico and Gasparo; and there is nothing finer in its way than the 
manner in which they severally entertain it. Both falter for an instant, 
as the blood flows from them, and may be supposed to carry with it that 
which supports their great spirits ; but Flamineo recovers again the next 
instant, and dies as he has lived ; while Vittoria so meets her end, that 
we are compelled to remember who and what she is: still beautiful, 

- young, and a woman; and therefore, capable of living in a perpetual 
triumph over her guilt, but not of dying so:—“ My soul!” (she ex- 
claims )— 
« My soul, like to a ship in a black storm, 
: Is tost I know not whither.” 

But with Flamineo it is different. All his ambitious hopes of great- 
ness are dead within him ; and why, therefore, should he look on death 
itself, in any other light than asa relief from life ? 

Flam. I recover, like a spent 
Taper, for a flash, and instantly go out. 
’Tis well yet there’s some goodness in my death : 
My life was a black charnel. I have caught 
An everlasting cold: I have lost my voice 
Most irrecoverably! Farewell, glorious villains ! 
This busy trade of life appears most vain, 
Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain. 
Let no harsh flattering bells resound my knell— 
4 - Strike, thunder, and strike loud, to my farewell! (He dies.) 
__ In closing our notice of this play, we should not leave a just impression 
of it upon the reader’s mind, if we did not recur, for a moment, to its 
glaring and manifold faults ; faults, however, which are, for the most 
art, those of a man of genius. It is overloaded with matter, so as to be 
_ in many parts confused, and almost unintelligible. However admirable 
_ in separate scenes and characters, it is ill digested in the plot and general 
construction, so that it leaves little distinct impression as a consistent 
whole. And fnally, there is an off-hand indifference and carelessness, 
_ the frequent result of conscious natural powers and accumulated re- 
- sources, which unhappily prevents the employment of those powers and 
resources to that noble end which they might have attained. We are 
very apt to close a work of this description under feelings which, how- 
ever the manifestation of them might have satisfied the author, are any 
but gratifying to those who experience them. Instead of receiving 
delight and gratitude that which he has done for us, and resting 
with the contemplation of that, we presently put aside what is, 
ger, and dwell only upon what we imagine might have been, but is 
hving conquered for us a noble province in the realms of mind, 
we complain that it is not a kingdom ; and if it had been a Kingdom, we 
hould have been equally dissatisfied because it was not a world. 


* 


f 134 j [Aueust, 


TRUE STORY OF A STORM AT SEA. 


Ir is a vulgar error, but a very common one, to connect in the imagi~ 
nation the dangers and horrors of storms and shipwrecks with distant 
parts of the great ocean, and with large vessels alone; whereas more 
disasters of this kind happen in sight of our own coast than in all the 
rest of the world put together, and these chiefly to vessels scarcely 
bigger than those we are accustomed to see on our own inland waters. 

Again,—nothing is looked upon as more fearful in its nature, and 
excites a more general and intense interest, than an authentic relation of 
an event of this kind, provided it be but connected with sufficiently dis- 
tant and imposing objects; but to talk of a storm and a steam-boat — 
together, seems likely to excite ideas of the ridiculous. And yet the — 
truth probably is, that those who would witness the utmost horrors and : 
miseries which a scene of this nature is capable of exhibiting, must seek 
them under those very circumstances, in connection with which no one 
ever thinks of looking for them. Seamen on board a man-of-war as much 
expect storms as they do battles, and it is as much their duty to brave 
the dangers of the one as of the other ; and they do brave them, gallantly 
and cheerfully. It is a part of their business : they are paid to do it, and 
they do it. The truth is, that what we (“ who live at home at ease”) 
regard the mere imagination of with fear and trembling, they make a 
joke of in the very height of its reality. They think of it as nothing ; 
and, therefore, to them it is nothing :—or even if there happen to be one 
among them disposed, by nature or habit (or rather the want of habit), to 
make much of the circumstances in which he is placed—or, indeed, to 
see them in their true light—he cannot do it if he would. Cowardice 
and courage—or, in other words, fear and bravery—are absolutely 
incompatible with each other ; so much so, that they cannot even exist in 
each other’s presence ; but that of which there is the greatest sum pre- 
sent will inevitably convert the other into its like for the time being. — 
Man is your only true chamelion, in respect of changing his appearance 
according to that with which he is in contact. There is scarcely an 
instance on record of the merest raw recruit running away from his fel- 
lows, even in his first battle; and, on the other hand, there are as_ 
few instances of the bravest standing their ground alone. The mere — 
cry of “ Sauve qui peut!” lost Buonaparte the battle of Waterloo and _ 
his throne. “| 

The account that Iam now to lay before the reader, I offer to him 
as a simple narrative of facts, as far as it relates to others; and of feel- 
ings, as it regards myself. It is on its unembellished truth that the’ ~ 
interest of my description must depend ; for as a fiction it would possess 
none at all. If the reader will look upon the circumstances to be such as — 
may not improbably happen, or might have happened, to himself, he will _ 
read the account of them without any feeling of their being impertinent, 
at least,—which, if they were offered as a fiction, he could scarcely do ; 
since the writer has not felt himself justified in availing himself of any of 
those privileges of addition or embellishment which a writer of fiction hg 
at his command, and has a right to use in the manner that may best 
his purpose. i. 

In the latter part of the autumn of the year 1822, I was at P3 
had twice taken my place to come by the public conveyance to CazaTs; 
my return to London, and was twice induced to forego it by the mos 


1828. ] True Story of a Storm at Sea. 135 


trifling circumstances. I mention this to shew on what mere threads 
our personal safety hangs. Laying in bed half an hour too late one 
morning, and waiting half an hour for a friend the next, had nearly cost 
me my life. 

As it was during the prevalence of the equinoctial gales, I had in- 
tended to wait a day or two at Calais, if it seemed necessary, in order to 
judge of the weather, and not go unless it seemed likely to be favourable. 
But these delays at Paris induced me to determine on leaving Calais by 
the very first vessel that should quit the port after my arrival. This 
happened to be the Lord Melville steam-boat, which went direct to 
London,—leaving Calais at midnight of the day on which I had 
reached it. 

The reader must know that I am, to a certain extent, a believer in pre- 
sentiments and warnings ; that is to say, I believe that such things happen 
—that we feel them, and feel that they have some connexion with future 
events. That they have any such connexion, is another matter, and one 
on which I shall not presume to determine even for myself. I believe 
that I do not believe them to have any such connexion ; but this is the 
utmost I can be sure of: and this, like most other beliefs, is not very 
operative upon our feelings, whatever it may be on our actions. I once 
performed a journey of some thousand miles, in the teeth of what the 
elderly ladies of my acquaintance insisted were three distinct warnings 
that I ought not to undertake it: and nothing untoward happened. But 
I did not forget the warnings, nevertheless, until I got safe home. In 
like manner, I had a strong presentiment that I ought not to have left 
Calais that night of which I am now tospeak. Inthe first place, I have 
an utter abhorrence of a steam-boat, as a matter of taste; though I am 
perfectly , satisfied as to the invention being one of great utility, in the 
common acceptation of the term. But it could, in this instance, be of no 
utility to me ; therefore, I ought not to have run myself headlong against 
one of my strongest prejudices.——Secondly, it was Sunday night, and a 
very boisterous one, to boot ; and though I admit that Sunday is, in this 
‘country at least, the most eligible day for travelling of every kind, yet I 
‘never feel that it is so safe to travel on that day as any other! The 
“why ?’ I leave to be determined as the taste of the reader may direct. 
—In the third place—and this was the only unequivocal warning I 
received on this occasion—after I had got on board the vessel, and had 
began to feela very palpable uneasiness at the appearance of the weather 
(but without its having ever entered into my thoughts that, now I was 
once on board, it was possible to change my mind about going, or prac- 
_ ticable not to go if I had), a young man suddenly rushed into the cabin 
_ where I was, evidently in great haste and confusion, and insisted on some 
of the people getting him his luggage out of the hold, as he could not 
that night. The sailors assured him that it was impossible to get at 
, as it was stowed away quite at the farther end of the hold, under hun- 
eds of other trunks, &c. He clamoured and insisted to no purpose, 
ywever, till he pulled out his purse ; and then the case seemed altered: 
ley took up the floor of the cabin; got out what he wanted, after much 
ie and searching ; and he laid hands on it in the greatest delight, 
peared immediately. During the whole of this process, which 
itching attentively, I felt certain that this person had received 

Mtion of the kind of weather we were likely to have, and had 
mined not to go accordingly. I was as sure of this as if I had been 


te 


136 True Story of a Storm at Sea. [Aveusr, 


told it ; but, notwithstanding the information (for I felt it act upon me 
in the light of actual knowledge), I could not make up my mind to act 
upon zt. I felt that it would look so ridiculous not to go, now that I had 
determined to go, that I preferred risking my life (as I now unequivo- 
cally felt that I was doing) rather than appear to be afraid of risking it ; 
for I judged of what others would feel with respect to me by what I felt 
with respect to the person of whom I have been speaking. This may 
appear to some an instance of courage and determination; but to me it 
seems directly the reverse. I had probably as strong a feeling of the 
danger I was about to encounter as the other person, who had acquired 
what he considered to be positive knowledge’respecting it ; but I felt that, 
at all events, it was distant and uncertain ; whereas the ridicule that I 
felt I should be making myself the subject of, by changing my mind 
aud seeming to fear to go, was immediate and certain: and I therefore | 
chose to risk the one, rather than bear the other. Now the true courage; | 
if I mistake not, consisted in undergoing the certain evil, rather than 
risking the uncertain one ; just as, contrary to the common opinion, self- . 
destruction (when not committed under the influence of insanity) is the 
strongest possible proof of personal courage, ‘since it braves a certain 
evil, and that the most dreadful of all that is attendant on mortality, 
rather than risk what is at all events distant, and may possibly never be 
nearer: for I hold that self-destruction is never committed in order to 
escape from present pain, but only to avoid future. No man ever thought 
of destroying himself in order to get rid of the most acute bodily torture ; 
and no one can doubt that bodily torture, while it lasts, is infinitely | 
beyond mental——But I am departing from my intended course of mere 
narration, and am also anticipating that, in part. 
The Lord Melville was to start at midnight precisely ; but it was 
necessary to be on board much earlier than that time, in order to procure 
even a sitting in the cabin—as there were about eighty passengers expect- 
ed ; and the prospect of any of them passing the night on the deck was 
out of the question, as it had been raining and blowing the whole even- 
ing, and was “ pitch dark,” as the phrase is—so much so, that we could 
not find our way down to the quay without a lantern. I was on board 
by eleven, watching quietly, “ as is my wont,” all that was passing, with 
the feelings of a spectator, rather than a partaker in the scene ; and 
though I have been present at a great number of scenes of this kind, 
I never witnessed one that bore the least resemblance to this. It seemed 
as if the storm and confusion that took place afterwards were to be 
typified beforehand in this singular scene. After passing silently through 
the sleeping town, crossing the Grand Place, passing the gate and draw- 
bridge, all silently—tlistening, all the while, with a prospective ear, to 
the winds whistling through the narrow streets, and the rains beating 
upon the pavement—and thinking what a fool I must be to think of 
crossing the channel in such a night—and yet thinking, all the time 
that, if it were ten times worse, I should not have the resolution t 
change my mind, and not cross it,—I arrived at the spot where the ves; 
sel was moored, and found myself suddenly, and without knowing ho 
I had come there, in the midst of a scene, that put the winds and the . 
to silence in a moment, with its confusion of strange noises, and 
and sights ; for by the dim light of half-a-dozen lanterns, which 
to flit here and there of themselves, as if instinct with motion, 


1828.] True Story of a Storm at Sea. 137 


sion with any distinctness, would be to prove that it was nol a scene of 
confusion ; but the many who have witnessed the same kind of scene by 
daylight may gain some notion of this, by fancying every particular of 
the confusion “ worse confounded,” and the whole rendered ten times 
more perplexing and indescribable, by the absence of light, and the conse- 
quent necessity of every passenger to undergo, three or four times over, 
an examination as to his permission d’embarquer, his charges for ladder- 
men, commissionnaires, &c. - 

Tired of waiting in the pouring rain to watch the progress of what 
seemed to make no progress at all, I had just passed through my ordeal, 
and taken my seat quietly in the cabin, to see what was going forward 
there, when I heard an increased shouting over-head, and a splashing in 
the water, as if some one had fallen in; and, on going to ascertain the 
cause, I found that two French sailors had fallen over the side of the 
quay, and were struggling for their lives in the deep water ; while the 
scene connected with the embarking of the remaining passengers seemed 
to be not at all affected by this accident—the douanniers gabbling forth 
their demands for the pass-tickets; the commissionnaires trying to extract 
their ten-sous-pieces twice over, in virtue of the darkness ; and the 
English sailors sitting on the sides of their vessel till it came to their 
turn to work, as if nothing extraordinary had happened: and, a few 
minutes afterwards, on a lady asking one of the latter (who had come 
and seated himself quietly on the stairs of the cabin, out of the rain) 
what was the matter above, and whether any body had fallen into the 
water? he said “ No, it was only two Frenchman !’”” 

As a proof that the true sang froid is not confined to us, of the north, 
it may be worth mentioning, that, a few minutes after the above-named 
accident had happened, one of the two men who had been the subject 
of it came down into the cabin, dripping wet as he was, and peered 
about among the passengers till he found out one who, he said, had not 
paid him his ten-sous-piece ; and, after getting his claim satisfied, he 
walked away, and stood on the side of the quay till the vessel left it, as 
if nothing particular had happened. 

We had scarcely left the port before it was easy to see that the prospect 
before us was any thing rather than favourable ; and, in an hour’s time, 
the wind had increased to a hurricane, and the rain fell in torrents. I 
believe I was the first among the passengers to discover the situation 
we were in,—probably in virtue of my before-named presentiment on the 
subject ; for it was an hour after this before any symptoms of fear were 
shewn, even among the females. There was an almost dead silence pre- 
served in the cabin ; probably from a natural disinclination to hear our 
own insignificant voices mingle with any of the really awful and impres- 
sive sounds of external nature: the most determined of Parisian prat- 
tlers will scarcely be found venting his gay nothings beneath the solemn 
aisles of a wind-swept fir-grove, or beside the ever-sounding ocean. But 

till there was no appearance of actual fear. There was an uneasy, 
anxious look on the countenances of all present ; as if they felt an indis- 
notion that there was something wrong; but they did not seem 
able of trusting themselves to think whal it was. That they were 
y in the open sea at midnight, in a storm, was a thing not be 
At of. They were, however, very soon to learn that this was 
noting more than the truth. It is curious to observe the manner in 
vhich we are affected by slight circumstances, when great ones seem too 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 32. T 


138 True Story of a Storm at Sea. [Aveust, 


great to come near, or be comprehended by us. They had heard, for an 
hour past, the winds roar, with a sound, or convocation of sounds, that they 
could none of them before have formed a conception of. They had felt 
the vessel pitch about upon the water like a shell, and_ the water knock 
against her sides as if it would beat them together. But these kind of 
effects they had been prepared for, from seeing, when they came on 
board, that it was “a rough night.” They saw nothing to frighten them in 
all this. But when, by a sudden blow of a wave on a particular part of 
the vessel, they heard and saw the crockery-ware, from the steward’s 
room, come rattling about their ears, I shall never forget the effect that 
took place. There was not one—man, woman, or child—that did not 
start from their places, and utter some exclamation ; some of pure fright 
and horror—some of anxious and eager inquiry—and some of indistinct 
fear, disguised under the form of an attempt at joke. From this moment 
the whole scene was totally changed, and all saw, or fancied they saw, 
the danger that awaited them. There was no more silence ; for the 
feeling of imminent danger destroys or counteracts all the impressiveness 
of the sounds or sights that may be connected with it. Before, they had . 
listened with a silent, though unconscious homage, to the voice of nature, 
shouting in the winds, and thundering in the waves ; because they did 
not feel that those sounds were fraught with peril. But now, their own 
personal safety was at stake ; and all other feelings, conscious or uncon- 
scious, were in a moment merged in that. If a water-spout had been 
passing, or an eruption of Mount Etna had been in sight, they would not 
have moved from their places to witness it. It was two hours after this 
before I was at all satisfied of the danger we were in; for, though I 
knew that the passage from Calais to the mouth of the river was an 
extremely dangerous one in bad weather, yet I could not discover any 
thing particularly suspicious in the looks of the captain and sailors— | 
though I could observe a good deal of whispering between them, and a 7 
restless and anxious air about the former, that was not exactly calculated 
to put one’s fears at rest. Meanwhile, the wind and rain seemed to 
increase, if possible ; and I had retired to my place in the cabin, close to 
the bottom of the steps, that I might occasionally go on deck,—when the 
captain came down, in rather a hurried manner, with the binnacle-lamp 
in his hand—which had been extinguished ;—and, while he was lighting 
it in the steward’s room, I had an opportunity of hearing part of what 
passed between them; which had the effect of completely setting my fears 
at rest ; that is to say, satisfying them that they were not without good 
reason on their side—which before I had very much doubted, and, con- 
sequently, had not permitted them to take any hold of me at all, but 
merely to flutter restlessly about me. What I learned from the talk 
between the steward and the captain was this :—that we were not far 
from the Goodwin Sands—that the wind was right in our teeth, and 
prevented the engine from making a yard of way against it—and that it 
would not do to go on ;—that, accordingly, the captain had determined 
to abandon his course to London—turn the vessel’s head—and make for 
Dover instead. For the captain of a packet (and he a Scotchman) t 
determine on giving up the profits of seventy or eighty passengers, 
two-and-thirty shillings each, and try to land them at Dover inste, 
London, where he could only demand half-a-guinea, was a very. 
ing. proof of the state of things! 
It is perhaps worth remarking, that this certain information as to 0 


er te. eee 


1828.] True Story of a Storm at Sea. 139 


danger (for such I considered it), so far from increasing the uneasiness 
that I had felt for the last two or three hours, completely set it at rest. 
Until now, I had been hampered between an indistinct and phantom- 
like apparition of danger, and a feeling that nothing of the kind 
existed ; and my mind was kept floating about, backwards and forwards, 
between the two, without being able to dwell with either. But now, I 
knew what I had to expect, and felt that the best thing I could do was to 
prepare for the worst ; and, accordingly, I did so, as coolly as ever I did 
any thing in my life. Whether there actually was imminent danger, or 
not, is not the question ; I felt sure that there was, and was prepared to 
meet the consequences of it as collectedly as if there had been nothing 
terrible in them. That death was at hand, I believed as firmly as any 
one can believe it who is in good health, and does not see the blow of the 
executioner actually impending over him; but, instead of being stirred 
and agitated by this belief, I was entirely calmed by it, and will confi- 
dently say that I never felt, much less uttered, a single impatient mur- 
mur. I was prepared (much more fully than I had been before) to watch 
for, and make use of, any means of safety that might offer themselves 
when it came to the worst ; and, in default of these, I was prepared to 
bear that worst as I might. I was prepared, also, in the mean time, to 
watch all that was taking place before me, with the eye cf a mere spec- 
tator ; and I did this, nearly in the same manner that I should if I had 
not been involved in the consequences. I noted the words and counte- 
nances of all present, and endeavoured to trace there what was passing in 
their minds, as if I had been looking at a picture ; and I more than once 
remember to have congratulated myself on having been thrown into such 
remarkable circumstances—partly as a matter of experience and curio- 
sity—but chiefly from a feeling of self-respect at the manner in which I 
found that I was capable of conducting myself under them. I had often 
thought—* What would I give to be in a storm at sea, but without the 
danger attending it ’’—And here I was, in one at last—not without the 
danger, it is true—but I did not choose to think of that at the moment ; 
and besides, it might pass away. But the fact of my being actually in a 
storm was, at all events, certain; and I remember sophisticating with 
myself in this way, till I was more than half pleased at what had hap- 
pened. Let me not forget to state, however, that for one moment, when 
i thought death was really at hand, I did feel a pang not to be forgotten, 
but not to be described. The storm was at its height, when, at a momen- 
tary interval of silence in the great cabin, and just as I was looking 
towards the folding-doors of a smaller inner cabin, where a few beds 
were placed, and which was entirely occupied by female passengers, a 
sudden shout and scream was heard in that part of the vessel; and, one 
of the folding-doors bursting open, the female attendant of the vessel 
rushed out in apparent terror, and exclaimed—“ The dead lights! the 
dead lights !” 

I shall never forget the effect of these portentous sounds (for they 
were, indeed, under the circumstances, nothing less,) on all who heard 
them without knowing their import, and even on some who did know 
it. I, for one, if I had given myself a moment to think, should have 
that the “ dead lights” meant nothing more than those wooden 
lutters which they place outside the cabin-windows, to preserve them 
hen a rough sea is likely to beat against them. But I recollected 
nothing but the sounds themselves—not their import ; and, preceded as 

T2 


140 True Story of a Storm at Sea. [Avueust, 


they were by a universal scream of terror from the spot whence they 
issued, I confess that they struck upon my senses like a death-warrant. 
—< The dead lights !”—I thought the woman was kindly giving us 
notice that our time was come, by letting us know either that some 
frightful signal had been hoisted on the shore, to warn us that we were 
on the point of going on the rocks; or else that the captain had ordered 
a signal of distress to be hoisted on board the vessel ; and that, in either 
case, the signal in question was called “the dead lights.” 

Enough, however, of my own feelings for the present ; and let me 
endeavour to describe a few of the indications by which I was enabled to 
judge of those of others. And, first, let me speak of one of the sweetest 
visions of beauty that ever presented itself toa waking, or even a dream~ 
ing fancy. It appeared that the occasion of the female attendant having 
called for these “ dead lights,” was that a sea had burst in the window 
of the little cabin where the five or six beds were, and had nearly filled 
the place with water; and the occupiers of this place now, for the first 
time, made their appearance in our part of the vessel. The woman had 
scarcely uttered these words, which caused so much consternation among 
us, than the other folding-door at which she stood flew open, and in rushed 
half-a-dozen females, drenched with wet, and apparently half dead with 
fear and illness. I shall not particularly describe any of these, for ter- 
ror is, at its best, the most humiliating and ungainly of passions ; and, 
when it is acting at its height, on common minds in common persons; 
produces effects no less disgusting than painful. But there was one per- 
son—not among them, but following them—the sight of whom displaced 
for a time all other objects and thoughts from my mind. It was a young 
creature, apparently about fourteen years of age, who came drooping out 

.from the inner cabin, and looking, as I have thought ever since, like an 
angel dropped by accident from some other sphere ; or still more, per- 
haps, like the vision of Margaret, moving among the horrors of the Hartz 
mountains, in the Faust of Goéthe. I think, in the “ History of Peter 
Wilkins,” there is a description of one of the skyey creatures that he : 
becomes acquainted with, who falls into the sea, and is rescued by him. 
She reminded me partly of this, too; and also of Kailyal, when she is (| 
rescued by her father from the river, into which she had fallen in endea- 
vouring to escape from the persecuting rage of Kehama. Her clothes ‘ 
clung to her sylph-like form, as if they were a part of it ; and the water ¢ 
dripped from her hair upon the ground as she walked. She was alone, ¢ 
with no one near her ; and, passing gently along to a vacant place which 
some one in their terror had left open for her, she seated herself, without 
saying a word, and looked—as I never saw any one look before, and as 3 
I shall not pretend to describe, except by negatives. Her face seemed B/ 
no more capable of expressing fear, or pain, or impatience, than a . 
flower can ; but, like a plucked flower, she merely drooped, and grew 
paler and paler, and hung down her sweet head, and seemed to be fading 
and fading away, as if she was slipping, willingly and imperceptibly, _ 
from life into death. There she sat, on the same spot, without moving © 
or speaking. during nearly all the rest of the storm; and there I sat, 
nearly opposite to her, turning every now and then from the sights of 
pitiful and yet pitiable weakness and terror that were about me, to dri 
in a draught of that calm composure which seemed to breathe from h 
like a halo ; and which I can compare to nothing but that air of sile 
solemn sweetness, which seems to pour, like an emanation, from some of 


1828.) — True Story of a Storm at Sea. 14] 


the old monumental statues that are placed on tombs, to represent the 
heavenly repose of the inhabitant beneath. 

The only other persons whose conduct, on that (to me) memorable 
night, I can recur to the recollection of, without calling up mingled 
feelings of grief and shame for the weakness and folly of poor human 
nature, were a new married couple (such at least I judged them to be), 
who occupied a situation close to that where I was placed during the 
greater part of the night ; and even of these the husband would, I con- 
fess, have excited little or no interest in me, but for that which was, as 
it were, reflected on him from the wife: for in himself he appeared to 
be little better than a cold, lifeless statue, awakened into something of 
an artificial existence by the warmth of her love for him. Not that he 
did not seem to feel for her all the love that he was capable of feeling for 
any thing ; but his cold, still, statue-like, yet intense expression of face, 
seemed to indicate that in him “ passion had raved itself to rest.” 
About himself, and all things but her, he seemed totally indifferent ; 
and even his feelings towards her seemed to be so entirely under his 
own command—at least so far as regarded any outward manifestation 
of them—that, in speculating on the probable conduct of the different 
persons about me, in case of the worst, I had said to myself—*< That 
man evidently loves his wife better than any thing else in the world, 
or than all things else; and yet he will see her sink into the deep with 
an unmoved countenance, and hear the last gasping sound of her voice 
without uttering an answering exclamation ; and, supposing the spot 
where we are to be lost should be one from which there is no hope 
of rescue or escape, he will yield her up without an effort to save 
her, and will wait till it-is his turn to follow her, with the same unmoved 
look that he would follow her funeral to the grave.” Luckily, I had 
no means of verifying this prediction: we will, therefore, turn at once to 
the lady. 

Though altogether different in appearance from the young girl I have 
described above, she was scarcely less beautiful, and even more interest- 
ing, on account of the circumstances which were acting upon her. She 
appeared to be in an extremely delicate state of health, and was reclining 
at her full-length on one of the black horse-hair mattresses provided for 
the purpose—for there were no beds any where but in the small inner 
cabin I before named. Her husband was seated on the same mattress, 
at her feet ; and in this position (except that the husband two or three 
times went up the cabin-stairs for a moment to look at the weather) they 
remained the whole night. But what I would more particularly wish to 
describe (if I were able) was the face of this lady ; for if ever the poetry 
of true passion was written on a human countenance in characters not to 
be passed over or mistaken, it was there. I must insist that 


nn’ {here 18 2 Skill 
tty To read the mind’s observance in the face ;” 


; rather, there is an instinctive feeling that supersedes the necessity of 
ill, and that nothing but artificial circumstances can destroy, or render 
ant. For those who are susceptible of natural impressions, to look 
this lady’s face was to see delineated there the history and the 
heey blended of an all-absorbing passion—a passion that had been 
he one moving principle of her past life, and was to remain so through 
1e future, in spite of all chance or change in other things—a passion 


142 True Story of a Storm at Sea. [Aveusrt, 


capable, as all true and deeply-seated passion is, of turning all things to 
food and nutriment, and yet, in the absence of all things, of sustaining 
itself alone and undieted. The effect of it, in the present instance, was 
most singular, and not to be understood or believed but by those who have 
penetrated into some of the recesses, and fathomed the depths, of that 
mystery of mysteries—the human heart, as it exists in the female bosom. 
Her face was “as a book, where you might read strange matters ;” but 
matters scarcely at all connected with the strange scene and circum- 
stances about her: or, rather, it was as a glass, where you might see 
reflected, not what was before it—which any glass could have reflected— 
but things which itself alone was capable of detecting. She looked in 
her husband’s face ; and as that was, such was her’s: not as that might 
have seemed to others, but as the piercing glance of passion enabled her 
to see it, through the external mask which it wore. The raving of the 
winds—the beating of the rains—the heaving of the waters—above all, 
the scene immediately about her—the wretched, terror-stricken inmates 
of the cabin—all this was as nothing to her ; except that, now and then, 
she would turn round her sweet, calm face, to speak a word of comfort 
(which she did not feel) to a poor creature who lay near her, weeping, 
raying, and raving by turns, in the very madness of womanish fear. 
he tempest and its terrors were (directly and in themselves) indifferent 
things toher. Even the “ dead lights” moved her not at all: she alone, . 
of all those who heard the sound, did not speak, or move from her place ; ; 
she only turned, with a more than usually eager and inquiring look, to ; 
the face of her husband ; and, finding nothing there to increase her fears, ; 
she placed her hand in that which he just then offered to her, listened 
silently to something that he said, and resumed her look and air of 
entire trust and dependence on him. It was of him alone that she thought, | 
and of herself only as connected with him. I verily believe that she 
thought death was at hand, and not to be avoided ; but death was to her 
a word that had hitherto meant nothing but separation from him ; and if 
it was now to come, and xot separate her from him, it was as nothing. If 
he did not dread it, why should she ?—and, if they were to die together, 
what was death but a consummation of life? So entire an absence did 
there seem to be of all fear, but that of parting from him, that, when the 
apparently increased cause of terror to which I have just alluded pre- 
sented itself, and he in consequence held out his hand for her to place her’s 
within it, a faint smile passed all over her pale face (seeming to rise out 
of the soft depth of her eyes, and spread itself all about, till it faded 
away round her still, patient mouth), which seemed to say, in the very 
spirit of the doating Moor, “If it were now to die, *twere now to be 
most happy!” I was confirmed in this view of her feelings by what 
happened shortly afterwards. The husband, as I have said above, had 
two or three times left his place at her side for a moment, to go on deck, 
but had almost instantly returned; but, just after the consternation 
caused by the “ dead lights” had in some degree ceased, he went up. — 
again, and did not return for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At first, she 
took no notice of his stay—merely directing her look to the spot oar a 


she would first see him on his return; but, when he had stayed two or — 
three minutes, she began to look anxious and restless ; then, as his 
was prolonged, her countenance put on an expression of disturbed ea, 
ness, which I had scarcely thought it capable of; and, at length, her 
hitherto tranquil demeanour was entirely thrown aside. She rose from 


£ 


i 


* 


“¥ 


) 


1828.] True Story of a Storm at Sea. 143 


where she was lying—called loudly and impatiently on the “ steward” 
—and, when he came to her, desired him to “ see for her husband ;” and, 
on the man professing not to know which was “her husband,” she in an 
instant gave a description of him, which enabled the man to go on deck, 
and seek him out among many more who were there. I have ever since 
thought this a fine example of the power of passion. It had rendered one 
image so exclusively present to her imagination, that, in the midst of 
her terrors, she could strike off a picture of it that an utter stranger could 
not fail to recognize the moment he compared it with the original. The 
husband now returned, and, at the same instant, the terror and agitation 
that had possessed her during his absence vanished ; a half-smiling con- 
fidence once more spread itself over her features ; and all was as before. 
But I must draw this long narrative to a close. For two hours before 
what I have just described took place, we had been beating off Dover 
harbour, immediately before its mouth, but with too little water to think 
of attempting to enter. The day now broke; but the wind remained 
unabated, and blew directly off the land. Here we remained, beating 
up against it, by means of the steam, for two hours longer, but without 
daring to attempt an entrance. The shore was, even at this early hour, 
lined with the inhabitants, watching (as we thought) the event of any 
assistance that might be needed by us; and we every moment expected 
to see some of their pilot-boats put off for that purpose. Alas! we little 
knew the habits of feeling that are engendered by commercial specula- 
tion—especially among the inhabitants of a sea-port town. We shortly 
after (thanks to our steam!) entered the harbour, and landed safely ; 
and, on my way to town the next day, I learned (from the very best 
authority—for it was one of the interested parties), what the reader will 
scarcely believe to be true (and what I should not dare to assert on any 
ground but the avowal of it to my own ears)—that the inhabitants 
of Dover were actually watching our fate from their shore, anxiously 
expecting—not to say hoping—that we should have gone down before 
their eyes! And my informant candidly confessed to me (on my 
inquiring why they did not send out boats to us), that it was probable, 
had we gone down, the last sounds we should have heard would have 
been shouts of exultation from the shore!! Does the reader divine— 
why ?—Because we were ina London steam-boat !_ And nothing could be 
more natural, as it seemed, to my informant, the stage-coachman who 
drove me to town.  “ Send out boats to your assistance! Why, Sir, the 
new steamers between London and Calais take above four hundred 
pounds a month from the coach-masters alone on this road!” This was 
unanswerable ; so I said no more—but silently blessed my stars that I 
had been in a steamer, and determined never to set my foot in one again ; 
since, though it had in fact saved us, by keeping us off the rocks (which 
I firmly believe nothing else would), yet it might have lost us, by 
depriving us, in case we had needed it, of that assistance which we 
should otherwise have had offered to us at the risk of the offerers’ lives, 


% 


f 144 j [Aveusr, 


A NIGHT AT VENICE. 


TuosE who have been at Venice in the month of September, know 
tolerably well that it is not, on many accounts, to be then desired as a 
place of residence The season is changeful and gloomy, the theatres are 
poor, the gaities feebly supported ; but these are not the arguments that 
weigh most with an experienced man. 

I was at the Leone Bianco, in most respects a well-appointed inn, and 
furnished. with comforts not always to be met with by the continental 
traveller. If the “‘ Osservazione” be credible, which one may read in 
monotonous succession in the “ Libro dei Forestieri,” the accommodations: 
are excellent, the waiters attentive, the charges moderate, &c. &¢. &c. ; 
but being a plain man, I had only my English notions about me, and 
found these encomiums rather too broad. It cannot justly be said 
wherein the defect lay: some may imagine the cookery to have been 
meagre ; some will find a flaw in the civility; but I am fanciful, and 
object to other matters. 

I went to my repose on the first night of my arrival, half intoxicated 
with the romance of the place. The music of the gondoliers, and splash- 
ing of their oars, lulled me into a pleasant sleep, and nothing was in my 
head but the glory of her doges, the beauty of her daughters, galleys, 
painters, Tasso, Lord Byron, and Kean’s Shylock. Here were the 
elements of a dozen good dreams at least ; but even one was denied to 
me. I thought that I was gliding along the serpentine canals of this 
great city, which somehow or other were nothing else all the while than 
my own blood vessels. I paddled away, dexterously turning the corners 
of my sharp bones, and wondering, as I went, at the fair edifices of 
muscle in the foreground. Methought mine own left ear was built by 
Palladio, and I construed my “ innocent nose” into the bridge of sighs. 
I heard some music. Was it a stanza of the Gerusalemme? No, ’tis 
too regular ; or a Barcarola? No, ’tis too dull. Still it follows, and 
becomes at. each stroke of the oar shriller and nearer. I cannot escape 
it; the drawling sound sings close beside me; yes, even within my 
reach! I started up, and killed a mosquito just settling on my cheek. 

~ Comforted now, at any rate, with the assurance that my enemy was 
foiled, it was with but a single exclamation of ill-humour that I turned 
myself round, and dosed once more. ’ 

Methought I was Doge Foscari, at the siege of Constantinople. | It 
struck me as particularly odd, that I should find myself there; and I did 
not at all enjoy it. Why I was blind, I could not guess; nor saw I any 
reason for fighting. There was plenty of carnage on all sides, and I was 
quite enthusiastic. I yushed up the wall, halloomg and cheering my 
men; but I could not conceive how it all came about ; and speculating in 
my own proper person, I thought the Venetian senate very weak to put 
me at the head of their affairs. What execution I did with my sabre! 
How I astonished the Moslemites, and myself too, by my intrepidity ! 
I kicked, plunged, and tumbled into the very midst of my enemies, and 
in a particular explosion of my fury, found myself rolling on the ground, _ 
with a dozen of the same winged persecutors buzzing about my nose! 

Now, for the first time, was I struck with the real cause of my afflics 
tions. There was no mosquito-net to my bed. Unused to such pect ak 4 


: 


I had neglected to select one so defended, and thus had the prospect 4 
a long night to be passed in a similar state of suffering. In vain were — 


1828.] A Night at Venice. 145 


the most approved expedients adopted. I smothered myself first under 
my sheet, then under my silk handkerchief. I drew my night-cap 
over my entire visage, then ensconced my upper part under a band-box ; 
but it was of no avail. I arose weary and feverish, and walked towards 
the window, which the sagacious servant had closed at sunset, as a sure 
specific against the entrance of these owl-light visitors. In my way to 
open it, my ear was caught by a heavy smash, as of crockery or glass, 
in the adjoining apartment. This was followed by a loud and unequivo- 
cal oath, uttered in broad English. In sympathy of suffering, I meekly 
asked what might be the matter? upon which a voice exclaimed in 
answer, “ What the deuce! You are at that door now, are you? And 
you want to know what’s the matter? Allow me to ask you the same 
question, for I’m getting impatient at all this clatter of yours?” 

I answered the stranger, and my fellow-lodger—for such he was— 
that I could not guess to what he alluded. 

« What!’ cried he, “ then wasn’t it you who thumped at the other 
door just now ; and so, dragged me from my bed, to the eternal destruc- 
tion of this crockery-ware, and damage of my shin ?” 

« Certainly not,” I replied. 

« Then,” said he, “ the devil, or some of his imps, are abroad to-night, 
destroying my peace and the king’s, by the most wanton clamour I ever 
swore at in my life.” And these words were no sooner uttered, than a 
gentle tap was distinctly heard—even by myself—at the outer door of the 
stranger’s room. Our chambers had a common wall, and door of commu- 
nication, and the unexplained noise was on the farther side, along which 
ranacorridor. My neighbour challenged the disturber, without effect, and 
his nerves began to be a little shaken. A conference was then proposed, and 
having got into his room through the common door, I recommended admis- 
sion of the visitor, and a trial of his character in proper presence. My new 
friend seemed sore puzzled how to receive this proposal. There was 
much hemming and haughing, but at length, with a mutual determina- 
tion to stand by each other, the door was opened. What sight greeted 
us then! By the feeble light of a night-lamp carried in our visitor’s 
hand, we could discern the figure of a female, clothed apparently in 
nothing beyond her bedroom garments, save as to her head, which was 
covered with a bonnet and long black veil. We started with much sur- 
prise and something like terror. Irritated and excited as I had been by 
my broken sleep, it was no wonder that my spirits had lost some little of 
their robustness ; and my companion had made up his mind to a guest 
of so opposite a description, as to be even more startled than myself by 
the apparition. She put her finger slowly to her lips, and pointing along 
the corridor, advanced two or three steps from the door-way. We stood 
in amazement, and our hesitation seemed to disappoint her, for returning 
to her original post, she laid her hand, it might be rather forcibly, on my 
friend’s arm, and urged him on in the direction she had pointed out. A 

thousand times more forcibly did he grasp my wrist, determined at any 
‘rate to have a sharer in his perils ; for my own part I could not conjec- 
ture the secret springs of this mystery. At times I thought our guide 
was a bodyless phantom, then I feared she might be a maniac, but more 
often I made it out to be entirely a dream, and that her whole existence 
ha the fabrication of a mind teased and stimulated by the agency of 
p e p green mosquito. I rubbed my eyes stoutly, and was con- 
__vineed of my being awake. Upon this, I was proceeding to address the 
M.M. New Series—Vou. V1. No.32. U 


146 A Night at Venice. . [Aveusr, 


stranger, when my attention was arrested by an admonitory kick from 
my nervous fellow-martyr, who had now no other instrument left to him. 
After this piece of counsel, we followed the spirit, and paced along one 
or two passages, and, I think, descended a flight of stairs, when, on a sud- 
den, the dusky cavalcade stopped at a door numbered—(good genius! 
how had I courage to read !)—numbered 26. It was opened by the sha- 
dowy thing in a chemise, and courteously thrown back, till her two 
silent companions were fairly withinit. Then, putting down her lamp, 
she closed and locked the door, took out the key, and arranging a couple 
of chairs, indicated to us that they were to be occupied by ourselves. We 
mutely sat down, and the mysterious personage, as if satisfied by our 
obedience, drew aside the curtain of a large bed that almost filled the 
room, and without more ado, getting between the bed-clothes, withdrew 
herself from our sight, by closing the curtain as before. 

We were left in a very considerable dilemma. Sitting side by side in 
a strange apartment, ourselves strangers, and in a costume not much 
adapted to an introductory interview, two more perplexed men did not 
exist. What could this goblin be? Or was it no goblin, but a mere 
imagination. I gently smacked my cheek, but no mosquito was there. 
Then whatever it might be, how were we to escape? We stared at each 
otherin mute dismay, and I suppose I must have looked like an especial fool, 
if my companion’s countenance bore any likeness to my own. We were 
oscillating between the absurdity and the suspense of our situation, and 
though we dared not move or talk, or even breathe stoutly, we could not 
but smile at the idea, that heroes of such a romance should be sans= 
culottes. The state was not one to be long endured. No sound dis- 
turbed the quiet of that sanctuary into which the spirit had entered. 
Occasionally, indeed, a stirring, as of mortal breathing, or a displaced 
coverlid, awed us into good behaviour, and checked our plans for self- 
emancipation. But for the most part, all was still and awful as a church- 
yard. We looked at each other wistfully, and at last one had the courage 
to incline his head towards effecting a closer neighbourhood. This was 
followed by sundry indistinct sounds—the attempt to dwindle a whisper 
down to its lowest possible minuteness, and these ventures being made 
with impunity, four distinct syllables were at length out-breathed :— 

« What shall we do?” 

This effort was succeeded by a “ hush!” and a long pause ; but our 
little tricks being innocent or unnoticed, we took the heart to commune 
still farther on the subject. 

“Is she a ghost?” 

“ Can’t be, sure.” 

«* Did you see her face ?” 

« No.” 

«« What do you think of her ?” 

«* What do you ?” 

This question was tormenting. It could not be answered in a word, 
and we had not many to throw away. The next matter of doubt was 
considered. 

« Do we stay here all night?” 

“ T hope not.” 

“ But how get away?” 

“ Is the door fast ?’’ ade 

“ She has the key.” 


1828.] A Night at Veniee. 147 


« Humph !” 

« Humph !” 

A pause again. 

Still no noise disturbed the current of our counsels. The curtains fell 
firmly to the ground, and the gleams from the night-lamp darted steadily 
on the various furniture of the room. But yet it was very long before 
the only method which could ensure our retreat was agreed upon. I am 
persuaded that an entire hour had passed away before we could resolve 
on seeking for the key where we thought it was to be found. At last 
the resolution was taken. We left our seats, and advancing on tiptoe, 
stole towards the bed. The light was flickering, and almost exhausted ; 
we had to grope our way, and, caught by some obstacle, the foot of my 
companion slid noisily along the floor. A gentle voice instantly called 
out in most melodious Italian, and hastily inquired who was there. 
Somewhat assured by this hearing, I answered that there were indeed 
persons in the chamber, but most anxious to get out of it; that they 
would never have entered it, had they dared to stay away, nor have 
remained an instant, had they been permitted to depart. 

The same voice, but in more timid accents, again asked what prevented 
our leaving the room? 

We answered that the door was fastened. 

“ Who can have done so?” cried she, impatiently. 

“ I know not,” I replied, “ unless, indeed, it were yourself, lady ?” 

_ “ Do not sport with me, Sir,” returned the gentle voice ; “ but tell me 
truly, how long you may have been here ?” 

“ Somewhere between one and two hours.” 

-“ And wherefore did you come ?” ; 

“ Because we were compelled—that is, induced by some one, whose 
name or description we cannot give you, inasmuch as we do not know 
Ct ad 

“ And I pray you, Sir, what then became of your conductor ?” 

_ “ Why, to tell the plain truth, she, or it, withdrew behind that bed- 
curtain, and, to the best of our belief, there remained: so that you see, 
lady, there was an excuse for the conjecture that you might possibly 
know something about this matter.” 

“ Sirs,” answered she, “ you are trifling with me ; as you are gentle- 
men, I beseech you leave the room, or be assured I will wake up the 
house without farther loss of time.” 

“ Madam,” I rejoined, in as persuasive a tone as possible, “ nothing can 
be more serious than I am, when I assure you that the person by whom 
we were guided thither, retired into that bed, after having locked us up 

: in this apartment, very much against our inclination. And if you want 

_ a farther testimony, you will, I doubt not, find there the very key of 

____ that very door, the possession of which we at this moment so intensely 
covet.” 

We heard the lady turn round, and utter a half-subdued exclamation. 
s She then threw something on the floor, at the same time addressing us 
ag with a more confirmed tone, in the following words :— 

“ Gentlemen, you are right. I ask your pardon for having doubted 
our assertions. here is the key, and I entreat you, as you are men of 
onour, not to divulge this story while you remain in Venice; for busy 

gues would make it scandalous, and no one would believe that my 
poor sister was subject to sleep-walking.”’ 


ab 


JEVAH. 
U 2 


[.-148 J °- [Avueusr, 


SLANG DICTIONARIES. 


OF slang dictionaries, more than of any other kind of work, it may 
be said, that their glory is transitory. If we know that, in language in 
general, many words are born, many revive, many decay, many entirely 
die, how much more true is it of those repositories of the current phra- 
seology of a society which, in its own generation, is obscure, and in the 
next is forgotten. The language of the vulgar perishes as speedily as the 
fashions of the great, and the succeeding Slang-whanger, as our trans- 
atlantic relations call the proficient inthis dialect, looks upon the quips and 
quiddities of his predecessor with as much contempt as the ton leader of 
to-day looks upon the cut of the coat or the tie of the cravat, that ten 
years before conferred renown upon the ci-devant king of the dandies. 

Yet, it is worth while to look over these books, little available as they 
are for literary purposes. We have heard the study of their dialect 
commended, on the ground of its advantage in understanding the col- 
loquial expressions of our dramatic writings, or the occasional escapades 
of our classical authors, in prose and verse; but we fear that its merits 
here are not very important. The language of Nym, &c. in Shakspeare, 
of the heroes of the Beggar’s Bush, a few stray sentences in Fielding or 
Smollett, and, of late years, some half dozen in Moore or Byron, would 
be found to exhaust the passages in which we should feel any necessity 
to look into a canting dictionary. A glossary of a couple of pages would 
amply suffice to explain the “terms of art,” in this list. We must de- 
fend it upon other grounds. In the first place, these dictionaries can 
be so managed as to be the vehicles of much wit and humour ; and, 
secondly, they frequently afford no small assistance to the antiquary in 
tracing out habits or manners of the lower orders, or the dissipated wits 
of former times. The etymologist even may not be unamused at 
trying the potency of his art on their whimsical vocables,-and may, 
(as could be proved, if the inquiry were worth the trouble) glean out 
of this lowest class of literature, if we may venture so to profane the 
word, every now and then a canon which may serve as a guide, or a con- 
firmation, to his more serious inquiries. 

Among ourselves there has been no dearth of these books. In Har- 
rison’s Description of England (which is prefixed to Hollinshed’s 
Chronicle) we are informed, while speaking of gipsies, &c., “ It is not 
yet fifty years sith (since) this have began ; but how it hath prospered 
sithens (since) that time it is easy so judge ; for they are now supposed, 
of one sexe and another, to amount to above ten thousand persons, as I 
have harde reported. Moreover, in counterfeiting the Egyptian rogues, 
they have devised a language among themselves, which they name cant- 
ing, but others Pedlar’s French, a speech compact, thirty years ago, 
of English, and a great number of odd words of their own deriving, 
without all order or reason ; and yet such it is, as none but themselves 
are able to understand. The first deviser thereof was hanged by the 
neck, as a just reward, no doubt, for his desartes, and a common end 
to all of that profession. 

“A gentleman (Mr. Thomas Harman) also of late hath taken great 
pains to search out the secret practises of this ungracious rabble ; and, 
among other things, he setteth down and describeth twenty-two sorts 
them, whose names it shall not be amisse to remember, whereby eac 


one may gather what wicked people they are, and what villainy remains 


eth in them.” 


1828.] Slang Dictionaries. 149 


The list gathered by worthy Mr. Harman, which thus excites the 
anger of Mr. Harrison, has been often reprinted. The ungracious 
rogues are carefully divided into fourteen classes of men, and nine of 
women. This Linnzan distribution consists of-—l. Rufflers.—2. Upright 
men.—3. Hookers and anglers.—4. Rogues.—5. Wild rogues.—6. Prig- 
gers of prancers.—7. Palliardes.—8. Fraters.—9. Jarkmen or Patricoes. 
—10. Fresh-water mariners, or whip-jackets. — 11. Drummerers. — 
12. Drunken tinkers.—13. Swadlers, or pedlars; and, 14. Abrams. 
The ladies are,—1. Demanders for glimmer (fire). — 2. Baskets.— 
3. Morts.—4. Autem morts.—5. Walking morts.—6. Doxies.—7. Delles. 
8. Kinching morts; and, 9. Kinching coes. 

Hollinshed’s Chronicles appeared in 1577; and thirty-three years 
before that brings us to about the time of the suppression of the monas- 
teries. These institutions fed multitudes of the poor, who, until the esta- 
blishment of the poor laws, were left wholly destitute. It is no wonder 
then that there should be amore than usual spread of pauperism over the 
country, which those laws were intended to remedy. The harsh and 
reckless way in which King Henry the Eighth turned out the friars 
themselves, giving himself, in many instances, very little trouble to 
inquire how they were to be provided for, added to the mendicants. 
Hence, perhaps, the name “fraters” for the eighth class in the above 
list. In an etymological point of view, we can easily account for the 
springing up of a new dialect among the lower orders about that time, 
without attributing it altogether to their roguish propensities. The 
language of England—we speak of the people emphatically—at all 
times after the conquest, had been Saxon; that of the Normans, and 
those who in after times represented them, French. These languages 
had been for a long time approaching to a complete amalgamation, but 
their final union was considerably hastened by the civil wars, which 
imposed upon the great a necessity of cultivating an acquaintance with 
all the various dialects of different parts of the country. The bringing 
together of the inhabitants of the north, south, east, and west of Eng- 
land, as was continually the case in these wars, of itself produced a 
lingua Franca ; and Mr. Harman himself would perhaps have been not 
a little astonished to find that many of the words which he, in all pro- 
bability, would have stigmatized as the casual inventions of rogues, for 
the purpose of casting a veil over their mal-practices, were more solidly 
English, than the picked phraseology of the gallants of the court. 

The Egyptians, of whom he speaks, drew their vocabulary from a 
very different origin. They had, about this time, made their appear- 
ance in Europe, where, until their knaveries exposed them, they were, 
in general, most favourably received. There exists a document, signed 
by our James I., while he was only King of Scotland, granting certain 
privileges to John Fa, Duke of Little Egypt, and other very sonorous 
titles, and his lordship over his gipsies was acknowledged with all feudal 
nicety of detail. But they soon got a very ill repute, and the statute, 
which made it felony, without benefit of clergy, to be one hour in their 
company, has been repealed only in our times. They are now gene- 

rally supposed to have been a Hindoo tribe; and the researches of 
dian scholars have succeeded in identifying their patter with one of 
the dialects of Hindostan. 
___ This collection of Mr. Harman's appears to have been the first attempt 
to make a dictionary of the vulgar tongue. He called it “A Caveat for 


4 
L 


@ 


A 
4 


150 Slang Dictionaries. [Aveusr, 


Common Cursitors, commonly called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas 
Harman, Esq., for the Utilitye and Proffyt of his Natural Country.” 
It was published in 1567, and has been often described in books of 
English bibliography. 

In 1608, “'The Bellman of London,” and, in 1615, “ Thieves falling 
out, True Men come by their own,” were published. These books 
contain the slang language then in vogue. In 1638, their contents 
were incorporated with many additions in “ English Villanies,” seven 
several times prest to death by the Printers, &c. At the end of which 
is a “ Canting Dictionary,” to teach that language, with songs in the 
dialect. Its author assures us, in his title-page, which is rather too | 
voluminous to copy, that it is “a booke to make gentlemen merrie, 
citizens warie, countrymen carefull; fit for justices to reade over, be- 
cause it is a pilot by whom they may make strange discoveries.” We 
are sorry to say that the wit of the book is rather of the thinnest, and 
that the gentlemen, whom it was calculated to make merry, were easily 
satisfied. 

As, however, it is not our intention to write a bibliographical account 
of these works, we refer the curious in such matters to the preface of 
Jon Bee’s whimsical Slang Dictionary, of which two editions have been 
published. Jon is the only author we know of, who ventures on an 
etymology of the word “slang.” He derives it, with what truth we 
cannot tell, from a Newgate onomatopeeia. The clashing of the irons, 
with which the inhabitants of Whittington’s College (as a book entitled 
*«« Hell upon Earth,” published in 1703, calls Newgate) are ornamented, 
it seems, utter, as the prisoners walk, the sound of sling-slang, 
as church bells have, from time immemorial, said “ding-dong.” Hence, 
by a natural transition, the voice of the irons was applied to the lan- 
guage of their wearers ; the nature of which it is rather unnecessary to 
describe. Neither Johnson nor Todd contain the word at all, though, 
as the writer of the very clever preface to Robinson’s late reprint of John- 
son justly remarks, the reverend gentleman has supplied the words 
which it signifies in sufficient abundance. We vouch not, however, for 
the accuracy of Mr. Bee’s etymology. 

It was merely our intention to have given a few specimens of the 
only real wit among our English lexicographers of this class, Francis 
Grose, but we found it necessary to say what we have just written as a 
preface. Grose was indeed a droll fellow: a fat, round, oily man, and 
full of glee. In size and good humour he rivalled Falstaff ; he might 
have rivalled him in wit, too, if that of Falstaff had not been supplied 
by Shakspeare. His very picture, in the poorest engraving, is redolent 
of fun. The honest face, the loose-girt paunch, the stick firmly planted 
in the ground, all speak his character. He lived in jollity, and he died 
of laughing. It was a fine illustration of his mode of life, that when 
he was paymaster of the J ersey Militia, he kept but two account-books 
—and those were his right and left-hand breeches pockets—the one 
being the debtor and the other the creditor pocket. It is said that the 
pecuniary consequences of this mode of doing business, were what first _ 
set him on deriving money from the productions of his pencil—all ,o ae ie 
which are too well known to require further notice here. He died in 
Ireland, to which country he had gone for the purpose of sketching its 
antiquities. A joke (tradition says not a very cleanly one) so tickled 
his fancy, that he was seized with a fit of laughing, so immoderate, as 


1828. Slang Dictionaries. 151 


to occassion the rupture of a blood-vessel, of which he died, in the 
year 1791. He was then in his sixtieth year, having been born in 
1731, at Richmond, where his father was a jeweller. Every one knows 
the verses which Burns addressed to him, and which the author of 
« Waverley” has taken as the motto of his “ Tales of my Landlord,”— 
«« Hear, land o’cakes, and brither Scots,” &c. In that poem there is a 
capital description of Grose’s person :— 


If in your bounds ye chance to light 
Upon a fine, fat, fodgel wight, 
O’ stature short, but genius bright, 
That’s he—mark weel. 
And wow! he has an unco slight 
O’ cauk and keel. 


It’s tauld he was a sodger bred, 
And ane wad rather fa’n than fled, 
But now he’s quit the spurtle-blade 
And dog-skin wallet, 
And ta’en the antiquarian trade, 
I think they call it. 


But wad ye see him in his glee, 

(For meikle glee and fun hath he) 

Then set him down, and twa or three 
Gude fellows wi’ him, 

And port O! port! shin thou a wee, 
And then ye’ll see him. 


Now, by the pow’rs of verse and prose, 
Thou art a dainty chiel, O Grose ; 
Whae’er o’thee shall ill suppose, 

They sair misca’ thee. 
Til tak’ the rascal by the nose— 

Wad say—shame fa’ thee. 


His classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue is a curious production. 
It was suggested to him, he tells us, by the satirical and burlesque 
dictionary of M. Le Roux—a singular book, in its way, of which we 
may take notice hereafter. To make it complete, he consulted all the 
printed authorities, including those which we have above enumerated, 
and several others; but he did not rely solely upon books. He 
informs us that “the second part, or burlesque terms, have been drawn 
from the most classical authorities ; such as soldiers on the long march ; 
seamen at the capstern ; ladies disposing of their fish, and the colloquies 
of a Gravesend boat. Many heroic sentences, expressing and incul- 
cating a contempt of death, have been caught from the mouths of the 
“py uding populace, attending those triumphal processions up Holborn 

, with which many an unfortunate hero till lately finished his course; 
and various choice flowers have been collected at executions, as well 
those authorized by the sentence of the law, and performed under the 
direction of the sheriff, as those inflicted under the authority and inspec- 

of that impartial and summary tribunal—the mob, upon. pick- 
kets, informers, and other unpopular criminals.” 

ven in a jocular dictionary the prevailing bent of the mind must 
, out, and the antiquary cannot avoid telling us that, “in the 
course of this work many ludicrous games and customs are explained, 
‘a 


152 Slang Dictionaries. [Aveusr, 


which are not to be met with in any other book ; the sacrifices of the 
finishers of the law, the abolition of the triumph or ovation of Holborn 
Hill, with the introduction of the present mode of execution at New- 
gate, chronologically ascertained ;—points of great importance to both 
the present and future compilers of the Tyburn Chronicle.” 

To this praise the work is deservedly entitled. In no language, we 
believe, does there exist so copious a collection of synonymes for the last 
finisher of the law. Nor, when we consider the vast number of offences 
which are visited with the penalty of death among us, can this be won- 
dered at. It is too common not to have become sometimes more an 
object of jest than of awe—particularly if we consider that many of the 
crimes so punished can never be looked upon by the populace at least as ° 
deserving of such an infliction. Nor is Grose confined solely to hanging 
—for his work abounds in allusions to every sort of punishment inflicted 
with or without law. We shall extract a dozen or so at random. 

What is an anabaptist, gentle reader? You will probably think of 
John of Leyden, and the gentlemen in Munster, in all their altitudes— 
or of a grave, argumentative, and long-faced disputant, in a Geneva 
cloak. Grose will set you on a different scent. His anabaptist is—“a 
pickpocket caught in the fact, and ducked in the next horse-pond.” 

Air and exercise may probably call up novel ideas in the sentimental 
mind, or, in the hypochondriac, may suggest the nature of the doctor and 
his ultimatum. Here the sense is rather different, and somewhat disa- 
greeable in practice ; for air and exercise, it seems, is but the softened 
manner of expressing “a whipping at the cart’s-tail.” Another article 
informs us, that a gentleman who enjoys this diversion is said to be 
“ fly-flapped.” 

« Babes in the wood,” we all know, are people in the stocks or the 
pillory ; but it is not perhaps as generally suspected that “ puzzling- 
sticks” are the triangles at which culprits are whipped, or that a “ spread- 
eagle” is a soldier tied up to undergo that operation. 

To “kiss the gunner’s daughter,” is certainly not an amatory feat 
comparable to the ceremony of embracing the maiden in former days ; 
but when we learn that it is being tied to a gun, and flogged upon the 
seat of honour, we must admit that the lady’s embrace is not delightful. 
An infliction on the same part, of a different kind, recurs in the name of 
« cobbing,” which is— 


«« A punishment used by the seamen for petty offences or irregularities among 
themselves: it consists in bastonading the offender on the sitting part with a 
cobbing stick, or pike staff; the number usually inflicted is a dozen. At the 
first stroke the executioner repeats the word watch, on which all persons pre- 
sent are to take off their hats, on pain of like punishment: the last stroke is 
always given as hard as possible, and is called the purse. Ashore, among 
soldiers, where this punishment is sometimes adopted, watch and the purse are 
not included in the number, but given over and above, or, in the vulgar phrase, 
free gratis for nothing. This piece of discipline is also inflicted in Ireland, 
by the school-boys, on persons coming into the school without taking off 
their hats ; it is there called school butter.” 

But, without dwelling on the minor punishments, hanging, as G 
premises, cuts a most prominent figure in his book. Its synonymes are 
endless. It is known by the name of “ riding the horse foaled by 
acorn ;’—— mounting the three-legged mare,” aterm that, we are care- 
fully told, is now inappropriate, since the invention of that eleganz — 


—_—_— 


1828.] © Slang Dictionaries. 153 


(Grose’s word) contrivance, the new drop, which invention, he informs us, 
was first employed for a peer ;—“ going to bed up a ladder ;”—*“ danc- 
ing at Beilby’s ball,” but who Mr. Beilby was, our lexicographer says, 
must remain with the quadrature of the circle, the discovery of the phi- 
losopher’s stone, and divers other desiderata, yet undiscovered ;—“ cry- 
ing cockles” (perhaps from the noise made while strangling) :—“ croak- 
ing” (for the same reason) :—“ dancing upon nothing ;’—< dangling 
in the sheriff’s picture-frame ;”’—“ picking the deadly never-green, that 
bears fruit all the year round ;”’—“ chanting the dismal ditty ;’—“ riding 
backwards up Holborn-hill,” on which we have the following history :— 


“The way to Tyburn, the place of execution for criminals condemned in 
London, was up Holborn-hill. Criminals going to suffer, always ride back- 
wards, as some conceive, to increase the ignominy, but more probably to pre- 
vent them being shocked with a distant view of the gallows ; as, in amputa- 
tions, surgeons conceal the instruments with which they are going to operate. 
The last execution at Tyburn, and, consequently, the last of this procession, 
was in the year 1784, since which the criminals have been executed near 
Newgate.” 


—“ Kicking the clouds before the hotel-door ;’—“ going off with the 
fall of the leaf,” which is a piece of Irish wit, and the people of Ireland 
ought to be well acquainted with all the minutie of hanging. 


* Cum multes aliis que nunc perscriben losqua.” 


The very names of the hangmen have honourable mention made of 
them: ex. gr. 


“Derrick. The name of the finisher of the law, or hangman, about the 
year 1608.—‘ for he rides his circuit with the devil, and Derrick must be his 
host, and Tiburne the inne at which he will lighte.’ Vide Bellman of London, 
in art. Pricery Law.—* At the gallows, where I leave them, as to the haven 
at which they must all cast anchor, if Derrick’s cables do but hold.” Zbid. 


Dun was hangman, it appears, temp. Henry VIII. But we must give 
the article on Ketch :— 


“Keron. Jack Ketch; a general name for the finishers of the law, or 
hangmen, ever since the year 1682, when the office was filled by a famous prac- 
titioner of that name, of whom his wife said, that any bungler might put a man 
to death, but only her husband knew how to make a gentleman die sweetly. 
This officer is mentioned in Butler’s Ghost, page 54, published about 1682, in 
the following lines : 


‘ Till Ketch, observing he was chous’d, 
And in his profits much abus’d, 
In open hall the tribute dunn’d, 
To do his office, or refund.’ 


Mr. Ketch had not long been elevated to his office; for the name of his pre- 
decessor, Dun, occurs in the former part of this poem, page 29: 


‘For you yourself to act squire Dun, 
Such ignominy ne’er saw the sun.’ 


he addition of ‘squire,’ with which Mr. Dun is here dignified, is a mark 
t he had beheaded some state criminal for high treason ; an operation 
hich, according to custom, for time out of mind, has always entitled the 
erator to that distinction. The predecessor of Dun was Gregory-Brandon, 
from whom the gallows was called the Gregorian tree Bicg which name it is 


M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 32. 


154 Slang Dictionaries: AUGUST; 


mentioned in the prologue to Mercurius Pragmaticus, tragi-comedy, acted at 
Paris, &c. 1641 


* This trembles under the black rod, and he 
Doth fear his fate from the Gregorian-tree.’ 


“‘Gregory Brandon succeeded Derrick.” 


Our partibularian taste has, we perceive, made us extract on that 
favourite topic so largely, as to preclude us from taking notice of the 
marvellous contents of Grose’s book on other points—to which, therefore, 
we refer the curious reader. We tear that we cannot, however, recom- 
mend it to the unrestrained perusal of virgins and boys, although we have 
the following assurance from Grose himself ;— 


“To prevent any charge of immorality being brought against this work, the 
Editor begs leave to observe, that, when an indelicate or immodest word has 
obtruded itself for explanation, he has endeavoured to get rid of it in the most 
decent manner possible ; and none have been admitted, but such as either 
could not be left out, without rendering the work incomplete, or in some mea= 
sure compensate by their wit for the trespass committed on decorum. Indeed, 
respecting this matter, he can, with great truth, make the same defence that 
Falstaff ludicrously urges in behalf of one engaged in rebellion, viz., that he 
did not seek them, but that, like rebellion in the case instanced, they lay in 
his way, and he found them.” / 


In spite of this, there are many articles which are more amusing than 
calculated to edify ; and though succeeding editions have been, in some 
degree, pruned, yet enough remains behind to whisper whence he stole 
his balmy spoils. We suppose that those who enjoy the woodcock 
must enjoy the trail also, and, without doubt, the squeamishness of those 
who do such business by halves is rather ridiculous. The Bowdlers of 
literature should not do the work of the Lord negligently. It is a whimsical 
fact that some foreign dictionaries, particularly German ones, have copied 
some of the grossest of the words with the most amusing gravity, con- 
sidering them as necessary and well-established phrases of the English 
language. 

The last editor of Grose was Mr. Pierce Egan—a gentleman totally 
unfitted for the task. Grose’s slang is wit—he laughs at and despises 
those who use it in earnest. Pierce Egan’s-is sheer vulgarity, and he 
evidently considers those who employ these words as persons of no small 
mark. Grose mixed among gentlemen—Pierce Egan among boxers. 
Accordingly, the words which he has added come exclusively from the 
witless people of the ring ; and, page after page, we are sickened with 
quotations from “ Randall’s Diary,” and articles indicating the most 
intimate acquaintance with the robbers and ruffians who pick pockets by 
prize-fighting. Naturally enough imagining that Grose, whose humour 
he is quite incapable of appreciating, must have been enamoured of mere 
vulgarity, he, in the memoir prefixed, favours us with an account of his 
supposed peregrinations in Wapping and St. Giles’s. In short, even the 
couple of wood-cuts which he gives are from his own “ Life in London ;” 
and that is, we suppose, saying enough upon the subject. So stupid a 
farrago of vulgar nonsense—so miserable an attempt at wit and humour 
—never was produced. The engravings floated the lumber. In the 
present case, Mr. Egan has not the pencil of Cruikshank to assist him; 
and, accordingly, all his part of the new edition of Grose is dull am ‘ 
disgusting. 4 


i F 


1828.] [ 155 ] 


FRIAR BACON’S KEY: 


«“ THERE are two modes, in the present day, by which any one may. 
get the name of a liberal man, and in the lottery of good things, I know 
few reputations more profitable. Be what you please, or do what you 
please, it matters little, so long as you have a character for generosity. 
This single virtue, or, what will dojust as well, the appearance of it, will 
stand.you in stead of allthe other virtues; it is a cloak to cover the 
inward nakedness, an umbrella to keep off the pitiless pelting of the storm 
when it is pouring somewhat too freely on the head of unworthiness. In 
short, what is it not, in the way of profit or defence, to the fortunate pos- 
sessor? Nor is the obtaining of it, by any means, as I have said, a 
difficult task to him who has a purse, the roads to it being an hundred 
fold—among the best, say, subscribing to some fund, where the money is 
not wanted ; or purchasing, at an enormous price, some works of art that 
you don’t understand or care about, and setting up a museum. As to 
your children or relations, if you happen to have any, you need not waste 
a thought upon them ; for, as all you may do on their account is no more 
than what you ought to do, it cannot redound to the praise of your 
liberality ; and, therefore, you may as well leave it undone.” 

_ Such was the advice of my friend Dives; and, as it happened to chime 
in with my own notions of the truth, I resolved to send my poor relations 
to the devil, or to any one else who might think proper to take them in ; 
while, in the meantime, I opened my “ collecting” campaign in a cele- 
brated auction-room at the west-end of the town. The object I had 
selected for the foundation of my new character as a “ patronizing man,” 
was a Venus or a Hercules, that Mr. C had to sell : the antiquarians 
could not decide which of the two characters above named properly 
belonged to it; and no wonder, seeing that the god or goddess had been 
by time and accidents so reduced and shorn of its original properties, as 
to bear no bad resemblance to a mile-stone—saving only in its material, 
which, I can vouch, without being a connoisseur, to have been genuine 
marble. Such as it was, however, the fame of this mutilated sculpture 
had roused the whole body of antiquarians, equestrian and pedestrian, 
amateurs and professors. Anxious, at least, to be able to say I had bid 
for such a rarity, even though I should fail to win it, for want of that 
species of courage which, I opine, is the highest of all courage, namely, 
the courage to part with one’s money, I hurried to the auction-room at an 
early hour, and found the orator already risen, and holding forth, with 
much eloquence and learning, upon a very equivocal as well as humble 
article. What that article was, I must not venture to say ; wanting the 
speaker’s exquisite powers of periphrasis, which enabled him at once’ to 
veil and ennoble that subject, which, to say the truth, stood in need both 
of one assistance and the other. Indeed, as my friend Dives remarked 
to me in a whisper, the dapper, smooth-chinned gentleman, with his 

_ starched collar, his oily tongue, and still more oily face, looked the very 
A ‘Bint of crockery, the born Apollo of Delft and China-ware. But my 


ind was bent on highér matters, namely,on the Venus or Hercules, and I 
+ n grew heartily sick of the tropes and similes that buzzed about my 
__ ears like so many May-chaffers on a warm summer’s evening. All the 
bidding and battling previous to the struggle for the precious statue, 

X 2 


156 Friar Bacon's Key. [Aueusr, 


appeared as so much tedious prologue to the grand drama, or skirmishing, 
by way of prelude, to the grand engagement. But still, in spite of my 
disregard or contempt, I grew out of patience’ as the delay continued. 
First I tried my snuff-box—next I beat the devil’s tattoo with my feet— 
next I grew hot—then hotter—then boiling hot—then red-hot—till by 
the time the orator had come to lot ninety-seven, an antique key, the 
fever had exhausted itself, and with itself, exhausted me; and the 
previous tension of the nerves was succeeded by a gentle inclina- 
tion to drowsiness, which was only at all resisted or kept back by the 
unaccountable interest I all at once seemed to take in this old key. It 
was only a key, and old, and green as the copper sheathing of a vessel 
after a twelvemonth’s voyage ;—nothing more than an old-fashioned 
massive key with a sliding ring in place of the fixed one that crowns the 
modern handle. But for all this I could not help listening, as the price 
rose, and what was worse, bidding, though every “ I thank you, Sir,” of 
the auctioneer, sounded in my ears marvellously like, “ well nibbled, 
gudgeon ; take another snap, fool ; the hook is not well in your gullet 
yet !” 

* Gentleman,” said the orator, “this key is—a key—I mean a key 
katerochen—that is, ladies, par excellence,—the key of keys,—it can be 
traced up into the possession of the celebrated Friar Bacon, the inventor’ 
of gunpowder. Look at it, ladies and gentlemen,—smell it,—taste it.” 
Here Mr. Fudge suited the action to the word, and, licking his lips, went 
on with an air of ineffable relish.“ Excellent! I protest it has the true 
antique relish—none of your modern rust, but the genuine tinge of the 
olden time. No one can be deceived in that matter.” 

« But are you quite sure it belonged to Friar Bacon?” asked a little, 
limping antiquarian, who looked amongst men much as a turnspit does: 
amongst dogs.— “ But are you quite sure ?” 

“ Terque quaterque,” replied the orator. : 

** Because I don’t buy for myself; I am only the lion’s jackall, you 
know.—Ha! ha!” 

« His jack-ass, rather,” muttered a young man, who stood between me 
and the limping querist. 

“ You may rely upon its being genuine,” continued the orator, seeing 
the little man still hesitate, though half convinced by the Latin which he 
did not understand, and by his own joke of the jackall—“< You may rely 
upon its being genuine.— Allow me to say five guineas, just to begin with, 
though, I trust, we shall not stop short of a hundred.” “ee 

The little man nodded. 

« Thank you, Sir,” said the orator, bowing.—“ Five guineas, gentle-, 
men, is bid for this rare piece of antiquity, this gem that has existed 
almost three hundred years.” 

“ Nearer six,” cried my young neighbour,—“ that is, if it belonged, 
as you say it did, to Roger Bacon, the monk of Brazen-nose.” 

Mr. Fudge coloured up to his eyes at this unsolicited correction of his 
chronology ; but, as it was his business to buy golden opinions of all men, 
he replied, with a bow and a smile—the two usual adjuncts, by the way, 


hundred years old.— Will no lady or gentleman say any thing?—Going for 
five guineas.— Really it is a mere giving away of this valuable relic.—‘ Six,” 
—Thank you, Sir,—* Eight,—Ten,—Twenty.— Twenty-five. Twenty- 
five guineas are bid for Friar Bacon’s key —Going,—going,— going for 


of all his replies —“ Much obliged to you, Sir, for the ng’ Going fr 


¢ 
3. 


. 


1828.] Friar Bacon’s Key. 157. 


only twenty-five guineas, and the treasure perfectly unique !—a rarity that 
has not its parallel!—We may suppose that this was the key of the 
monk’s sanctum,—why should it not be ?—of that celebrated chamber, 
of which the legend says it is to stand till entered by a greater scholar 
than Bacon, when it is to fall on the devoted head of the student, and 
crush it for too much learning.” 

« Egad ! Fudge goes beyond himself to-day,” whispered Dives. “Was 
not that last a glorious bit of the sublime?” 

« Magnificent !” I said, and so loudly that the orator overheard me, 
and replied to the compliment, as if to a bidding, with his customary, 
«“ Much obliged, Sir.—Twenty-five guineas.—Going, for the last time, 
and the relic six hundred years old! Here is a gentleman vouches for 
its being six hundred years old.” 

«I youch for no such thing,” said my young neighbour, “I only 
answer for the friar’s having been dead that time.” 

« Thank you, Sir,—much obliged for the correction,” replied the 
smooth Mr. Fudge, who seemed as little able to travel out of his set 
phrases, as a horse to step beyond his tether. —< Thirty,—forty,—fifty, — 
pray, be speedy, gentlemen, for we have a host of treasures to get 
through.—In one minute, jacta est alea, the die is cast.—Going for fifty 
guineas—gone——.” 

It was to myself that the key was knocked down at this enormous 
price, though why I had bid so much, or why I had bid for it at all, 
was a mystery past my own comprehension. I seemed to be acting under 
the power of some influence from without, independent of my own 
thoughts or my own volition. The key, however, was mine, and, being 
mine, I resolved to put a good face on the business, and elevate its worth 
in the eyes of others, whatever I might think of it myself. Accordingly 
I handled my bargain with as much reverence as if it had been the 
purest gold instead of an old piece of iron eaten up with rust and verdi- 
gris, throwing into my face a certain imposing air of mystery, which 
seemed to say, “ there is more in this, my merry masters, than you have 
the wit to fancy.” Whether I succeeded or not in persuading any one 
else by this manceuvre, is more than I can pretend to say, but that I per- 
suaded myself of it—strange as this will appear—is quite certain. The 
longer I examined my prize, the deeper became my conviction that 
there was something in it, if I could only find out what that something 
was. But there was the difficulty, the pons asinorum, or asses’ bridge, 
which I could not contrive to get over, turn it which way I would. In 
short, I was much in the same plight with my friar’s key that a savage 
of Otaheite would be, or rather would have been some years ago—he is 
wiser now —with a magic lantern, or a Dolland’s microscope—good 
things enough in their way, if you only happen to know how to use 

em. 

I fancy what I felt upon this occasion must have been expressed in 
my face, for the young man at my left hand, who had been at such 


__ pains to correct the orator’s chronology, adding three hundred and odd, 
_ years to the time since Roger Bacon had flourished at Brazen Nose, now 


; ed up to enlighten me. 

:" You have got a prize, Sir,” he said, “ though you must excuse me 
I suspect you are not acquainted with its value.” 

_ “ That is to say,” I replied, “ you think yourself the better anti-. 

quarian.” 


158 Friar Bacon’s Key. [Aueusr, 


~ T do not profess to be an antiquarian at all,” said the young man, 
“ and, if your purchase had no other value than its age, it would be, in 
my eyes, but a sorry bargain.” 

« And what other value can it have?” I exclaimed. “ Why, if the 
old friar himself were alive again, with all his art and magic to help him, 
I doubt if he could find any thing in this key beyond a piece of rusty 
iron.” 

“ Why then, Sir, your bargain has been a sorry one. But you are 
wrong. The key has an intrinsic value, such as no antiquarian would 
have discovered, had he pored over it for a hundred years in the way he. 
usually considers such things. If you will dine with me when all is 
over,—for this is not the fittest place to talk of these matters,—I will 
show you how this little piece of iron, if wisely used, may be worth to 
you more gold. ” 

« More than I have paid?” 

“ More than is in the exchequer of princes.” 

Being somewhat of a saturnine temper, I have an antipathy to all 
jokes, whether practical or otherwise, and this wore the face of a very 
impudent one, yet I actually accepted his invitation. It is true, the 
young man had not the appearance of a joker; on the contrary, his 
aspect, both from its longitude and lugubrousness was such as a pro- 
fessional mourner (where such artists are in request) would have deemed 
a fortune. And this, with a strong mixture of curiosity on my part, 
determined me to run all the peril of a hoax; the thing on earth I 
usually most dreaded, even beyond a mad dog or a lawyer. 

I pass over the rest of the auction, which had now little interest for 
me, not excepting even the Venus, for a Venus Mr. Fudge pronounced 
the stone to be ; and, if some people were right in their surmises, he had 
better reason than any one to be positive on the subject, having himself, 
as they said, superintended the manufacture of the deity. I thought no 
longer of any thing but my meeting with the young man at the coffee- 
house he had named, and explanation to grow out of it. When the time 
did come—Heaven and earth! how tedious did the dinner seem! It 
appeared to my fancy as if it would never be over, so monstrous was the 
appetite of my host or guest, or so enormous my impatience conceived it. 
But as all earthly things must have an end, so had our meal. The last 
plate was cleared away, the last crumb swept from the cloth, the cloth itself 
borne off under the arm of the waiter, and a magnum of port wine 
placed between us with the remains of a bottle of sherry from the dinner. 
Now it was that I ventured to speak out plainly on the subject, to which 
hitherto he had not made the slightest allusion; and, at my first ques- 
tion, “ What were the hidden virtues of the key he had so much vaunted?” 
the whole man was immediately changed, as if I had touched him with 
the rod of Aaron! 

« Sir,” he said, “ I am here to answer your question, and I will answer 
it; but it is right I warn you beforehand, that my discourse will include 
things scarcely credible to men of this unbelieving age.” ’ 

« Why, truly,” I replied, “ we have not such an excellent capacity 
of belief as our forefathers had, but still we can do pretty well too upon 
occasion.” a 

_“ Yes,” said my guest, with a sneer; “ you do not believe in ghosts 
—scarcely in a devil—but you do believe that a man’s mental and moral 
qualities are regulated by the bumps on his skull—you do believe that 


1828.] Friar Bacon's Key. 159 


ice ceases to be ice at the pole, and are even beginning to doubt 
shrewdly, whether you have souls; thus voluntarily abasing yourself 
from your high ranks, as things of immortal life, to the level of the brute 
beast—but let that pass, it concerns me not—and let me tell you in what 
consists the real value of that seemingly so worthless piece of iron.” 

“ You would oblige me,” I replied, “ beyond measure. I am all 
impatience to hear the secret; and, as to the matter of belief, you will 
not, I fancy, find me a very hard customer, provided your goods wear 
any thing like the market stamp upon them.” 

* But it is strange,” said my guest, in that low, emphatic tone, which 
strikes with such miraculous distinctness on the tympanum of an eager 
listener, “ It is strange, beyond the strangest wonder, that science or 
history has yet recorded.” 

I was ready to burst with curiosity ! 

« This little piece of green rusty iron,” he went on, “ that, to judge 
from outward appearance, is hardly worth the trouble of picking from 
the ground, is—” 

He paused again, and sipped his wine. In my heart I wished the 
port could be changed to salt and water ; but I took care not to offend 
him by communicating this opinion. 

“ This key—and there are others, though not many, like it—commands 

the entrance to the central gardens of the earth; for this world is not 
quite what philosophers in their conceit have imagined it to be. If you 
have the courage to dare so far, in one hour you may be where gold 
and diamonds grow as thickly, aye, ten times more thickly, than the 
daisies in a summer meadow.” 
* Here he paused again, with a look that seemed to say—“ Do you 
believe me?” and for my part I did not see any occasion to tell him it 
was a lie; it would not have been polite to one who carried, as he did, a 
stout oak cudgel, and looked as if he knew how to use it. So I contented 
myself with observing—“ If this story be true—and I don’t take upon 
myself to say it is not—there must be some deviltry at the bottom of it— 
some old signing of bonds in one’s own blood—conveying a soul or so 
over to the old gentleman in black.” 

“ You area fool,” replied my guest, tartly ; “ nothing more is required 
to the great end than courage to gain, and industry to gather. If you 
have these, you have all, and nothing will be demanded of you in 
return, though you should carry off a cart-load of treasure.” 

« But, my worthy counsellor in the art diabolic—for I must yet affirm, 
in spite of all you say, this has a strong relish of diabolus in it—” 

“T tell you, no!” interrupted my guest, vehemently. 

“ Don’t be angry for the matter,” I said, “ it isnot worth it. But you 
must yourself own, that, if this key were the key of Paradise, it would 
be of marvellous litttle use to me, unless I knew where to find the gate it 
was intended to open.” 
~ © You speak well,” he replied, pushing aside his glass, and taking out 
his watch. “ The very time! day has just began there——Follow me.” 

“ You forget our account here—let us ring for the waiter first.” 

“ Tt is not needed ; he is paid already.” 
© Tf that be the case, there is nothing more to be said ; and I am at 
your service.” 

And off we set, arm-in-arm, diving through sundry blind alleys and 
crooked lanes, conspicuous alike for dirt and ragged children, till we at 


160 Friar Bacon’s Key. [Aveusr; 


last emerged upon 4 wide street, that was as strange to meas if it had 
been one of the highways of antient Babylon. In the middle stood a 
solitary hackney-coach, with a pair of huge grey horses, or rather living 
skeletons of horses, for the celebrated ‘“ anatomie vivante’ had not a 
better claim to the title than those semi-transparent animals ; it was a 
marvel to me how they held together at all, and still more how they 
contrived to carry such long, handsome tails, which might have become 
the charger of a life-guardsman. On the box of the said coach sat a 
tall lean negro, well worthy to be the driver of such cattle. He had on 
a high, steeple-crowned hat, like those worn by the members of 
“ Praise-God-Barebone's parliament, grey boots, grey pantaloons, that, 
to use the hostler’s phrase, were spick and span new, and his beard, too, 
was grey,—not as in old age, witha silver tint, but approaching the 
colour of ashes,—and, that nothing might be wanting to make a com- 
plete grey man of him, he wore a cloak of the same complexion. In 
my life I had never seen a more droll-looking Jehu. : 

** Co-ach-man !—co-ach-man !” called my new friend, dwelling on 
every syllable as if he had got the asthma—*« Co-ach-man !’” 

The grey man ftourished his whip with a knowing wink, and a nod 
of the head, as much as to say, “ I understand,” and drove up to us m 
grand style, not leaving a hair’s-breadth between his wheel and the 
curb-stone. In a second he had dismounted; slap went down the 
steps, and I found myself handed into the carriage almost before I was 
aware of it. 

“Good evening, and a lucky journey to you,” said my friend ; 
“ though you will find it morning where you are going.” Sal fy 

The grey man hastily packed up the steps again, and slammed the 
door to. f 

« But, my excellent monitor,” I exclaimed, “ will not you, stop, 
coachman—stop, I tell you.” The rascal had one foot on the wheel 
already—* but, my very worthy counsellor, are not you going with me?” 

“ No occasion,” he replied; ‘‘ old Harry knows where to drive you 
to. He has gone with many before on the same road.” 

« Aye, aye, master,” said the grey man; “I know the road well 
enough. It’s a half-crown fare when I carry a mean one ; and a good 
four shillings-worth when a gentleman steps into my coach.” 

I would have protested against venturing upon so singular a journey, 
unless accompanied by the proposer of it, but all my remonstrances _ 
were effectually drowned in the clatter of the coach, which now set off 
at arate that I had not expected from the lean condition of the cattle, 
The pavement struck a continued stream of fire from their shoes, as 
we flew along through street after street, all apparently deserted, and 
all equally unknown to me, though, till this time, I had flattered myself 
there was not a single corner of London with which I was not as well 
acquainted as the horse of a doctor in high practice. A four-shilling 
fare!—the grey man had done himself less than justice; we had 
already travelled over ground to three times that amount, and were 
now clear of the city, clattering, like mad, down a steep hill, that led, 
of course, somewhere, though where I could not imagine. The farther 
we. went, the higher grew the walls of earth on either side of the road, — 
till at last, their height was such as to completely exclude the light of — 
day. Before and behind me was night, yet still we flew on,—on,—on,— 
on,—till I began to think I had realized, in my own person, the idea 


1828.] — Friar Bacon's Key. 161 


of perpetual motion, and was destined to whirl along for the rest of my 
life like a comet revolving in its orbit. But herein I wes happily mis- 
taken. We did at last stop before an immense pair of folding-doors, 
of brass or some heavy metal, let into the solid rock, which latter was 
scraped out into the form of an arch. Above this stood two colossal 
figures, each holding in its brazen grasp a chafing dish, full of live 
embers, that threw a lurid light for a few yards round, just sufficient to 
show the inscription over it—< Carpr Diem.” 

This little memorandum gave me no particular encouragement to 
proceed, but the grey man was not a person to allow any one too much 
time for reflection. With his usual expedition, he had handed me out 
of the coach, received his fare, and again mounted his box, before I had 
well made up my mind what to do. 

« Stop a moment, coachman,” I exclaimed, as he took up his whip, 
and was about to give it the preparatory flourish—< Just stop for a 
minute or so: Stop! I say,—I have a mind to go back with you.” 

« But I have no mind that you should. Tschick! tschick—gee-up, 
ho, lads!’ He was gone. 

What was to be done now? I might as well go on, since it seemed 
there was no way of getting back,—at least for the present,—so I 
applied my rusty old key to the ponderous lock before me, not a little 
doubtful, though, of the result; when, to my great surprise, it not only 
fitted exactly, but at the first touch of it the bolt shot from its fastening. 
The doors then swung slowly on their hinges, as if impelled by some 
invisible hand, and showed me a spacious hall of white marble, sup- 
ported by columns of the same, and with windows, that, from the light 
streaming upon the pavement, must open into day, though all behind 
me, for many a mile, was utter darkness. I had little hesitation in enter- 
ing a place of such fair promise, when the gates again closed after me, 
as they had opened, of their own accord: but this gave me little 
trouble, as I had carefully retained the key, and had, therefore, no occa 
sion to fear the being detained against my will. ; 

Boldly passing on through this noble hall, I suddenly found myself 
in a world,—for I may call a space so limitless a world,—that fairly 
struck me dumb with wonder. Above me was a chrystal sky, brilliant 
' with excess of light, although it had neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, 
nor any other visible source of so much splendour. Before me, and on 
both sides, as far as the eye could reach, was hill after hill, valley after 
valley, the soil of which was gold-dust, the rocks gold, and the stones 
thickly set in it, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and all those gems to 
which the fancy of man has given an estimation. Thousands of human 
beings were busy, in all directions, with shovel and pick-axe, sweeping 
up the yellow dust, or rending the jewels from their beds of gold ; and, 
indeed, the work must have been carried on for ages, for the ground 
was full of immense cavities, that appeared to have resulted from the 
mining after the treasures imbedded in it. Of the multitudes thus 
employed, some were young, and others old, but by far the greater 
part were no less burthened by their years than by the riches they had 

collected and stowed away in their pockets, to the great increase of 
5 ir persons. What was still more singular, the aged were infinitely 

e most industrious. They scarcely allowed themselves time to eat or 
drink, so intent were they in adding to their loads, even when they were 
sinking under them; but the young, with a few exceptions only, took 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 32. Y 


162 Friar Bacon’s Key. [Auveust, 


the matter much more easily ; they would frequently leave a ruby or 
a sapphire ungathered, after they had nearly detached it from the rock, 
and leave some crafty old fellow to reap the benefit of their labour, 
while they stepped aside for no other purpose than to pluck some new 
flower that grew near them, or to indulge in the fruit, which, it must be 
owned, looked most deliciously. 

While I was admiring this novel sight, with no little inclination to 
join in a labour so agreeable, I was accosted by a dark, portly man, who 
in dress and figure strongly resembled a Dutch burgomaster, when 
Holland was under the rule of Spaniards. In his right hand he carried 
a substantial cane, headed with ivory, such as rich men of a certain age are 
in the habit of carrying, more as a prop to their dignity than to their 
limbs. Though not so fat as a London alderman in full perfection, he 
yet had a waste of comfortable dimensions, which, as he was of the tallest, 
did not show so much amiss; and, indeed, he had no want of dignity, 
though it was not precisely of that kind which assimilates with the 
received notions of a king or a hero. He was too homely for the one 
character, and too fat for the other ; for, notwithstanding the example 
of Napoleon, there is something peculiarly incongruous in the idea of a 
great waste and a great man. His complexion, however, was all that a 
novelist could wish for his hero, being so dark that it might well be 
called olive, and his dress was a rich, but sober-coloured Spanish habit ; 
so that, altogether, he had the appearance of a merchant of the olden 
time when merchants were princes. 

_ © Well, Sir,” said this portly figure, laying his hand condescendingly 
upon my shoulder,—* you are come, like the rest of them, to see what 
you can pick up in my gardens.” 

I thought it best not to tell a lie for the matter—that is, not a direct 
lie—for he had a terrible eye under his bushy brows; so I treated his 
question half in joke, half in earnest, saying that I might, perhaps, be 
tempted te pick up a few handsful of dust, or some half-score of jewels, 
if I could be well assured that there were no steel traps or spring-guns set 
in his premises. ° 

« For what do you take me?” said the portly gentleman, frowning. 

« For the owner of this splendid estate,” I replied, with a conciliatory 
bew. i 

« You are right,” he said, “I am so, and if it were only for that word, 
you may gather a cart-load of diamonds, or gold, or whatever else 
happens best to tickle your fancy. How say you, friend: have you a 
mind to this gem ?” 

« Nothing,” I replied, “ would please me better—though—” for I did 
not yet feel convinced he was in earnest—“ though I can hardly reconcile 
it to my conscience to rob you of such precious treasures.” 

« Treasures, quotha! Aye, that is one of the many fancies of you 
simple folks of the upper earth. But think so still for me; I shall the 
sooner get rid of the rubbish, which lies more thickly on the land than is 
like to be good for my fruit trees. Here, Gobliner.” 

The being thus summoned, and who hastened to us at the call, was, 
as I imagined, a gnome, and this the kingdom of the gnomes, though, 
I must confess, the appearance of the portly gentleman was not that of a 
ruler of spirits. Gobliner, however, with his yellow face and long 
muscular arms, fully justified my suspicion. 

“ Gobliner,” said the portly gentleman, “ give this honest man a spade 


1828. ] Friar Bacon's Key. 163. 


and pick-axe ; he has taken a fancy to help in clearing off the stones for 
you.” 

“ T am glad to hear it, master,” said the gnome, “ for they lie thicker 
this year than ever; for my part, I think they must grow like the car- 
rots and turnips, only it may be not quite so fast.” 

“« Bad philosophy, Gobliner,” replied his master ; “but give my friend 
here his tools, and e’en let him set to work as soon as he pleases.” 

I was accordingly furnished with the requisite implements, and was 
trotting off ina violent hurry to a very promising mass of rock, in which 
the diamonds were stuck like pins in a toilette cushion, when the portly 
gentleman again laid his hand upon my shoulder. 

« Hark ye a moment, mine honest friend—there is yet one thing for 
you to learn—one little condition, before you begin your operations, for 
I like to deal on the square with the folks who come here.” 

My countenance fell in an instant. I thought directly of the devil 
and his old tricks, and had scarcely courage to falter out,— Pray, Sir, 
what is this condition ?” 

« Oh, no great matter; it is only that folks are allowed but a single 
day in my grounds. Work away, therefore, as hard as you please till 
nightfall ; dig gold and diamonds, or gather the fruits from the trees, or 
sit still without doing any thing, just as you think proper ; it is all the 
same to me. But, remember, when you see the chrystal above you 
clouded with a grey tint, as if a veil had been drawn over it, then is our 
twilight, and, hard upon that, follows darkness, when you are like to be 
turned out, if you stay so long, with certain disagreeable accompaniments. 
I tell you this, that you may make the best use of your time, and not 
blame me afterwards if you should find your labour has been great and 
your pleasure little.” 

Thus saying, the portly gentleman strode off, with a patronizing nod, 
followed by Gobliner, who turned back from time to time, mocking at 
me with his long yellow hands, and chuckling with delight, as if he had 
some pleasant piece of mischief in view—pleasant, I mean, to himself— 
for I did not suspect him of too much good-nature. I had, however, 
little leisure to think of him. There were diamonds to be dug, and fruit 
to be gathered, for my mind was made up to neglect neither ; though, 
as a prudent man, I resolved not to tickle my appetite till I had collected 
an ample supply of gold and precious stones. Even if this should 
occupy the day, what would that matter? When the twilight came on, 
it would be time enough to think of indulging myself—though, truth to 
say, the fruit looked tempting beyond measure, and the single taste I 
ventured on, by way of experiment, had a surpassing relish with it, that 
almost upset my resolution. 

Such was the profusion of precious stones, glittering from the rocks 
on all sides, that I calculated on digging out as many as I could possibly 
want long before the darkness. But this was a grievous mistake, as I 
soon found out when I actually set to work. The greater part of the 
diamonds grew on the steep sides of precipices, not to be climbed without 
infinite peril to my neck; and those that were more within reach lay 
imbedded in rock that was harder than the hardest granite. Not that 
these difficulties deterred me from the labour ; so far from it, I toiled with 
unabated diligence hour after hour, neglecting the delicious fruits which 
seemed ready to drop into my mouth, and, by the time of twilight, had 
got together a tolerable parcel of the largest diamonds—not to speak of 

Y 2 


164 Friar Bacon's Key. [Avueust, 


topazes, emeralds, and gold-dust. Even then I thought I might as well 
continue my work a little longer. The evening had, it is true, thrown a 
grey veil over the crystal sky ; but who could say how long such a twi- 
light would last? It might, for aught I knew, endure for hours ; so 
that there would be still time to sit down and enjoy myself. On, there- 
fore, I went, most gallantly, with spade and pick-axe, digging and ham- 
mering, rending and gathering, till I could absolutely work no longer ; 
indeed, I could scarcely move hand or foot: the sky, too, grew darker 
and darker ; and I began to think it would be as well to rest contented 
with what I had got, and enjoy myself while there was any twilight 
remaining. But here again I had reckoned without my host, or rather 
my passion for gold and diamonds had blinded me to all other consi- 
derations. Having wasted the day in such excessive toil, I was almost 


too weary to gather the fruit ; and when I did reach any, the same feel-. 


ing of fatigue rendered me incapable of enjoying it. 

Night now unfolded her wings, and sank down in darkness upon the 
earth, like a vulture overshadowing the prey it has struck ; and a deep 
bell, that seemed to be tolled in the very centre of the earth, sent a heavy 
summons to all that the day was over. At this signal, the plains and hills 
suddenly swarmed with gnomes, in face and figure the exact prototypes of 
Gobliner, if indeed they did not—many of them, at least—deserve the 
palm of superior ugliness. These ferocious monsters were armed with 
whips, which they cracked with high glee about the ears of those who, 
like myself, had loitered to this late hour, driving us forward, as if we 
had been a flock of sheep, to the great hall. Wearied as I was, and with 
such beagles close upon my heels, it is no wonder that by degrees I lost 
the whole of the precious burthen I had toiled so hard for. Diamond 


dropped after diamond, emerald after emerald, and, if I paused for an. 


instant to pick up the fallen treasure, the lash of the gnomes soon 
reminded me that time was no longer at my own disposal. Indeed, I 
was often glad, when we came on the more broken parts of the ground, 
to fling away a portion of my load, dear as it was to me, that I might 
get on the more easily ; and thus, in one way or the other, by the time 
I reached the hall, I had not a single sample left of all my treasure. 
There was no occasion for the key to let me out: the great folding- 
doors now stood wide open, the gnomes smacking their whips behind us, 
and the road before us being covered with vehicles of all kinds, from the 
proud coach and six, through all the intermediate degree of carriages and 
pair, demi-fortune, and gig, down to the humble hackney. Vexed 
beyond measure at my own folly in having thus wasted the whole day in 
fruitless toil, instead of enjoying myself, I jumped into the first vacant 
coach, and, holding out a crown-piece to the driver, bade him drive like 
fury. He took me at my word. Off we set at full gallop, with as little 


regard to our necks as might be; and as many of my neighbours, pro-. 


bably under the influence of the same feelings, were going at the same 
rate, I had no right to wonder at our vehicles coming in collision. Off 
flew the wheel—down smashed the coach ; and I was thrown upon the 
hard road with so much violence that—awoke me! I was still in the 
auction-room, where, thanks to the eloquence of Mr. Fudge, I had been 
comfortably asleep for the last two hours. The Venus or Hercules was 
going.—“ Nine hundred and eighty guineas are bid for this magnificent 
torso.”—«* One thousand !” I cried.—* Thank you, Sir.—Going for one 
thousand guineas—gone!” __ G. § 


, 


1828.] [ 165 J 


PORTUGAL ILLUSTRATED.* 


Tur author of the work before us, sets out in his labours with an 
intimation, that his design in visiting Portugal was “ to bring back remi- 
niscences of the feelings, manners, and customs of its inhabitants, which 
might make the people of England better acquainted with the peculiar 
features of Portugal, than are even the inhabitants themselves.” Our 
readers in general will agree that this is a somewhat hardy (however 
highly laudable) proposition; and we are afraid it would be little 
better than flattery if we were to encourage the writer to believe 
that he has succeeded to any thing like the full extent of it. Indeed, 
however little—as it seems to be agreed by travellers generally—the 
natives of countries are in the habit of being acquainted with their own 
affairs, we are sometimes, on reading continental tours, visited with a 
suspicion, that the foreigners who speak upon a six weeks’ residence, 
know still less about them. A gentleman, for instance, perhaps, but 
superficially informed, even as far as the intelligence of previous voyagers 
can go, of the condition of a country like Spain or Portugal ; wholly 
ignorant of its laws, its home resources, and civil institutions ; acquainted 
with its foreign and commercial interests and relations, only just in such 
a degree as qualifies him to make mistakes about them; and totally 
unacquainted—for this is the case three times out of four—even with the 
language of the people upon whom he is to observe, and among whom 
he is moving ; such an individual, necessarily incompetent, upon forty- 
nine points out of fifty that come before him, even to distinguish between 
cause and effect; with no test to decide by between right and wrong, 
but that which has been formed for another state of existence and almost 
in another hemisphere ;—such an individual goes forth, and after a term 
of six months travel, which may perhaps have afforded him a week in 
each considerable city, and a fortnight in the capital, returns ready to 
pronounce a full and dispassionate opinion upon the general statistics, 
the military and political strength, the morals, prospects, arts, religion, 
literature, and general cultivation of the country which he has visited ! 

Now let any reasonable person take the trouble to consider what would 
be the condition of an Italian or Frenchman, who should attempt to 
perform this sort of exploit in England? who should propose, after 
travelling by stage-coach from Essex to Anglesea one way, and from 
Kent to Northumberland the other, to give his countrymen a “ better 
notion” of England than the English have themselves—or even any notion 
of England at all? And yet this work would be a trifle—e mere juggler’s 
trick—compared with the performance of a similar task in Spain or 
Portugal ; where, it is true, the field for inquiry would be less varied, but 
where no sources of information—no aids for satisfying inquiry—exist 
at all. In England, let a stranger but have the power to read, and 
knowledge forces itself upon him on every side. There is scarcely a 
subject or a question of any general, or even temporary importance, to 
which he may not find a manual in almost every shop window. Our 
climate, geology, topography, is all measured, and set down; we have 
a survey of our land almost by inches, in the very road books, and the 
children’s primers. Our books of science, law, statistics, in three years 
are useless and gone by ; new interests have arisen; new changes have 


* Portugal IMlustrated ; By the Rev. W. M. Kinsey, of Trinity College, Oxford, B.D., 
with a Map, Plates, Vignettes, &c. &c., Treuttel and Wiirtz, London. 


Po 


166 Portugal Illustrated. [ Aveust, 


followed ; and new works haye been published, carrying information up 
to the very hour. Every branch of our trading interest, every circum- 
stance, good or bad, of our political system, forms the subjects of daily 
and hourly canvass and discussion. The mass of the people comprehend 
and speak of these matters ; writers, almost numberless, devote their 
whole lives to the analysing and watching over them. The periodical 
press of London—nay, one three weeks file only of the Times news- 
paper—will convey more information to a stranger upon the affairs and 
position of England, than the study of twice as many years, unaided by 
the same facilities, would enable him to arrive at. 

But, in Spain or Portugal, the first circumstances of novelty that 
surprises the English traveller, is the absence, not only of his accus- 
tomed sources, but of all sources—of every description — of informa- 
tion. He is travelling in a strange region without a guide. He is 
learning a new language, without a tutor. He lands in the country ; and 
“his eyes,’”’ as Shylock tells Lancelot Gobbo, may be “ his judge ;” 
for other means or aid to judgment he finds none. Books—unless at the 
bookseller’s shop—are things unheard of ; and when he finds any, they 
are sure to contain every thing rather than discussion or information as 
to the country in which he stands. The newspaper is a rag so worth- 
less, that he casts it down in anger. For books! the author of the 
work before us says, that in Elvas, the chief fortified town of Portugal, 
containing 10,000 inhabitants and a garrison of 5,000 men, there is 
not a single bookseller’s shop. The wonder, indeed, would be if there 
were. In the course of a three years’ residence in various provinces of 
Portugal—certainly it was in a time of war, not, perhaps, exactly the 
most favourable period for study—but we never recollect, in any one 
instance, to have seen a book in the hands of a Portuguese gentleman 
—except some manual of prayer, or missal. We can take our corporal 
oath that there was not (at that time) a book-stall from one end of 
Lisbon to the other. In society, the conversation—with a very few 
exceptions, and those chiefly among the ecclesiastics—exhibits the same 
ignorance of, and, by consequence, the same apathy to, all that is 
passing in the kingdom. As there seems to be no help, there is no 
interest ; and, for internal intercourse, or communication, no man 
knows that the Grand Turk is not in arms within fifty miles of him. 
The inhabitant of Lisbon hears and knows nothing, except once a 
year by a family letter, of the affairs of the resident at Coimbra. 
Some intercourse exists between Lisbon and Oporto, but this is confined 
almost entirely to the inhabitants, and in great measure to the English. 
The little remaining correspondence that exists in the country, is entirely 
in the hands of the government and of the clergy ; and the people, by 
habit, acquire an indifference even to the consideration of topics or mat- 
ters, which it is known to be not always prudent or safe to talk about, 
and which they are aware they very imperfectly and indistinctly under- 
stand. 

Under such circumstances, with all the ordinary avenues to knowledge 
closed against him; with but slender opportunities for consideration, 
and none at all for acquiring any thing like what might be termed 
experience, the sort of “ Illustrations” likely to be produced—even from 
the ablest summer tourist—of Spain or Portugal, would hardly be of 
very high authority ; and, in fact, the books which have appeared, have 
in general been of very moderate value. Almost the only one worth 


1828.] Portugal [llustrated. 167 


consulting (we put the military works out of the question here) is 
that of the German writer, Link. Spain and Portugal are not new 
countries, nor countries newly thrown open to English inspection, from 
which the most crude results of a traveller’s observation are valuable 
or interesting. We have superficial descriptions, in abundance, of all 
quarters of the Peninsula. The dirty streets and the mongrel dogs, and 
the number of the frairs, and the vigour of the fleas, and the mountain- 
ous roads, and the mule-drivers’ inns, and all the economy of the convent 
disciplines and the religious processions, have had the changes rung upon 
them again and again. It is just possible for strongly humorous or poetic 
description to give force and interest even to details so frequently already 
_ dwelt upon ; but in the way of information as to such matters, nothing 
new, we believe, is likely to be supplied. If any book upon the state 
of Portugal were to have value at the present moment, it could only be 
the work of some writer of an informed and philosophical mind, whose 
long residence in, and familiarity with the country, should have afforded 
him an intimate knowledge of the constitution, dispositions, powers, and 
intelligence of its inhabitants; and thus enabled him to draw a con- 
clusion, or to supply his readers with the means of drawing such con- 
clusion, by the facts presented to them, as to what position the country 
may be likely to maintain in the future distribution of power in Europe 
—or how to acquit itself under the circumstances of disorder and difficulty 
under which it is at present labouring. 

Now Mr. Kinsey’s book we wish to look at with every favourable 
disposition ; but it certainly is not quite a work of this character. It 
tells us little more, as far as we can perceive, in the main, about Por- 
tugal, than that which every body knew before ; or, where originality 
is attempted, it falls very frequently into incorrect inference and error. 
The style too, of the work, is not such as we can commend: and we are 
justified in taking this exception to the production of a traveller, who 
travels professedly to make a book, and who is a scholar by pro- 
fession, and the fellow of a college. It is frequently obscure, and 
ungrammatical ; generally disposed to be pedantic; and most unfortu- 
nately overloaded with attempts at sprightliness and humour, such as— 
as we wish to avoid all severity—we shall not trust ourselves to cha- 
racterise. With these faults, and the still farther one of being lengthened 
to a needless extent, by the extract, not only of whole pages, but almost 
of whole chapters, from every work upon Portugal that the author 
can lay his hands on, the best fortune we are afraid, the book can 
expect is to be voted, not quite unreadable, nor without a claim to 
passing consideration: it can hardly hope to reach the library, but 
may have a chance of some popularity in the drawing-room or on the 
work-table. We shall proceed, however, to give some specimens both 
of the more worthy and more culpable portions of its contents: pre- 
mising that, beginning where the author begins, we shall begin with 
those points in which he shews to least advantage. 

The Rev. Mr. Kinsey embarks from England, at some time—exact 
date not mentioned—in the year 1827; (it might have been more con- 
venient if the month had been given, as the fact of time become a key 
to the season during which the traveller pursues his researches) ; and, 
after having been deeply gratified in the course of a Sunday passed on 
board the packet, by perceiving that every sailor on board attended 
his (the author’s) performance of church service, and that “ not a 


168 Portugal Illustrated. [Aveusr, 


man out of the whole number but possessed his bible and prayer 
book,” he arrives without meeting any mischance—or making any dis- 
covery—in his fifty-sixth quarto page, at Lisbon. Here, on landing, he 
is a good deal surprised and displeased (as a travelling gentleman no 
doubt ought to be) with all the useless mummery of passport compari- 
son, and custom-house examination ; “ they manage these things far bet- 
ter under the pure constitutional atmosphere of dear old England.” After 
a time, however, he consoles himself by the patriotic reflection, that these 
impertinencies, taking place while the British troops (General Clinton’s 
force) ave actually stationed in Lisbon, form a triumphant answer to the 
French insinuation of British influence prevailing in the Portuguese coun- 
cils; and, being on shore, “ after two or three trips and stumbles in 
consequence of the bad state of the packet stairs,” is conducted to his 
hotel in the Rua do Prior ; in his way to which, he encounters “ heaps 
of disgusting filth,” “friars,” “ dogs,” and “ the carcase of a horse 
which had fallen down [on] the preceding night, and was already ex- 
hibiting proofs of the rapid way in which the Egyptian plague of flies 
effects its work” in Portugal. In the same early stage of his progress 
too, it is his fortune to be made aware of the truth of the relations of 
former tourists, “ with respect to the horrifying exposure in the crowded 
streets, by beggars, of limbs in every stage and under every character 
of disease ;” and on asking for “ flowers to refresh his offended senses,” 
under such circumstances, receives an immediate proof of the poverty 
of the land, for none are to be procured. After which preliminary 
details, come the traveller’s “ Illustrations’ of the city of Lisbon ; which 
begin (we hardly know whether from the novelty or the importance of 
the topic) with an account of a visit to “the theatres.” Almost all 
that is done here is trite and bad. The observer seems to set out with the 
false impression, that it will be right for him to blame every thing— 
which it is neither reasonable nor necessary (upon five minutes acquaint- 
ance) that he should do: and that “ effect” is to be produced, by ridiculing 
every thing—which he is wholly devoid of the power to do. Moreover, he 
changes his style of description aukwardly and needlessly every ten 
minutes from the “ I” to the “ we,” and vice versa: speaks very far too 
frequently upon slender, and often upon mere hearsay information: and, 
upon almost every point worth dwelling for three lines upon, favours 
the reader with three pages from the work of some previous writer ; 
whose observations may, perhaps, be well deserving attention, but 
whose work is before the public—in print—already ; and as well known 
to the world as the “ Illustrations of Portugal” are likely to be. To 
begin, however—as we have premised—with the visit to the theatres :— 

“We have visited the two national theatres, the one denominated ‘ do 
Salitre,’ and the other, which is of larger dimensions, and of an oblong shape, 
in the ‘ Rua dos Condes,’ both of which are dark from filth and neglect, and 
in neither did we consider the pieces represented, to be at all above the lowest 
degree of mediocrity ; while the frequent obscenity of the allusions made, 
gave us no very favourable opinion of the delicacy and purity of the Portu- 
guese drama. In the neighbourhood of the first theatre there is a walk, 
planted with rows of trees, which, by the bye, at this season, are obliged to be 
trenched around, and watered every morning and evening to preserve their 
verdure from the burning rays of the sun; but it is both small and confined, 
and in no respect would serve as an agreeable place of resort, even did the 
retiring habits of the Portuguese permit them to indulge in the taste for a 
public promenade. , 


1828.] Portugal Tllustrated. 169 


© The opera-house is a fine building, with a handsome portico, situated in 
the square, from which it takes its name. It required only five months for 
its erection in 1793. The corridors throughout are vaulted, as the staircases 
also, which lead to the séveral tiers of boxes ; while the vomitories are so nu- 
merous and so skilfully distributed, that the interior of the theatre, in case of 
fire, can be instantaneously cleared. 

“The royal box occupies the entire segment of the circle, cutting perpen- 
dicularly the five tiers of boxes, which gives it an elevated and imposing 
appearance. There are one hundred and twenty boxes ; and the pit here, as 
at Paris and elsewhere, reserved for the accommodation of male spectators, 
may contain about seven hundred persons; the price of admission being to 
this part of the theatre half a crusado novo, and for a box on the lower and 
principal tier, sufficiently capacious to contain five or six chairs, half a moi- 
dore, or about ten shillings. The operas are given on the nights of Monday, 
Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday,—generally commencing about half past 
eight, and concluding before twelve. The ladies appear not to dress for the 
opera, excepting upon the appearance of some new actor, or at the representa- 
tion of a novel piece. The custom of the actors stopping to acknowledge the 
applause of the audience, even in the delivery of an heroic speech, quite 
destroys the illusion of the whole scene.” 


These details are something meagre, which is not very surprising ; 
inasmuch as the author (if we understand him rightly in another place) 
was not acquainted with the language in which the performances were 
carried on. Near the first mentioned house, the Salitre, which is a sort 
of “ Minor” institution, equal to our own Circus or Sadler’s Wells, stands 
the amphitheatre for the Bull Fights, which are exhibited on the Sunday 
afternoon. This national entertainment our traveller thought it right 
not to see-—“ The cruelty of the sports,” he says, “ and the sacred cha- 
racter of the day, are quite sufficient for English travellers to leave Por- 
tuguese taste in the full and undisturbed enjoyment of all its pleasures.” 

The native Portuguese of the higher classes, are not so fortunate as to 
be agreeable to Mr. Kinsey in their personal appearance. It is true that 
they are not (in all probability) the immediate descendants of Adonis ; 
but the following description strikes us strained and extravagant, rather 
than ludicrous :— 


« And what, you will demand, of these said lords of the creation at Lisbon? 
—Why, the fact is, that if the English gentleman who once received from a 
stranger in London a gold snuff-box, in acknowledgment of his greater nasal 
pretensions, which he was to transfer to the honour of any proboscis more red, 
ugly, and extensive than his own, that he might casually chance to meet, had 
come off straightway to Lisbon, the said box he must in justice have resigned 
upon the first step of the abominable packet-stairs. 

-“ Of all animals in creation, the Lisbon dandy, or fashionable Lusita- 
nian swell, is by far the lowest in the scale of mere existence. I have been 
haunted in my dreams by visions of ugliness since the first time I beheld a 
small, squat, puffy figure,—what was it? could it be of a man?—incased 
within a large pack-saddle, upon the back of a lean, high-boned, straw-fed, 
cream-coloured nag, with an enormously flowing tail, whose length and 
breadth would appear to be each night guarded from discoloration by careful 
inyolution above the hocks. Taken, from his gridiron spurs and long pointed 
boots, up his broad blue-striped pantaloons, @ la Cossaque, to the thrice folded 
piece of white linen on which he is seated in cool repose ; thence by his cable 
chain, bearing seals as large as a warming-pan, and a key like an anchor ; 
then a little higher, to the figured waistcoat of early British manufacture, and 
the sack-shapened coat, up to the narrow-brim sugar-loaf hat on his head,— 
where can be found his equal? Nor does he want a nose, as big as the gnomon 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. V. No. 32. 


170 Portugal Tilustrated. [Aveusr, 


of a dial-plate; and two flanks of impenetrably deep black brushwood, 
extending under either ear, and almost concealing the countenance, to com- 
plete the singular contour of his features. 

“* The lower classes are infinitely superior in dignity of appearance, and in 
manly beauty, to those of the higher order. For instance, turn round and 
look at that finely-formed, athletic, patient, and hard-working water-carrier, 
with his barrel of many devices upon his shoulder ; how nobly and gracefully 
does the honest mountaineer trip along under his burden! Though only half 
clothed, he has more about him of the dignity of human nature, mich as he 
is unjustly despised, than all the classes of those who deal out to him no treat- 
ment but contumely and contempt. By the hard sweat of his brow he is 
enabled, though with difficulty, to earn about sixpence a day, the moiety of 
which serves to procure him his bread, his fried sardinha from a neighbouring 


cook’s stall, and a little light wine, perhaps, on holidays,—water being his’ 


general beverage,—nay, one might almost say, his element. A mat in a large 
upper room, shared between him and several brethren of the same avocation; 
serves him in winter as a place of repose for the night ; but during the sum-= 
mer he frequently sleeps out in the open air, making his filled water-barrel 
his pillow, ready in an instant to start, in case of fire, at the call of the captain 
of his gang, and to perform the only public duty exacted from him.” 

The red noses of the -Portuguese gentry, we apprehend, are of recent 
growth—or inrportation. Certainly, in the course of our own experience 
in this country, we never recollect to have encountered one of them. 
Indeed, the habits of the people, which are temperate and abstemious in 
the extreme, are quite ill-calculated to favour the production of any such 
excrescence. We conclude that they must be imported ; probably from 
the neighbourhoods of Leadenhall-street and Whitechapel, in part pay- 
ment of the port wine consumed in those regions. ‘The chief fault of the 
“ Lisbon dandy’s” dress seems to be; that it is the same which was 
fashionable some years since in this country, and is now so no longer. 
And Mr. Kinsey’s pursuits have probably not led him much into the 
consideration of horse equipment; or he would be aware that the prin- 
ciple of the Portuguese saddle, is the same which—after much obstinacy, 
and exhibition of prejudice, and mischief arising from delay—has been 
adopted in the cavalry furniture of our own country.* The paragraph 


* It is-a singular fact, that with all the excellent horsemanship, and admittedly 
admirable cayalry discipline, which has so long distinguished the English, our horse-har- 
ness was, until within the last ten years, and in many points still is, perhaps the very worst 
in Europe. The ordinary English saddle seems constructed with the especial design of 
affording neither support, nor what is technically termed “seat” to the rider. It is low 
both behind and before ; stuffed to a comfortable rotundity ; and covered with a smooth 
hard leather, which acquires a polish equal to enamel from use ; and the nether garment 
chosen to be placed in contact with this glossy level, is constructed of some soft, pliant, 
material—wash leather, or fine woollen cloth—between which, and such a double varnished 
surface, there can be no more disposition to adherence, than between the feet of an old lady 
in pattens, and a “slide” on the London pavement down hill, in December. The old dtagoon 
saddles, in use (contemporary with the cocked hats) in the beginning of the Peninsular 
war—some remnants of which, we believe, may still be found in the depéts of the artillery 
—were perfect curiosities, considered as machines which men were to sit, and fight upon. 
From constant and arduous friction (in the way of cleaning) with some oily or saponaceous 
compound, they attained the smoothness and lustre of glass ;_ and men would have gained 
just as much assistance from saddles built out of that material. To render the impossi- 
bility of any natural hold the more complete too, the men, in several of the heavy dragoon 
regiments, were dressed in plush [cotton-velvet] small-clothes. The dragoon harness, as 
far as concerns the saddle, now is pretty generally improved among us; and the demi 
pique shape, high before and behind, is introduced, covered with a schabrach of sheep-skin, 
with the wool outwards ; upon which, with a dressing of cloth trowsers, a firm and steady seat 
(without the incessant exertion of muscular strength) can be maintained. The old saddle, 
however, still remains in ordinary use out of the army. And our stirrups continue to be 


r| 
eI 
“ 


1828.] Poriugal Illustrated. 171 


that follows is singularly unlucky in both its facts and inferences. 
For the “ superior dignity” of the lower classes of the Portuguese, it 
happens unluckily that the Gallegos referred to for the proof, are all 
Spaniards, from the province of Galicia ; indeed, the author himself states 
this fact, we believe, in the ensuing page. For the “ gracefulness with 
which they /rip under their burthens,’ we confess it is a circumstance 
that had escaped us ; it may be that we were less alive to the beauties 
of form and movement than our author. But at all events we have 
great pleasure in assuring him that it is an exceeding error to imagine 
that these poor people “ earn with difficulty about sixpence a day ;” on 
the contrary, like most irregular artizans im capital cities, they gain a 
very competent livelihood: and if ever Mr. Kinsey had occasion to 
employ one of them for half an hour, we can hardly understand how he 
has fallen into such a mistake. 

The following description of a dinner entertainment in Portugal, 
affords another instance of the haste with which our author jumps to 
conclusions ; as well as (we think) of the infelicity of his efforts to be 
piquant or satirical :— 


“ A Portuguese economist appears to have attained to the valuable art of 
feeding the largest given proportion of human beings with the smallest con- 
ceivable quantity of sustentatious matter. 

“Tn fact,’ says the Rambler, ‘the habits of life among the two people’ 
(speaking of Portuguese and English society) ‘ are so different, that the 
intrusion of a stranger would perhaps involve a greater disturbance of the 
usual routine of existence, than it is fair to expect they should incur upon the 
claim of a common letter of recommendation.’ A dish of yellow-looking 
bacalhao, the worst supposable specimen of our saltings in Newfoundland ; a 
platter of compact, black, greasy, dirty-looking rice; a pound, if so much, of 
poor half-fed meat; a certain proportion of hard-boiled beef, that has never 
seen the salting-pan, having already yielded all its nutritious qualities to a 
Swinging tureen of Spartan soup, and now requiring the accompaniment of a 
satellite tongue, or friendly slice of Lamego bacon, to impart a small relish to 
it ; potatoes of leaden continuity ; dumplings of adamantine contexture, that 
Carthaginian vinegar itself might fail to dissolve ; with offensive vegetables, 
and a something in a round shape, said to be imported from Holland, and 
called cheese, but more like the unyielding rock of flint in the tenacity of its 
impenetrable substance ; a small quantity of very small wine ; abundance of 
water ; and an awful army of red ants, probably imported from the Brasils in 
the wood of which the chairs and tables are made, hurrying across the cloth 
with characteristic industry ;—such are the principal features of the quiet 
family dinner-table of the Portuguese. 

“ The crassitude, the pinguid gravity of such entries, would, as an agree- 
able writer observes, ‘make a man of delicate stomach and feeble digestion 
heavily repent of having adventured upon the hardships of such an Arabia 


carefully constructed so as never to secure the foot while a man is on horseback, or by any 
accident let it loose if he happens to fall off. There have been a hundred inventions—not 
one of them worth a farthing—to “ prevent the possibility (in case of accident) of a rider’s 
foot being dragged in the stirrup ;” but the simple principle of the shoe stirrup, used by 
the Spaniards and Portuguese, which renders it nearly impossible for the stirrup to be lost 
-on horseback, and quite impossible for the foot to be retained in case of a fall, has never 
been adopted. Such a stirrup too, with the front of open lattice or shell work, would. be 
capable of being made more ornamental than those at present in use. It is true that 
our people, both on the road and in the field, ride extremely well with their present 
equipment ; but they ride with an outlay of double the power and bodily exertion that is 
necessary. One or two English artists draw exquisitely well, who have had the misfortune 
to lose the right hand; but no reasonable person would teach a learner, by compelling 
him to work only with his left. 
Z 2 


172 Portugal Illustrated. [Aueust, 


Petrea hospitality ; to do justice to which, it might be added, in all fair cal- 
culation of proportionable powers, that the steam-engine force of an ostrich’s 
stomach, or the iron digestion of a turkey, could alone be adequate,” &c. 


It would scarcely be supposed of a traveller, who set out with the 
view of making his readers better acquainted with the country he was 
to visit than the inhabitants of it themselves, that this fierce philippic 
against Portuguese hospitality is pronounced merely on the authority 
of report? This, however, undoubtedly is the fact; for the author 
declares, at the time when he writes it, that he has never “in any one 
instance” been a visitor in any Portuguese family! Such a description 
as is here given may be true of the household of persons in narrow cir- 
cumstances, but certainly bears no resemblance to the style of domestic 
arrangement in the dwellings of persons of fortune or condition. 

Throughout Mr. Kinsey’s work, however, constant references will be 
found to the “pride and poverty” of the nobility and gentry, and the 
“beggared and degraded condition” of the lower classes ; and as there is 
a great deal of error and exaggeration about many of these statements, we 
may find room for a few words upon the real position of the case. 
The Portuguese of the upper classes, are, like most of the natives of 
southern climates, habitually abstemious. The people at large, for the 
sake of enjoying a larger portion of the luxury of leisure, are contented 
to consume a less amount of the luxuries of beef and wine than the 
English are accustomed to do. The chief objection arising to this system 
is a political and a public one—by diminishing the amount of national 
exertion, it weakens the strength of a country and lessens its resources: 
that the personal happiness of individuals is increased by the state of 
incessant exertion—between acquirement and expenditure—in which 
we live in England, has never yet been shewn entirely to our satisfaction. 
Still there is none of that slovenliness and offence about the domestic 
arrangements of the Portuguese of respectability, which Mr. Kinsey is 
so ready to impute. Their cuisine is bad enough ;—they say that it is bad, 
but that the English is worse—a point, however, on which we take 
leave to think they are entirely mistaken ; but still it would be difficult 
to find more scrupulous neatness and cleanness than pervades all the 
chamber and table arrangements of a respectable Portuguese house ; 
and Mr. Kinsey’s account of the distress of the lower orders is entirely 
over-rated. For instance, Mr. K. describes the water-carrier and 
porter of Lisbon, as “ earning with difficulty sixpence a day ;” we can 
assure him that he is totally mistaken as to this fact; and he himself 
states, directly afterwards, that his “ savings” out of these earnings, are 
in general “ sufficient to enable him, in the course of some fifteen years, 
to return to the mountains of his own native Galicia, and to purchase a 
little plot of culturable ground, upon which he erects a small cottage,” 
&c. &c. A labourer, who accomplished this in fifteen years in Eng- 
land, would think that he had little to complain of. And again, Mr. Kinsey 
is everlastingly complaining of the paucity of the population—of “the 
want of sufficient hands even for the purposes of agriculture”—a state of 
things hardly consistent with the existence of a very low rate of wages 
to labourers? But what is the fact, as to this point, where we have an 
opportunity of getting at it directly. Mr. Kinsey does once—we believe 
it is only once—tell us the actual wages paid for labour in one of the 
districts which he visited ; and his words are these: at the time he writes, 
he is at Oporto—* The labourers in the quarries, on the banks of the 


_i i ie 


1828.] ' Portugal Illustrated. 173 


Douro, near Porto, whom we have observed on our excursions up the river, 
converting stone for the line of new quay, get about three hundred reis 
for their day’s work, which commences shortly after four in the morning, 
and is continued (with three hours rest during the heat of the day) until 
beyond sunset.” Now three hundred reis are equal to one shilling and 
sixpence English ; and with eighteen-pence a day, in a country where 
meat (this is at Oporto) sells for from three-pence to four-pence a pound ; 
potatoes for two-pence a bushel ; fruit, vegetables, and “ sardinhas,” more 
than proportionably low, and a wholesome wine at about two-pence a 
bottle,—under such circumstances, so far from perceiving that the lower 
classes suffer very heavy distress and privation in Portugal, we certainly 
should be extremely well pleased if we could see every labourer in 
England placed in an equally prosperous condition. 

These errors are the errors of hasty conclusion—by no means of inten- 
tional misrepresentation ; and of a desire to speak upon every point as it 
arises, less guardedly, than decisively and with force. But there are 
some other faults in Mr. Kinsey’s book which cannot be so easily excused. 
The following passage, for instance, touching the observances of the Sab- 
bath in Lisbon, strikes us as being in as bad taste as can well be 
conceived :— 

« A saint’s day, or holyday, in Lisbon, set apart by the ordinances of man, 
it soon became obvious, is observed with every solemnity of outward appear- 
ance ; the shops being closed, and business of every kind, save that of the 
dealer in wines, as well as of the laborious Gallego and hardy muleteer, being 
universally suspended ; whilst the sacred day of rest, appointed to be hallowed 
by the express word of God himself, is openly and scandalously, and without 
exception of persons or classes amongst the Portuguese, most shamefully 
violated, under every possible circumstance of impropriety in the continuance 
of the ordinary pursuits and occupations of the week, and in the more than 
usually large assemblage of persons at the fairs, fetes, bull-fights, theatres, 
and the opera. Yet this same people, so devoted to their amusements, when 
the bell rings in the front of a church, to announce that the holy composition 
of flower and water is about to be carried in procession through the streets to 
the couch of the sick or the dying, are immediately arrested in the prosecution 
of their worldly avocations, and publicly kneel in deep devotion to the real 
presence, until the canopied priests and chaunting choristers have borne the 
Pyx out of sight.” 

It is scarcely very good judgment in a gentleman and a scholar, to 
break out into so much indignation and vituperate epithet, about a 
practice which is almost universal over the continent of Europe ; nor is 
it ever otherwise than painful to hear the minister of one religion speaking 
in angry or contemptuous terms of the usages or ordinances of another. 
It is something offensive, too, to hear “the express word of God” alluded 
to in terrorem, on every occasion when a poor man employs a portion of 
his only day of leisure, in the pursuit of pleasures, or in the execution 
of duties, which his necessary labours leave him no time for during the 
week. It is not a month ago that a member of Parliament declared in his 

lace, that, to get through the business of a certain Government office, he 
ad been constantly compelled to work for some hours on the Sundays. 
This gentleman is a baronet, and moves in high society ; he went to the 
opera on Saturday night, and did his work on the Sunday. A French 
hatter or jeweller, is compelled to reverse this course : he works on the 
Saturday night, and goes to the operaon Sunday. In another part of his 
work, Mr. Kinsey talks of “ drunken friars” in the streets of Lisbon ; and 
speaks of the sight as though it was one of common occurrence. If Mr. 
insey pledges himself—which it is difficult sometimes to decide how 


174 Portugal Illustrated. [Aveusr, 


far he does or does not do—that he has witnessed this sight, we have no 
hesitation in giving credit to it upon his assertion ; but it is only just for 
us to observe, that in the course of a residence’in various provinces of 
Portugal, very considerably indeed more extended, as we apprehend, 
than his has been, we certainly never, in any instance, saw a friar “ drunk 
‘in the street.”* And, as far as our belief goes, we never saw an eccle- 
‘siastic in a state of intoxication at all. The clergy, we have no doubt, 
in every country, have quite sins enough to answer for ; but intoxication 
is not a vice at all prevalent in Portugal. 

We pass, however, with great relief from these notices of Lisbon, 
which contain nothing of any value but that which is extracted from the 
works of previous writers, to the more advanced portion of Mr. Kinsey’s 
book, which describes his tour through Beira and part of Estremadura to 
Oporto and Coimbra; upon one circumstance, at least, of which, the 
pictorial illustrations which accompany it, we are tempted to bestow 
almost unqualified praise. Some of these views are the productions of a 
friend who accompanied the author in his tour, and one or two are stated 
to have been obtained from gentlemen resident in England; but, under 
any circumstances, Mr. Kinsey may esteem himself fortunate in their 
collection. The landscape views are, almost without exception, drawn 
with great taste and fidelity, and the engravings, all of them, admirably 
-well executed. Many of the little vignettes, too, which consist of points 
of Portuguese habit and economy, convince the experienced eye, at a 
glance, that they have been drawn from observation on the spot. 
Among the views of architecture and scenery, we would point out espe- 
cially, as striking, not more from the manner of their execution, than 
for the beauty of the scenes represented—the: frontispiece—the “ View 
of Coimbra’—taken, as we imagine, from the high road leading from 
Condeira ;—it is hardly possible to wish for any design more graphic or 
correct than this. The last view but one—“~ The Castle of Leiria,” is 
quite equal to the former in point of merit. And the “ View upon the 
Douro, looking towards Oporto ;” the “ View of Cintra;” and the “ View 
of Porto and the Villa Nova, from the Serra Convent,” can scarcely be 
spoken of in terms of too high commendation. Among those scenes 
more descriptive of the peculiarities of the country, the plates of “ The 
Estalagem, or Portuguese Inn ;” “ The Douro Peasant with his Car and 
Oxen;” and “ The Road-side Altar, with figures resting ;’ all are 
drawn with great spirit and deep feeling, and will recal to the cam- 
paigner of the Peninsula, thoughts and objects with which, in other days, 
he has been familiar. The “ View of the Abbey of Batallha,” we do not 
like so well. Murphy’s book contains a view of the same building, in 
every way superior. And the author fairly enough apologizes for the 
absence in such a work of a View of Lisbon, by alleging, that which is 
the fact, that nothing short of a “ double elephant sheet’—which his 
book will not admit—would enable any artist to embody even an outline 
of the city. Lisbon can only be well represented upon a very extended 
scale ; and it would be a good subject, and, as a picture, not an unworthy 
one, for the future consideration of Mr. Horner’s gigantic panorama. 

It would be injustice, too, in this place, towards Mr. Kinsey, whom 
we have treated hitherto with an absence of ceremony, but whom we 
have no disposition to criticise unfairly, if we were to pass by the fact 


“ We quoted from memory, the words are—‘ A monk in a state of intoxication, with 
a rabble of boys at his heels ;—these are the passing objects that render a residence in this 
street so highly diverting,” &c. 


1828. ] Portugal Illustrated. 175 


that several chapters in this part of his work, are written in a spirit 
more rebuked and intelligent than most of those to which we have 
already alluded. His notices of the commerce and finance of Portugal, 
and especially of the wine trade of Oporto, though occasionally tripping 
as to principle, are industriously collected, and marked in the main by 
temperance and good sense. As an example of the errors in point of 
principle, we may take the passage immediately before us (p. 147.), in 
which the author ascribes the decrease that he finds in the population 
of Portugal, to “the great demand for labour in the colonies.” We 
are afraid that not much of the abstraction of hands is really to be 
traced to this source. The demand for labour is very high in Australia 
and even in the United States ; but we do not find (just now unluckily) 
that it tends very materially to carry off the surplus labourers of England 
orIreland. The “ celibacy of the priesthood” too, and “ the extent of the 
conventual system,” two other causes named by Mr. Kinsey, as tending to 
lower the zmount of population, can hardly operate to produce that efiect 
in any very extended degree. The number of individuals acted upon 
by them (and especially of females), though numerically it appears large, 
taken in comparison with the great mass of the community, is inconsider- 
able. In Ireland, the priests do not marry ; but there is notwithstanding 
no want of an abundant population. A good deal of the fault lies, pro- 
bably, in the absence of that spirit of enterprise and industry in Portugal, 
among those classes by whom the property. of the country is possessed ; 
which, where it exists, by the bounty which it offers for labour,. can 
scarcely fail to call the principle of population into action. But somes 
thing, we fear, will have to be attributed to the peculiar bodily constitution, 
and with that to the vices and ill habits of the people themselves ;—cer- 
tainly the fact will have forced itself upon the notice of every Portuguese 
traveller—that in passing through a town or village, he seldom saw any 
thing like the number of children, even in proportion to the number of 
adults, that he would have expected to find in France or England. 
Those pages of this portion of the work which relate to the province of 
Douro, contain information, as we have already observed, and entertain- 
ment; but we attempt any extract from them almost with apprehension, 
for the extracts of the author himself from former writers are so extensive 
and incessant, that it is very difficult to decide, even upon cautious exami- 
nation,when he means to speak for himself, and when he quotes the 
words of some other person. We shall hazard a few detached passages 
however, chiefly those describing the town and vicinity of Oporto. 


* One of the finest streets in Porto is the Rua Nativida. It forms the 
continuation of the Calcada dos Crucos, where the market people principally 
assemble. At the top is situated the beautiful church of the Clericos. From 
the part where these two streets divide, the Rua das Hortas begins, and 
terminates in the Rua Nova Almada. Close to the Rua dentre Vendas, 
where small wines are sold, is a sort of covered passage, or little bazaar for 
inferior shops, where the country people are accustomed to make their pur- 
chases. In the Rua Largo da Feira, bread, dried fish, fruits and vegetables 
of all sorts, are sold, as well as groceries and other necessaries. The Rua 
das Flores, however, is the principal street at Porto, and in which the best 
shops in every line of business are situated, and where any article almost of 
English manufacture may be procured. At an ‘ Armazem de Papel de todas 
a ee: we observed a shield of the Norwich Union fire office placed over 
the door. In the Rua des Domingos are the bank or Caixa Filial do Banco 
de Lisboa, the grand front of the Dominican convent, and principal entrance 
into their church. At the end of the Rua das Flores, and overlooking the 


176 Portugal Illustrated. [Aueusr, 


Largo da Feira, is the large Benedictine nunnery, in whose beautiful chapel 
the sublimest music is frequently heard. 

“ There is a fine fountain of excellent water in the Rua de bello Monte, 
which is to the left up a steep street, forming the continuation in a northern 
direction of the Rua des Domingos, and another beautiful fountain in the 
Praca de Santa Theresa. From the summit of the elegant tower of the 
Clerigos, a most commanding view may be obtained over the town and 
neighbouring wooded heights, the windings of the Douro, a large extent of 
coast, and the Atlantic ocean. The view from the northerly terrace of the 
Serra convent above the left bank of the Douro, comprises the public and 
private buildings of the city, and the remains of the old town wall. The 
corridors of the convent are extremely long, as may be supposed from the 
almost interminable line of building which looks towards Porto. From the 
eastern terrace, at the end of the corridor, a little chapel is distinguished at 
about six miles distance, perched nearly on the loftiest summit of the Serra, 
in which are the coal-mines of Vallonga.” 


The monks of the Senor convent, are of the Augustine order, and 
possess very considerable lands, which, in common with most of the 
demesnes of the monasteries in this country, are laid out— 


“Into fields, pleasure gardens, orchards, orange and lemon groves, with 
the addition of fountains and an aqueduct. The rigour of their discipline 
never permits them to quit the paradise in which they are confined; but 
they have their rabbit-warren, and preserves for game, which, with their 
religious occupations and employment in the surrounding grounds, serve to 
beguile the time. We took a walk one evening in the gardens with the 
prior, a venerable old man, who was distinguished from his brethren by 
wearing a ring, set with a large amethyst, on the middle finger of his right 
hand, and a large silver cross worn round the neck. 

‘* Passing under the Ramada, or walk of vines, which arch over head on 
trellis-work, supported by rude granite columns about nine feet high, we 
came to a piece of ground, the extent of twenty acres, situated to the north- 
east of the convent, and this year bearing a crop of Indian corn, which is 
estimated, according to the prior’s statement, to contain about twenty-seven 
loads of produce, each load being reckoned forty alcaldes of corn, and the 
alcalde to be worth a crusado novo, or ninety shillings the load in our money. 
Thence we ascended to the summit of the aqueduct, which runs down to the 
convent, and passes over a mill that is worked by the superfluous water ; and 
enjoyed from that elevated position a still more superb view to the east, of the 
line of high pointed mountains in the distance, and a conically shaped hill, 
apparently of white granite, with the little chapel on its summit called San 
Cosme; anoble reach of the river, and the buildings on the right bank, 
including a large untenanted mansion, called the Quinta de Freijo, to the 
bishop’s public school, as it is called, and which is not yet completed. Down 
the river again to the westward, a fine expanse of water is seen, with part of 
the city of Porto in the centre of the view, the remainder being intercepted 
by the convent groves and buildings. 

“* But the most interesting prospect by far is obtained from a small chapel 
advanced on a terrace, which immediately fronts the west, and overhangs 
Villa Nova and the immense magazines in which the Douro wines are depo- 
sited, commanding the whole city, a considerable circuit of the river, the 
cheerful hill of Gaia, with the remains of an old building on its summit, falsely 
reputed a Castello dos Mouros, a little below Villa Nova, and apparently 
locking up the Douro, as you will find in the sketch which accompanies this 
letter. It is by far the prettiest object seen in the neighbourhood of Porto. 
To the right again, the view falls upon the bridge of boats, the vessels of 
different nations at anchor below it, and the new line of quay which runs 
parallel with the right bank of the river.” 


We have already spoken of this view, which is one of the most inte- 
resting given in the volume. It was taken, the author says, from a 


: 


1828. Portugal Iliustrated. 177 


foreign print, ill executed, and very scarce, but was corrected and 
greatly improved in the course of the re-drawing. From these descrip- 
tions and some of those which follow, our readers will perceive that 
Portugal might be made not altogether unendurable as a residence :— 


* In the gardens of the quintas, small channels of water, kept constantly 

filled from some overflowing fountains, are so skilfully constructed, as to 
furnish a never-failing supply of moisture to the shrubs and plantations, which 
would otherwise in summer be burnt up by the heat. The ulmis adjungere 
vitem is well known in poetical description, but in Portugal, besides over- 
shadowing their artificial supporters, the vines are seen attaching themselves 
to, or hanging down in luxuriant festoons from forest trees, such as the oak, 
chestnut, and cork, in all the wildness of nature, and not unfrequently insi- 
nuating themselves among the branches of myrtle-trees, which attain a con- 
siderable size in the hedge-rows, and contrasting their large purple bunches 
with the snow-white blossom. The union is truly poetical, and its novelty is 
charming to the eye of a northern traveller. You shall have a sketch of the 
myrtle and vine in conjunction, faithfully represented. A vine is often pur- 
posely planted by the farmer under an oak tree, whose boughs it soon over- 
runs, repaying the little labour expended in its cultivation by its fruit, and the 
lop of its branches. Ten pipes of green wine, vinho verde, expressed from 
these grapes, will yield one pipe of excellent brandy. Being light and sharp, 
the vinho verde is preferred by the generality of Portuguese, in the summer, 
to wines of superior strength and quality. 
_ “ The golden pippin-trees are here in as declining a state as they are in 
England. Great care; however, is taken in their cultivation; and at one of 
the quintas, where we were hospitably received, we were surprised with 
finding a nursery of them amounting to nearly a thousand, and apparently in 
a very healthy condition. It is observed, however, that they invariably 
become cankered after the growth of a few years. Cider is said to have been 
first known in Africa, and thence to have made its way across the Iberian and 
Lusitanian peninsula, by the Pyrenees, into France and Normandy, and ulti- 
mately into our country. Were not the vine so luxuriant in Portugal, the 
inhabitants might be disposed to turn their attention to the increase of apple- 
trees, which would amply repay every care bestowed upon them by their 
rich produce, calculated alike for the table and the press. The branches of 
the fruit-trees are literally breaking down under the weight which has 
increased upon them. Little care, however, is taken to prevent the mischief 
by the application of props; for such is the climate and fertility of the soil, 
that the ensuing spring commonly repairs the injury, and the vigour of the 
tree seems never to be exhausted. The young trees are generally very great 
bearers.” 


The markets of Oporto are much better supplied, Mr. Kinsey says, 
than those of Lisbon. “ Fresh meat is excellent ; and particularly pork, 
during the season.” The pork of Portugal, generally, would not be con- 
sidered good in England. The sweet acorns upon which it is fed, and 
which Mr. Kinsey afterwards describes as such cheap and admirable 
provision, diminish the firmness and elasticity of the flesh, though they 
produce fat very abundantly. The greater part of the Portuguese hogs, 
from this cause, are unfit to be cured in the shape of bacon; and the 
fat only of the animal is preserved, which is kept between layers of salt, 
and called focino. There can never be fine bacon produced except from 
hogs fed upon corn. The prices of provisions, from the difficulty and 
expensiveness of all conveyance, vary very considerably in different 
parts of Portugal. In Lisbon, they are always, comparatively, dear ; 
and the meat is of a very bad quality. It is killed, as some moon-struck 
persons are insisting that ours should be killed in London, at “ abattoirs,” 
and brought into town in carts, making an exhibition, as Mr. Kinsey 
oa observes, extremely “ filthy and revolting.” It is fair to observe, 

.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 32. 2A 


178 Portugal Illustrated. [Aueusr, 


however, that the aspect of the meat brought into Lisbon, is very dif- 
ferent from that which we see in London; and that the appearance 
of the vehicle—the mode of conveying it, &c.—is considerably more 
slovenly. Fish, fruit and vegetables, are to be had in excellent order 
in Lisbon ; and the shrimps—as large as our English prawns, and very 
abundant—and the fresh caught sardinhas, are delicacies upon which the 
most accurate gastronome, even although of Paris or London, can form 
but one opinion. In the more distant parts of Portugal, on the other 
hand, the necessaries, and even the luxuries of life, may be obtained at 
an almost incredibly low rate. Mr. Kinsey says— 


* Tn the fortified town of Elvas, situated near the Guadiana, on the frontier 
of the Alentejo, about three leagues and a half from Badajoz, on the left bank 
of the river, a good family house may be procured, as has been stated, for 
about six pounds for the twelvemonth. Bread of the finest quality may be 
obtained from Badajoz for one penny the pound, and meat from two-pence to 
four-pence ; wine one penny the bottle; milk one penny a full quart; oranges 
twelve the penny ; three pomegranates for two-pence, and a turkey for about 
one shilling and sixpence. Colonial produce, however, is nearly ten per cent. 
dearer than in Lisbon, owing to the additional charge for carriage ; but even 
in Elvas very good Brazil coffee is to be purchased for about fourteen-pence 
the pound, and refined sugar for sixpence.” re 

The “ fortified town of Elvas,’ if meat and wine could be had for 
nothing in it, is a place which we should commiserate any body who 
was forced to dwell in. But the town of Estremoz, about eighteen 
miles nearer Lisbon, is one of the most delightful situations in the 
whole Alemtejo ; and, as the road between that and Elvas is a reason- 
ably good one, we should suppose, the distance would not produce any 
material difference of price. ; : 

The English troops under General Clinton, were in Portugal at the 
time of our author’s visit ; but of their reception or treatment by the 
inhabitants, he says little; and his notices or observations, taken gene- 
rally, upon the struggle in which he finds the country engaged, convey 
little that is new, or that can assist the reader in any opinion as to the 
probable termination of it. This is a subject which has already been 
more than once treated in our Magazine ; and it is not our intention, at 
present, to enter into any lengthy argument or discussion of it. For 
the time, the struggle has now terminated ; but the question between 
free institutions and despotism—education and improvement, or con- 
tinued bigotry and sottish ignorance—has not terminated ; and twelve 
months will not elapse before it will revive. The really liberal party in 
the kingdom—we speak of that party which desired a free govern- 
ment, religious toleration, and the instruetion and improvement of their 
fellow men—not of those who joined the ranks of the Constitutionalists, 
because their interests, or their attachments, carried them to the side of 
Don Pedro rather than of Don Miguel—that party, ever since the 
death of John the Sixth, have been combating with a weight about 
their necks. In maintaining that which they meant should be the cause 
of liberty, they were in fact maintaining, and compelled to maintain, at 
least the temporary dependence of Portugal upon the colonial kingdom 
of Brazil. The national pride—at all hazards—refused to endure this 
indignity ; and it is not surprising that it should have refused to endure 
it. Liberty, and the charter, desirable as they might have been under 
other auspices, were intolerable as presented (coupled with the honour 
of a “ Regency”) by am ex-colony tothe parent state. The ery for 
the “ absolute king!” was a call for the “ independent king ;” for such 
aking as would not be a servant to the crown of Brazil, and such a 


0 ee ee ee 


4 
aa 


1828.] Portugal Illustrated. 179 


sovereign as the Portuguese thought their honour concerned in allowing 
themselves only to be governed by. But the real question of despotism 
or constitutional freedom, has been lost sight ef—not tried or argued— 
in this contest. It has been silent and in abeyance while a stronger 
influence ruled men’s minds for the imstant ; when order is restored, and 
something like tranquillity, we shall begin to hear of it again. The 
cause of liberty and reform is “ hearted” in the country. There are 
classes who perceive they have an interest in its success; and who 
cannot resist, if they would, the temptation of aiding it wherever they 
see the opportunity. Its progress may be slow ; for it is opposed by 
deep seated prejudices, and powerful vested interests ; and the character 
of the people even among whom it will best make its way, is timorous 
and procrastinating. But it is infatuation to believe that the accession 
of Don Miguel, (a weak, and notwithstanding his election, unpopular 
prince,) to the sovereignty, will put an end to a spirit, which has never 
ceased to exert itself since the termination of the French war. And in 
fact, the very vices and fooleries which so abundantly adorn his majesty’s 
character, amount to so many pledges for its speedy and prosperous 
re-exhibition. 

The few notices given by Mr. Kinsey of the reception or conduct of our 
troops, at Lisbon, are trifling and contradictory. In one place, he com- 
plains—*« Our (the English) officers are openly insulted in the streets by 
the muleteers ; and it is useless for them to make any complaint.” Now 
it is hardly twenty pages back that we had a recollection—one of the 
first that follows the author’s arrival—of a totally opposite character :— 


* At the moment we landed at the foot of the packet-stairs, a ludicrous 
instance of the infliction of summary punishment occurred, which afforded us 
great amusement. Some quarrel, it would seem, had arisen between some 
native boatmen and a party of our jolly tars, who were waiting to take an 
officer off to his ship. The Portuguese had the temerity to strike one of the 
British seamen with an oar, when the whole boat’s crew jumped aboard the 
Lusitanian, and trundled the Portuguese party into the water—a case of no 
unusual occurrence, as we afterwards learned.” 


There is another story about the robbery of an English officer, by 
some Portuguese thieves, which the gentleman concerned will scarcely 
thank Mr. Kinsey for relating :— 


“ Tt was only a few nights since that a young English officer, who had 
lately joined his regiment in Portugal, and was returning home on his best 
horse from the opera, and in his dress regimentals, was stopped near Sacavem 
by four Malereados, (supposed to be expatriated Constitutionalists from 
Spain,) and robbed of every thing but his shirt and pocket-handkerchief, with 
which the brigands bound his hands, and then left him to his fate. A shrug of 
the Intendant’s shoulders was a sufficient proof that either he could not or 
would not effectually interfere to procure the restoration of the property lost. 
Ex uno disce omnes. Military men have many such anecdotes to relate of 


Portuguese magistrates and robbers.” 


‘We don’t exactly know whether the ex uno disce omnes here applies to 
the intendant, or to the officer: but we trust that it is to the former ; 
for we hardly can believe that our military men have many such anec- 
dotes to relate. Certainly the time has been, when an English officer, 
“returning on his best horse from the opera,” and in his “ dress regi- 
mentals,” if he had been so unfortunate as to be stopped at Sacavem 
by four malcreados and “ robbed of every thing but his shirt and 
pocket-handkerchief” (an odd association to leave!) instead of applying 
to any intendant, would have been happy to put up with the loss— 
not to say jump into the Tagus—in order to keep the adventure a secret. 

2A 2 


185 Portugal Illustrated. [ Aueusr, 


Our limits, which have already been carried nearly to their extent, 
prevent us from following Mr. Kinsey in his route, first down the 
Douro, and then by Coimbra and Leiria, from Oporto back to Lisbon. 
The tour, however, which he manages to accomplish altogether, includes, 
if not the whole, certainly the greater part, of the interesting scenery 
and positions of Portugal. Into the Alemtejo, if we understand rightly, 
he does not penetrate ; but describes it—as he is too apt to do, a great 
many things—upon “hearsay.” The return to Lisbon again brings us 
back to the dogs and the ecclesiastics, with anecdotes told fifty thousand 
times before, and laid at five hundred different places, and attributed to 
more than five hundred different people: all of which the writer may 
never have heard before, but which, we fear, will be sadly familiar to a 
great proportion of his readers. There is no very great point, for 
instance, in such descriptions as the following :-— 


“ Notwithstanding the effects produced by the ardent beams of the sun 
upon men, and almost every animal excepting the mule, the Lisbon dogs seem 
to luxuriate under the violence of the heat, and to avoid the shady sides of the 
streets, though the thermometer of Fahrenheit should indicate the state of the 
atmosphere to be at 110 degrees ; and scarcely an instance of canine madness 
indeed is ever known to occur. Certain trades and professions, such as gro- 
cers and shoemakers, are compelled bylaw to keep at their doors small sunken 
cisterns, which are constantly replenished with water for the use of these 
animals, who, since Junot’s bloody edict against them has ceased to have 
effect, and the restoration of the city to the uninterupted enjoyment of its 
‘ priesthood, and doghood,’ and filth, seem to have recovered their former 
numerical strength. 

** The canine confederacy, basking in the sun under our windows or upon 
the dunghill by the principal entrance into the Franciscan convent, which is 
opposite, consists of curs of high and of low degree ; some without a tail ; 
others with their ears shorn, or an eye lost in battle ; some lame, dragging a 
broken leg after them, perhaps, in addition, writhing under the mange, and 
proving their antiquity by the leanuness of their condition; poodles, who knew 
a master sixteen long years since ; pointers, who have been fixed to the same 
spot during the tenth part of a century ; and others who, from the variety in 
their colour and difference of shape, can boast no common origin. Such is the 
character of the motley group of dogs assembled together in the occupation of 
the Rua San Francisco. During the day, one is constantly molested by the 
yelpings and growlingsand snarlings of the pack, whenever a carriage or horse 
pass rapidly along, or the permanent possession of their territory seems endan- 
gered ; and in the night one is agreeably serenaded by the domestic broils of 
the vigilant cabal over the offerings made, to the great danger of the pas- 
senger, from the upper windows of the houses, to noctivagant Cloacina. The 
singular cry of one old gentleman, who, from infirmity, was not so ready as 
his brethren in joining the feast, still tingles in my ear.” ; 


Considering that, in the very next paragraph we are informed, that, 
for these dogs “ the Portuguese entertain the most religious commi- 
seration, and no one is found to do them an intentional injury,” it 
seems very odd how such an amazing supply of shorn ears and absent 
tails, lost eyes, and broken legs, can arise, as Mr. Kinsey describes ? 

The case that follows too, about the apothecary that was starved to 
death by attending noblemen and gentlemen, is a story for the Morning 
Post newspaper—for “the charitable and humane, and those whom 
Providence has blessed with affluence,” rather than for the quarto volume 
of the traveller and historian. 

Of the same character with these narratives are far too many other 
of the strange instances gathered in the course of Mr. Kinsey’s travels ; 
but it is not necessary to the advantage of our readers, nor would it be 


a CS ee ee 


1828. ] Portugal Illustrated. 181 


a work of charity towards the author himself, that we should particu- 
larisethem. The story of the law-suit about the old coat at Oporto, to 
give one example, is improbable, and, if true, puerile, and not worth the 
telling ; and the adventure of the Franciscan monk (p. 185), has travelled, 
we believe, through all the Italian jest books, without an exception, 
that ever were printed. Another mortal fault about Mr. Kinsey’s style 
of narrative, is the disposition that he has every where to lay a stress 
upon trifles. At one time, he makes his reader “ pause,” in the middle 
of a paragraph, at the gate of the English factory’s burying-ground ! 
because—but for the skill and carefulness of some physician, it would 
have been his own lot—instead of writing a book—to have reposed 
there! Presently afterwards, he is actually unable to examine the archi- 
tecture or antiquities of a particular church, on account of the “ over- 
powering stench” (a stench that people endure twice a day, at morning 
and evening prayer, and swoon not) arising from the practice of burning 
the dead within the walls of such edifices. And anon, in travelling up a 
hill to witness some object of peculiar curiosity, stops again to record the 
urbanity with which some gentleman picked up and restored his missing 
“white cambric pocket handkerchief.” These are pettinesses which 
weaken our confidence in an author, and disincline us to go on in his 
company. We distrust the judgment of a traveller, who quits Portugal 
-without witnessing a bull fight, because that species of shew is “ cruel,” 
or is “ exhibited on a Sunday ;” or who passes over the examination of 
a curious building, because he perceives a disagreeable smell in the 
inside of it. A still heavier fault, and the last we shall advert to, is the dis- 
position which Mr. Kinsey exhibits, either from natural acerbity of feel- 
ing, or from a desire to maintain a tone which shall be high and ex- 
cathedral, to talk in terms of fierce condemnation, if not of direct invec- 
tive, of all parties and persons who chance to be opposed to him in re- 
ligious or political opinions. Thus, through almost every page in which 
he touches upon the recent contest, we find the words recurring—* artful 
friars’ —“ unholy zeal”—<“ interests of the priesthood” —* restoration of 
priesthood and dog-hood,”—&c. &c. These figures of speech come ill 
from the mouth of a clergyman ; and from any man they are an argu- 
ment of weakness, not of strength. Noman who has common brains 
can feel surprised that the ecclesiastics of Spain or Portugal should be 
anxious to uphold the system by which they live, and preserve their 
resources and immunities from reduction or spoliation. Whether society 
at large would do wisely to allow them to uphold that system, and 
retain those immunities, is a very different consideration ; but it is no- 
thing strange, nor does it form any heavy moral imputation against them, 
as individuals, that they should exert themselves to do so. There are many 
individuals in England—some whole classes—who think that our own 
church revenues are needlessly and unreasonably high, and that the 
system of their application and distribution is a highly inequitable and 
unjust one. But, nevertheless, we suspect the established clergy would 
exhibit very little Christian forbearance, if any attack were proposed upon 
their receipts ; and we commonly see sufficient “ zeal,” either “ holy” or 
“unholy,” manifested at the very slightest indication of a disposition to 
encroachment upon them. Discussion loses all its worth the moment 
it lapses into abuse ; and, besides, there is no just cause for the condemna- 
tion here pronounced. We point out the propriety, perhaps the neces- 
sity, of breaking up a system, the existence of which has the sanc- 
tion of ages; but we do not vilify the parties, or find them worse 
rogues than ourselves, who happen to have an interest in the vigorous 


182 Portugal illustrated. [A_ cust, 


maintenance of it. The faulty judgment of Mr. Kinsey’s style upon 
these last points, as well as on some others which we might mention, will 
preclude his work, therefore, as we have already stated, from taking any 
thing like that rank in literature which he seems to have proposed for it. 
Its chief value lies in the pictorial embellishments, which are numerous, 
and certainly admirably executed ; even the (wood cuts) vignettes— 
the tail pieces to the chapters—many of them highly lively and charac- 
teristic. Of the larger views—the landscapes—we have spoken already. 
The specimens of costume at the end of the volume, we do not like 
quite so well as the matters that precede them: they are drawn and 
engraved by eminent artists; and the costumes are accurately given ; 
but the expression of the countenances—especially in the figures of the 
peasantry—have not, as it strikes us, the genuine Portuguese character. 
We should add that the work contains a map of Portugal, corrected by 
Arrowsmith, from the map of General Foy, and an illustrated table of 
ali the coins of Portuguese currency ; and that, as far as the matter of 
typography, and book embellishment goes, it is one of the handsomest 
works that ever issued from the press. 


SIX WORDS ON THE LATE ELECTION IN IRELAND. 


The obtrusive and pernicious exhibition of the Clare “election” is 
over ; and Mr. O’Connell has assumed the title of a Member of Parliament, 
and, by that which seems a misplaced endurance on the part of the 
authorities, is exercising some of the privileges of one. The mere act of Mr. 
O’Connell’s being returned to Parliament, amounts only to an indecorous 
trick ; intruded (rather too much in the general taste of our Irish friends) 
upon that which ought to be a grave and serious proceeding ; but, the mea- 
sures by which that return has been accomplished, will have made a strong 
impression upon the advocates of Catholic claims in England. It would be 
a waste of the patience of our readers, and a work that at this late period of 
the month we have not room for, to enter into any argument upon the 
competency of the Catholics, under the existing law, to sit in Parliament; 
nor, shall we go over the ground, already familiar, through the medium 
‘of the newspapers, of the genuflexions, exhortations, excommunications, or 
other mummeries, which were used at Clare, to induce the forty shilling 
voters to support Mr. O’Connell. All we want—and we shall dwell even 
upon that very shortly—is the fact, that, either from their natural appetite 
for tumult, or from the power exercised over them by the “ Associations” 
and the priesthood—on the first display of the standard of rebellion, the 
freeholders did renounce their allegiance to their landlords, and came 
up to the poll in crowcs for the candidate of the opposition. 

Now, if there were any thing at all in this proceeding, even like an 
assertion of independence on the part of the Irish voters, we should 
rejoice at it: but it is a gross perversion of terms, to talk of the existence 
of any such manifestation. There is an exhibition of a state of moral 
principle and feeling, with which freedom disdains to be associated ; 
but nothing else. ‘“ Independence,” as the word is understood by the 
reputable part of society, implies the discharge of our debts and duties ; 
not their evasion or defiance. A person the other day in the Court of 
Requests, pleaded in answer to his creditor’s demand, that he was legally 
freed from all claims, by “ having been sentenced by the law to be 
hanged ;” but that individual has not yet been declared in any address 
from the English pulpit, to be a pre-eminently free, and independent man. 

The contract between the Irish landlord, and his “ forty shilling” 


— 


_— 


1828.] Six Words on the late Election in Ireland. 183 


tenantry, stands thus. Their “ freeholds” (much to the abuse of the 
name) are portions of his property, entrusted to them by him specifically 
for his use, and, for the holding of which, subject to his application or 
appointment, they receive a consideration: this stipend is received in the 
shape of a right to cultivate some bog, or, of a strip of land for a 
potatoe garden, the rent of which gets into arrear, and while the tenant 
gives satisfaction, is not expected to be punctually paid. Now, this is a 
bad description of contract. And it jis a bad description of contract 
by which a man sits in the House of Commons—counterfeiting the 
position of an independent member—who, in reality, takes his seat for a 
private borough, to vote and act as the proprietor of that borough shall 
direct. But, unless all the bonds are to be dissolved, by which society 
exists and is held together, both these are contracts, as to which, when 
entered into, faith is to be kept. The Irish freeholder knows the bargain 
which he makes, and seeks it. He receives, and enjoys the advantages 
which result from it- He may become a free agent if he pleases, by 
cancelling the bond, and restoring the consideration: but he is a robber, 
if, for his own interest or passions, he violates its conditions, and trusts 
to the lawless state of the community in which he lives, to escape the 
infliction of its penalty. 

This latter species of independence, however, is that which has been 
asserted by the voters of the county of Clare; and it is worthy of remark, 
that this violation of faith and honour has been recommended and en- 
forced by their spiritual advisers as a duty. Those ministers of religion 
who best knew how fully and entirely binding in conscience the contract 
was, were the very men, who, by entreaties, and even by threats, induced 
them to break it. But, the state of affairs exhibited upon the whole 
(for our space runs short) is this—it is pretty evident that the peasantry 
of Ireland, or at least, a very large proportion of them, are at the com- 
mand, not at all of the legitimate government of the state, but of the 
priesthood and of the knot of adventurers who are raising money and 
trying to get into notice by disturbing it ; and the question that follows 
is twofold—“ Must such a state of things be allowed to continue >” and 
« Ts it probable that concession will alter or remove it?” The answer is, 
that such a state of things ought, at all hazards to be changed : and that 
a great many of those who have been the advocates of conciliation, begin 
now to be afraid that very little is to be expected from it. It would be 

_ arguing in the teeth of demonstration, to suppose that any concessions 
_ that ever England will make, or ought to make, will satisfy—(and 
* satisfy” too, quotha!)—the priests, and the self-elected Catholic 
leaders. And, for the lower classes—is it believed, that any human con- 
_ cessions that ever could be devised can ever deprive men, who are dis- 
: ed to turbulence, of a pretext for it? The Catholic tenantry of Clare 
lice abandoned their pledges to their landlords; an allegiance—we 
_ speak the fact out, let those who can contradict it—which has ten times 
_ more practical influence over them than any allegiance they ever bore 
the British government :—they have abandoned this allegiance, and run 
all the hazard of ruin and ejectment from their farms and livelihoods 
likely to be consequent upon it—for the sake of styling a man for a 
few weeks “ Member of Parliament” whom they know is incompetent to 
sit in Parliament; and who three years voted for a measure which was 
to exclude them for ever from returning members to Parliament at all. 
And, can it be supposed, that men who have hazarded all they possess 
for such an object as this, can ever be at a loss for an excuse for sedition, 
or for riot? or, that there is any spell in the measure of “ Catholic 
Emancipation” which can deprive them of the disposition for it ? 


184 Siz Words on the late Election in Ireland. [ Aveust, 


The multitude in Ireland will receive the boon which may be called 
«© Emancipation,” or any other boon which may be offered to them by 
this country, as their leaders may direct ; and it is clear that, if all that 
the most liberal portion of the English legislature ever thought of granting 
were conceded to them, it is not intended that they should be content 
with it. This is no matter of belief or inference: it is a conviction 
to which those who have been the supporters of concession have come 
with regret. It is openly, and ostentatiously announced, by those in 
whom the deluded people are trusting, that the terms which have been 
discussed in England under the title of “ Emancipation” will not do. 
«The church establishment of Ireland must be changed. The act of 
union must be repealed. The Parliament of Britain must be reformed ; 
and her governors and ministers taught how detestable their names are 
to the whole world, before the ‘ Liberators’ of Ireland will be satisfied.” 
And to back these pretensions, we are told “that the Catholics are banded: 
that they have friends, leaders, funds, and communications ; that it is 
in the weakness and the fears of England that they must put their trust ; 
and that the justice which she has insolently denied, she will now find 
can, and shall be compelled from her.” 

Now, these are words and demonstrations which can be attended with 
but one effect: they will lead the thinking part of the English nation to 
pause ; and to recollect that there are other means than those of con- 
cession, by which to deal with presumption and seditious insolence. 
They will begin to perceive that the Protestant party in Ireland, is that— 
and that alone—upon which this country, in emergency, could rely ; and 
to doubt of the expediency of granting additional power to those, whose 
ambition or brawling violence is not to be appeased, and who are making 
so dangerous a use of the power which they possess already. This is the 
conclusion to which the conduct of the Catholic body is bringing those 
even who have been the most anxious to avoid it. The argument which 
has triumphed over the Irish landowner on the late occasion has been too 
strong a one: it recoils and does mischief to the Catholic cause itself. 
The reliance has been—and this every Englishman feels—upon the 
lawless habits of the country. The fear of ejectment would never have 
been met—even where the disposition to treachery existed, by the 
tenantry ; but the answer was—“ They (your landlords) dare not eject 
you to-day, for fear you should fire their houses in their sleep, or shoot 
them from behind a hedge to-morrow.” Of all errors else, the promul- 
gation of this doctrine has been the most mischievous! The inculcation 
of a breach of faith upon the lower orders, is the last into which the 
Catholic divines should (openly) have fallen... They must be aware, that 
the faith which they profess is distristeld as well as disliked in Eng- 
land ; and, that the trust of those who supported their cause, was, in the 
conviction of its powerlessness, not in any supposition of its change. 
The dangerous principle, that “ Truth may be dispensed with, where 
important objects are concerned,” has long been asserted to be an article 
of their creed; but, it was short-sighted policy in themselves to make 
the justice of that charge so unequivocally apparent. 

We have only space farther to say, that it can scarcely be doubted, 
that the Catholic cause has suffered considerably by the events of the 
last month. Their electioneering exertions, carried to the utmost, will 
never gain them ten additional votes in Ireland; and, if by any 
accident, a general election was to take place, twenty new members 
would come in upon the Anti-Catholic interest in England. 


1€28.] L 


185 J 


MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMETIC AND FOREIGN. 


—— 


History of the War in the Peninsula, 
and in the South of France, by Colonel 
Napier. Vol. 1; 1828.—This history of 
the war is of a different, and, in many re- 
spects, superior character, to Lord London- 
derry’s still very respectable publication. It 
is not, like that, a mere narrative of the 
achievements of the English troops during 
the least important campaigns, but will, 
when completed, present a full view of the 
whole war, and exhibit in detail the conduct 
of the French as well as the English forces 
—the author having had extraordinary faci- 
lities for obtaining information from French 
officers, particularly, from Marshal Soult, 
who, “ disdaining national prejudices, with 
the confidence of a great mind, placed nu- 
merous original documents at his disposal, 
without even a remark to check the freedom 
of his pen.”? Colonel Napier’s professional 
experience, and personal acquaintance with 
the scene, will, moreover, give him a de- 
cided superiority over his rival, Southey. 
He has been not only an executive soldier, 
but is a political philosopher—somewhat, to 
be sure, of a radical cast—too much so, to 
please the leading members of his profession, 
or to conciliate the great commander to 
whom he dedicates his book—though he 
does so on the ground that “ he has served 
long enough under his command to feel why 
the soldiers of the Tenth Legion were at- 
tached to Cesar.” The present volume—a 
pretty portly one—conducts the story to the 
battle of Corunna and the death of General 
Moore, and at least three or four more on 
the same scale will be required to complete 
his purpose. He designedly forbears from 
treating largely of the disjointed and inef- 
fectual operations of the native forces— 
apocryphal as much of what could have been 
obtained of them, must necessarily be. 

The deliverance of Spain was the work, 
Colonel Napier maintains, not of the native 
troops, but of the English armies. The 
Spaniards conducted the war like savages— 
unconnectedly—unskilfully ; not in manly 
warfare, but by stealth and brigandage. They 
were self-sufficient, and stimulated by 
wounded pride—they were superstitious, and 
their religious feelings were roused to fury 
by an over-ruling clergy, who dreaded the 
loss of their endowments ; but, after the first 
burst of indignation, the cause of indepen- 

ce created very little enthusiasm among 
them. The leaders were, many of them, 
traitors, and more of them abhorrers of free- 
dom — pursuing, consequently, their own 
projects, and neglecting the general cause. 
umults and assassinations terrified and dis- 
gusted the sensible part of the community— 
a corrupt administration of the resources ex- 
tinguished patriotism, and neglect ruined 
the armies—and the peasant, a raw soldier, 
usually fled at the first onset, threw away his 
arms, and returned home, or joined the ban- 

M.M. New Series,—Vou.VI. No. 32. 


ners of men, who, for the most part, origi- 
nally robbers, were as oppressive to the 
people as the enemy. The guerilla chiefs 
would, in their turn, have been quickly ex- 
terminated, but that the French, pressed by 
Lord Wellington, were obliged to keep to- 
gether in large masses. This was the secret 
of Spanish constancy. From the moment 
the English took the field, the Spaniards 
ceased to act as principals—though the con- 
test obviously involved their existence as an 
independent nation. - 

Of the barbarities committed by these 
Spaniards, Colonel Napier notices some me- 
morable instances, exceeding in atrocity 
any thing we remember to have ever read. 
For instance :— 


Filanghieri, the Governor of Corunna (at the 
first explosion), an Italian by birth, was by a 
tumultuous crowd called upon to exercise the 
rights of sovereignty, and to declare war in form 
against the French. Like every man of sense in 
Spain, he was unwilling to commence such an 
important revolution upon uncertain grounds ; the 
impatient populace instantly attempted his life, 
which was then saved by the courage of an 
officer of his staff; but his horrible fate was only 
deferred. He was a man of talent, sincerely at- 
tached to Spain, and he exerted himself with 
success in establishing a force in the province: 
no suspicion of guilt seems to have attached to 
his conduct, and his death marks the temper of 
the times, and the inherent ferocity of the people. 
A part of the regiment of Navarre seized him at 
Villa Franca del Bierzo, planted the ground with 
their bayonets, and then tossing him in a blanket, 
let him fall un the points thus disposed, and there 
leaving him to struggle, they dispersed and retired 
to their own houses, 


The fate of Colonel Rene, a French of- 
ficer, was still more horrible :— 


He had been sent on a mission to Portugal, pre- 
vious to the breaking out of hostilities, and was 
on his return, travelling in the ordinary mode, 
without arms, attached to no army, engaged in no 
operations of war; but being recognised as a 
Frenchman, he was seized, mutilated, and then 
placed between two planks and sawed alive. 


Assassinations similar to those of the Mar- 
quis of Solano at Cadiz, and the Conde 
d’Aguilar at Seville, occurred in every part 
of Spain :— 

Grenada had its murders, adds Col. Napier ; 
Carthagene rivalled Cadiz in ruthless cruelty ; 
and Valencia was foul with slaughter. Don 
Miguel de Saavedra, the governor of thatcity, was 
killed, not in the fury of the moment, for he 
escaped the first danger and fled, but being pur- 
sued and captured, was brought back and de- 
liberately sacrificed. Balthaza Calvo, a canon of 
the church of St. Isidro, then commenced a 
massacre of the French residents, For twelve days 
unchecked he traversed the streets of Valencia, 
followed by a band of fanatics, brandishing their 
knives, and filling all places with blood: many 
hundred helpless people fell the victims of his 


2B 


186 


thirst for murder ; and at last emboldened by the 
impunity he enjoyed, Calvo proceeded to threaten 
the junta itself ; but there his career was check- 
ed. Those worthy personages who (with the ex- 
éeption of Mr. Tupper, the English consul, then a 
member) had calmly witnessed his previous vio- 
lence, at once found the means to crush his power 
when their own safety was concerned. ‘lhe 
eanon, being in the act of braving their authority, 
was seized by stratagem, imprisoned, and soon 
afterwards strangled, together with 200 of his 
band. 


Of the Madrid massacre, on the 2d of 
May—the source and prelude of these hor- 
rors—Colonel Napier speaks and reasons in 
these terms :— 


That it was commenced by the Spaniards is un- 
doubted—their fiery tempers, the irritation pro- 
duced by passing events, and the habits of violence 
which they had acquired by their late successful 
insurrection against Godoy, rendered an explo¢ 
sion inevitable. But if the French had secretly 
stimulated this disposition, and had prepared in 
cold blood to make a terrible example, undoubtedly 
they would have prepared some check on the 
Spanish soldiers of the garrison, and they would 
scarcely have left their bospital unguarded—still 
less, have arranged the plan, so that their own 
loss should far exceed that of the Spaniards ; and 
surely nothing would have induced them to relin- 
quish the profit of such policy, after having suf- 
fered all the injury. Yet Marshal Moncey and 
General Harispe were actively engaged in re- 
storing order; and it is certain that, including 
the peasants shot outside the gates, the ewe- 
cutions on the Prado, and in the barracks of 
the imperial guard, the whole number of 
Spaniards did not amount to 120 persons, while 
more than 700 French fell. Of the imperial guard 
70 were wounded, and this fact would suffice to 
prove that there was no premeditation on the part 
of Murat; for if he was base enough to sacrifice 
his own men with such unconcern, he would not 
have exposed the select soldiers of the French 
empire, in preference to the conscripts who 
abounded in his army. The affair itself was cer- 
tainly accidental, and not very bloody for the 
patriots ; but policy induced both sides to attribute 
secret motives, and to exaggerate the slaughter, 
&e. 


The convention of Cintra is stoutly de- 
fended by Colonel Napier :— 


_ The editors of the daily press,—says he, after 
discussing the circumstances—adopting all the 
misrepresentations of the Portuguese minister, 
and concluding that the silence of government 
was the consequence of its dissatisfaction at the 
convention, broke forth with such a torrent of 
rabid malevolence, that all feelings of right and 
justice were overburne, and the voice of truth 
stifled by their obstreperous cry. Many of the 
public papers were printed with mourning lines 
around the text, which related to Portuguese 
affairs ; all called for punishment, and some even 
talked of death to the guilty, before it was pos- 
sible to know if any crime had been committed ; 
the infamy of the convention was the universal 
subject of conversation—a general madness seem- 
ed to have seized all classes, and like the Athe- 
nians, after the sea-fight of Arginuss, the English 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Aueusr, 


people, if their laws would have permitted the ex- 
ploit, were ready to condemn their generals to 
death for having gained a victory. 


A court of inquiry was held at Chelsea— 
the report of which was not satisfactory to 
the government, and the members were re- 
quired to state their opinions individually. 
Colonel Napier is inclined to censure them 
for not speaking plainly. ‘‘ No set of men,”’ 
he says, “‘ were ever more favourably placed 
for giving a severe and just rebuke to popu- 
lar injustice.—Thus, ended,” adds he, ‘‘the 
last act of the celebrated convention of Cin- 
tra—the very name of which will always be 
a signal record of the ignorant and ridiculous 
vehemence of the public feeling; for the 
armistice, the negociations, the convention 
itself, and the execution of its provisions, 
were all commenced, conducted, and con- 
cluded at the distance of thirty miles from 
Cintra, with which place they had not the 
slightest connexion, political, military, or 
local: yet Lord Byron has gravely asserted, 
in prose and verse, that the convention was 
signed at the Marquis of Marialva’s house, 
at Cintra; and the author of the ‘ Diary of 
an Invalid,’ improving upon the poet’s dis- 
covery, detected the stains of the ink spilt 
by Junot on the occasion.”’ 

The conduct of Lord Castlereagh and Mr. 
Canning, successively foreign secretaries, 
and that of the agents, civil and military, 
sent by them to all parts of Spain—with au- 
thorities undefined, or incompatible, or con- 
tradictory, and independent of the com- 
mander-in-chief, and even controlling him— 
are sharply and deservedly censured. But 
we have no space, and can only direct the 
reader’s attention to the subject—and, in- 
deed, to every part of the volume may that 
attention be properly directed. 


Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentle- 
man, 3 vols. 12mo.; 1828.—The proper 
and distinguishing qualities of a gentleman 
—of a very high-bred gentleman—it seems, 
are an exquisite taste in dress, cookery, 
wines, liveries, sofas, carpets, draperies, 
&c. ; and the scenes of his adventures the 
drawing-room, the gaming-house, the club, 
the hotel—the ring, turf, and chase belong- 
ing to a rougher class—and if his ambition 
be of the very loftiest description, Downing- 
street and the House of Commons—in- 
triguing for place, or planning revenge. 
For the most part, these are the pursuits of 
Pelham—he is a very superior person—a 
dandy in dress, fastidious in sentiment, and 
exclusive in taste ;—in appearance he is 
absorbed in exhibition and display, but 
within he has other aspirings—he is in pur- 
suit of higher and incompatible objects—his 
delight is to be other than he seems—to be 
thought an idler, but be in fact a fagger— 
a devotee’ of Mill, and Bentham, and the 
Edinburgh, under the cover of a skimmer of 
novels and verses. 

But the prominent object of the volumes, 
and which indeed constitutes the tale, is the 


a es Oe 


— 2a oe 


1828.) 


adventures of Sir Reginald Glanville. This 
gentleman was a schoolfellow of Pelham’s, 
remarkable for his generous qualities and 
prodigious abilities—reserved and melan- 
choly, and so, of course, now-a-days, exces- 
sively interesting—and, above all, distin- 
guished for the utter absence of selfishness, 
and eager and active benevolence—which 
qualities, as we go along, we shall find sin- 
gularly illustrated. As boys, he and Pel- 
ham had been on the most intimate terms ; 
but leaving school, Glanville goes we know 
not where, and Pelham to Cambridge—of 
which he speaks in the flippant style com- 
mon to such as, intent upon the piano and 
the billiard-table, are too idle to pursue the 
studies of the place, and to such—a very 
numerous class—as know nothing whatever 
about the matter. 

After quitting Cambridge, to while away 
the lagging hours he visits a friend in the 
country, where were assembled a large party, 
consisting of persons of more or less im- 
portance—one or two conspicuous characters 
—four or five of the unknown vulgar, good 
shots and bad matches—elderly ladies, who 
live in Baker-street, and like long whist— 
and young ones, who never take wine, and 
say ‘ Sir,” &c. In a day or two, some of 
the ladies report the appearance of an odd 
looking man, in a rough coat, with a great 
dog, who had run after them, and was called 
off by the rough-clad stranger. By-and-by 
somebody else sees a man in the church- 
yard—prostrate—then rising, and clasping 
his hands towards heaven—and accompanied 
by a great dog, who was only prostrate, and 
did not ‘clasp his paws. At last, Pelham 
himself, walking towards this same church- 
yard, sees the very same man fling himself 
upon the ground—sob audibly ; and, on his 
getting up—his hat had fallen off—in the 
broad moonlight appeared the “ noble and 
chiselled features” of his old schoolfellow,’ 
Glanville. Glanville also recognizes Pel- 
ham, and sinks with a wild cry to the earth, 
—and we have quite a scene. Pelham 
kneels by his side, and Glanville throws 
himself into his arms and weeps like a child, 
and presently starting up, escapes without 
leaving a word of explanation on this unac- 
countable conduct. 

Tired of the country and of town, Pelham 
goes to Paris, where he speedily gets into 
a quarrel ; and an Englishman, whose name 
is Thornton, of a common cast, volunteers 
his services as second. ‘This man, a day or 
two after, he meets again in the Bois de 
Boulogne, and with him—“ who could he 
be ? where had he seen that pale, but more 
than beautiful countenance ? he must be 
mistaken—the hair is of a different colour.” 
The next day, strolling into a gaming-house, 
he finds again his new acquaintance, Thorn- 
ton ; and, presently after, he observes ano- 
ther Englishman, in a rough great coat—the 
same person who had so greatly excited his 
attention the day before. He was intently 
watching a man of a swarthy complexion, 


Domestic and Foreign. 


187 


who was playing with evident anxiety; and 
never could Pelham forget the stern and fe- 
rocious expression with which the man gazed 
upon the keen and agitated features of the 
gamester. ‘In the eye and lip there was 
neither pleasure, hatred, nor scorn, in their 
simple and unalloyed elements; but each 
seemed blent and mingled into one deadly 
concentration of evil passions.” By-and- 
by, still occupied with this interesting 
stranger, he meets him again—still in the 
rough great coat—in the Jardin des Plantes. 
He was here joined by a young woman, 
meanly dressed. They exchanged a few 
words, and the young woman, taking his 
arm, turned into another path, and they 
were soon out of sight. A person of so very 
aristocratic a look, with a mistress apparently 
so humble, was another mystery. However, 
“¢ ¢ we all have our foibles,’ as the French- 
man said,’? observes Pelham, “ when he 
boiled his grandmother’s head in a pip- 
kin.”” In an hour or two he meets them 
again at a cabaret, and overhears a conver- 
sation which only throws another cloud on 
the mystery. It regarded one T'yrrel—ap- 
parently the young woman’s protector. The 
aristocrat of the rough coat demanded of her 
if the £200. Tyrrel had received was cer- 
tainly the last relic of his property; and 
upon her assurance, and expressing a hope 
that, though she was now solely devoted to 
himself, he would not suffer Tyrrel to die of 
starvation, he replied in these delectable 
terms :—“ Night and day I pray to God, 
upon my bended knees, only one unvarying, 
unceasing prayer; and that is—when the 
last agonies shall be upon that man—when 
sick with weariness, pain, disease, hunger, 
he lies down to die—when the death-gurgle 
is in the throat, and the eye swims beneath 
the last dull film—-when remembrance peo- 
ples the chamber with hell, and his cow- 
ardice would falter forth its dastard recanta- 
tion to heaven—then—may I be there !”— 
which is met by the young lady with— 
“ Spite of the stings of my remorse, as long 
as I lose not you, I will lose life, honour, 
hope, even soul itself !” 

Pelham’s curiosity is now wound up to 
the highest pitch, and he makes Thornton a 
call to pnmp him, but unsuccessfully. In 
a day or two, however, he has the good for- 
tune to mect the young woman again, ac- 
companied this time by the swarthy game- 
ster; and again—he has capital ears—he 
overhears what enables him to identify him 
with the Tyrrel of the former conversation ; 
and, finally, he again encounters Tyrrel and 
the eternal stranger at a gaming-table— 
Tyrrel playing, and the stranger glaring on 
him like a demon. ‘Tyrrel loses every far- 
thing of the £200., and they quit the house 
at the same moment. On the staircase the 
stranger stops T'yrrel, and questions him: as’ 
to his losses ; and, on T'yrrel acknowledging 
his absolute ruin, he lifts up his hand to his 
head—* Turn !”” says he; “ your cup is 
not yet full—look on me, and remember!” 

2B2 


188 Monthly Revien 


‘Tyrrel gazed, :shricked, ‘and fell; and Pel- 
‘ham, pressing forward, and casting an in- 
tense look upon the stranger—the dark hair 
was gone—he discovered again the “ bright 
locks and lofty brow of Reginald Glan- 
ville.”’ 

Some few months elapse, and Pelham is 
again in England, canvassing an uncle’s 
borough ; when meeting with unexpected 
opposition, though returned, he is quickly 
ousted on petition. He intrigues with the 
minister, and performs some of the dirty 
work of office. In the mean while, he en- 
counters Tyrrel at Cheltenham, as Sir John 
Tyrrel—he having luckily, by sundry deaths, 
fallen upon a good estate and atitle. In 
London, teo, he meets with Glanville, as 
Sir Reginald ; and, renewing his intimacy, 
is introduced to a sister, with whom he falls 
in love; but no explanation of the old mys- 
tery takes place with the brother. 

Suddenly, Glanville discovers Tyrrel’s 
flourishing condition—he had supposed him 
dead, and not without pretty good grounds— 
and dispatches by Pelham a challenge, 
couched in the most offensive terms. Tyrrel 
refuses to fight, and quits town. But soon 
at Newmarket, where Pelham had gone in 
prosecution of some political intrigue, he 
meets with Tyrrel, and, the same day, a 
person in disguise, lying on the heath, whom 
he suspected to be Glanville. Returning in 
the evening, he is overtaken by Tyrrel, who 
expresses some apprehension, particularly 
as he has money about him, of a man who 
had been dogging him all day, and proposes 
to accompany Pelham ; but a storm coming 
on, and Pelham’s horse breaking down, he 
rides forward. Presently, Thornton comes 
up, Pelham’s old Paris acquaintance—now 
a well known black-leg—and immediately 
after, in full speed, rides past the person he 
took for Glanville, and by a glance was con- 
firmed in his suspicion. Suddenly he hears 
a distant ery, and coming up to the spot, he 
finds Tyrrel murdered; and appearances 
bear strongly and irresistibly upon Glan- 
ville. Pelham’s conviction is rooted, and the 
subsequent intercourse between them is con- 
ducted with much-reserve. At last, Glan- 
ville proffers explanation. He was not the 
murderer—he had planned to force Tyrrel 
to fight, muzzle to muzzle; but he was anti- 
cipated by Thornton and a companion.— 
What was the ground of this determined 
pursuit of vengeance? Glanville had se- 
duced a young lady—she lived with him as 
his mistress, and, on a temporary absence of 
his, Tyrrel had introduced himself—had, 
basely, no doubt, committed violence, which 
ended in her insanity and death—the cause 
of Glanville’s appearance in the church- 
yard—his retaliating seduction of Tyrrel’s 
mistress—and horrible and satanic persecu- 
tion. , 

A word with the writer. He is doing 
mischief, and doing it insidiously. He is a 
liberal in morals, and entrapping the sym- 
pathies of young men and young women, by 


of Literature, 


whom alone he well knows he will be chiefly 
read, into an approval of profligacy. In 
Falkland, his very aim was to shew how na- 
turally and interestingly an adultery might 
be got up—to pity the victim, and admire 
the criminal; and, in Glanville, seduction, 
and keeping, and revenge, are elaborately 
exhibited as actions which detract nothing 
from the moral worth of a most intellectual 
and superior being. Nor can the private 
calumnies interspersed here and there, par- 
ticularly of Lady Gander—originating, as 
they manifestly must, in the violations 
of domestic privacy——do the writer any 
credit. 


LAveust, 


Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebel- 
lion of 1798, by Charles Hamilton Teel- 
ing ; 1828.—The whole strain of the nar- 
rative—extravagant, romantic, puerile as it 
is—Jrish we might at once haye said—is 
little calculated to accredit the facts which 
the author puts forth; but unhappily we 
have evidence confirmative of their general 
character, of too notorious and irrefragable a 
nature to question their authenticity. He 
boldly gives his name, and certainly—save. 
the manifest want of simplicity and plain. 
sense, conspicuous in every leaf of the book, 
we have no grounds for throwing a shade of 
suspicion over any part of it, and especially 
over what he avers to have fallen under his 
own eye... The narrative, however, is not 
only told in bad taste, but is indistinctly 
told. The personal knowledge too, appears 
to have been slight. He was arrested in 
1796, confined for about a twelyemonth, 
liberated on his own responsibility, and took 
no active share in the subsequent rebellion. 
He was thus far the greater part of that 
tumultuous period in prison, or at large 
under recognizance, or ill—and moreover a 
mere boy—though Irish boys no doubt 
mature early. A slender and unsatisfactory 
sketch of the insurrection in Wexford, Kil- 
dare, and Down, is given, and of the lea~ 
ders—particularly of Lord Edward Fitz. 
gerald—where Pamela, the “ lovely’? Pa- 
mela, is not forgotten—“ formed to charm 
every heart and command every arm that 
had not already been enlisted in the cause of 
Ireland’’—intermixed with some details of 
the atrocious crueltiesand scandalous licence, 
which prevailed among the soldiers and the 
police, before, and during, and subsequent 
to the rebellion—with all which the public 
has been over and over again surfeited, and 
will scarcely be inclined to lend a very seri- 
ous ear to the vague, and unparticular state- 
ments before us. The part strictly personal, 
which is really very small, is of more in- 
terest, involving, as it does, the conduct of 
Castlereagh and Carhampton—with the con- 
duct of official persons the public has an in- 
timate concern. 

It was not till the autumn of 1796, afer 
the dismissal of Lord Fitzwilliam, that the 
Irish government, at the head of which was 
then placed Lord Camden, commenced ac- 


a ee ee 


—— ee 


shied tes air 


— 


1828.) 


tive operations against the united Irish- 
men—of which government the late Lord 
Londonderry, then the Hon. Robert Ste- 
wart, was the most conspicuous agent. 
That nobleman himself had been a member 
of the Irish volunteers, and his name stands 
recorded among the distinguished persons 
who formed the great political association in 
Ulster—the Whig Club of Belfast—and no 
one knew better than himself who were the 
most stirring men of the time. Charles 
Hamilton Teeling, the author, was the first 
victim of Lord Castlereagh’s political delin- 
quency. On the 16th of September—then 
not eighteen years of age—he was arrested 
on a charge of high treason, and arrested by 
him in person. Lord Castlereagh was the 
friend of Teeling’s father, and well ac- 
quainted with the youth himself. The father 
and son were on horseback, and were met in 
the streets of Lisburne by Lord Castlereagh, 
who accosted them with his usual courtesy, 
and politeness, and rode with them till they 
reached the house of the Marquess of Hert- 
ford, Castlereagh’s relation, when Teeling 
and his father being about to proceed in 
another direction, Lord Castlereagh sud- 
denly said—“ I regret your son cannot ac- 
company you,” conducting him at the same 
moment through the outer gates, which were * 
instantly closed, and Teeling found himself 
surrounded by a guard of soldiers. With 
some difficulty the father was admitted to 
take leave of him. Teeling’s person being 
thus secured in Lord Hertford’s house, Lord 
Castlereagh proceeded to the father’s to 
search for papers, and placing a guard at 
each door, he himself held a pistol to the 
breast of Teeling’s brother, a lad of fourteen, 
and compelled him to accompany him in his 
search—opening successively every locker, 
from which he carried away such papers as 
he chose to select, and moreover a pair of 
pistols. In the evening, fatigued with the 
exertions of the day, he returned to Lord 
Hertford’s, and ordered dinner for himself 
and his prisoner—at which my Lord talked 
of his labours, and of the persons he had 
arrested, Nelson, Russel, &c.—to the great 
entertainment, of course, of his guest. In 
the dead of the night a string of ten car- 
riages, containing the prisoners, with a 
guard, set out for Dublin. At Newry they 
stopped to bait the horses, but no refresh- 
ment was allowed the prisoners—save what 
the “young and lovely daughters of the 
miaitre d’hétel”—the innkeeper we suppose 
—hastened to present them. The soldiers 
dared not resist “ innocence and beauty ;” 
and innocence and beauty accordingly crept 
under the very horses bellies to convey their 
cates and dainties to the prisoners. ‘ Heroic 
countrywomen,”’ exclaims the author, in his 
rhodomontade style—“ if courage had been 
wanting to animate our cause, your example 
would have taught us firmness.” 

On arriving at Dublin, they were quickly 
taken before Judge Boyd, and committed by 
him to Kilmainham gaol, andthe use of pen, 


‘Domestic and Foreign. 


189 


ink, and paper prohibited. Eventually these 
requisites were introduced under the paste of 
a Christmas pye, by the ingenuity of one of 
the author’s fair countrywomen—“ a minis- 
tering angel thou,” of course bursts from 
him. They were at first confined in separate 
cells, but were soon enabled by the negli- 
gence or connivance of the keepers to re- 
move the locks, and communicate; and 
the author himself, from the good will of 
the soldiers on guard, and others, had more 
than one opportunity of escaping, which he 
disdained to use. Occasionally Lord Car- 
hampton (Luttrell) amused himself with 
making nocturnal visits to the prison, and 
ence—but the author shall tell his own 
story. 


In one of those excursions in which none but the 
gloomy and tyrannie soul can take delight, our 
several departments were entered in succession by 
the commander-in-chief, aceompanied by two offi- 
cers of his staff, a brutal turnkey, and four soldiers 
with fixed bayonets. Aroused at the dead hour 
of the night by this unlooked for and unwelcome 
intrusion—the fell visage of the turnkey, with a 
dark lantern in his hand—the presence of soldiers 
under arms, and the horrid grimace of a counte- 
nance the most repelling I ever beheld—all con~ 
spired to fill my soul with terror—and the act of 
assassination presented itself to my mind as al- 
ready commenced. Isprang from my pallet, and 
under the influence of horror bordering on de- 
spair, determined not to surrender my life without 
a struggle, and unconsc‘ous of whom I assailed, 
my hand had already grasped at the throat of the 
noble. commander-in-chief. What a specimen of 
the puerile employment of the man, to whose 
courage and guidance was committed the protec- 
tion of the state, and that state hourly threatened 
with invasion from abroad, and tottering from 
dissensions at home! Whether a feeling of com- 
passion, or a sense of shame operated on the mind 
of this distinguished commander, was not the sub- 
ject of my inquiry—my person was uninjured, and 
my terrors allayed. “ Pray, Sir, how long have 
you been confined?” “ Since September 96.” «A 
long imprisonment.” “ A painful one,” was my 
reply. “You are Mr. ——?” “ And you, I pre- 
sume, my Lord Carhampton?” ‘* Ha! youknow 
me then—good night, Sir.’ ‘Good night, my 
Lord,’ and I resumed my pallet. 

The apartment inthe corridor adjoining to mine 
was oceupied by my friend Nelson, and to this his 
lordship directed his next visit. The unbarring 
ofthe heavy doors, and the hollow sound produced 
by the tread of feet, had alarmed many of the pri- 
soners, and Nelson was up and dressed when the 
guardian of Iveland’s safety entered his apart- 
ment, ‘You are late up,” said his lordship, ina 
hasty and irritated tone of voice. “ Rather early, 
I think, my lord,” said Nelson, “ for it is not sun- 
rise.” “ Pray, Sir, do you know me?” “Oh 
perfectly,’ replied Nelson, “ Allow me, Sir, to 
ask you where or when you have known me, for I 
cannot recollect that J have ever had the honour 
of your acquaintance?” “had the honour to be 
reviewed by your lordship in the first battalion of 
Irish volunteers, when the light cayalry on the 
plains of Brougshane—’ “Stop, Sir, stop,— 
those days are gone by—these are not fit subjects 
for prison reflections—go to bed, Sir, and dream 


190 Monthly Review of Literature, 


of something else than Irish volunteers.” ‘The 
commander looked stern—Nelson frowned—the 
soldiers exchanged significant glances—and his 
lordship proceeded to the next apartment. 

In this were lodged two characters of in- 
estimable worth, the Rey. Sinclair Kilburn, and 
the celebrated physician Dr. Crawford—good and 
benevolent men, but of a warmth of disposition 
which a vexatious imprisonment had rather in- 
creased than diminished. They were unacquaint- 
ed with the person of the gallant commander-in- 
chief, but perfectly familiar with the notoriety of 
his exploits. ‘ What! gentlemen, up so early?” 
“* Up, replied his reverence, wp captain, is the 
order of the day.” (Up wasa popular expression 
well understood, and synonymous with the word 
united). Then, Sir, [recommend youto be down,” 
said his lordship, with a stern countenance, and 
pointing toa chair, “I cannot think of sitting 
down, Sir, while you are standing; allow me, 
captain, to hand youa chair.” “ No!” exclaimed 
his lordship, with the utmost scorn, and apparent 
contempt ; “‘ No, Sir, I shall never sit in company 
with traitors.” ‘“ Honi soit qui mal y pense,” 
whispered the worthy divine; but roused by the 
word traitor, and unable to restrain the honest 
indignation of his soul, ‘* Traitor,’ he exclaimed, 
and bending his dark brow on the pallid counte- 
nance of the commander-in-chief, he pronounced 
in a solemn and emphatic tone, ‘ No, on the sin- 
cerity of an Irishman, and the faith of a Christian, 
there is not a Luttrell within our walls.”’—In has- 
tening to retire, his lordship’s attention was ar- 
rested by a small volume, which he perceived in 
the worthy doctor’s hand—* What has been the 
subject of your study, Sir?” ‘“ Locke on Govern- 
ment,” was the reply. “ A bad book for a prison,” 
rejoined his lordship. “ Then carry it to head- 
quarters, Sir,’ said the doctor, presenting the 
book with a sarcastic smile. 


For about a twelvemonth, or something 
more, Teeling bore the confinement without 
injury to his health; but at the end of that 
period, it gave way, and interest was made 
for his removal to a friend’s house on proper 
security. The first moment he was able to 
relieve his bail, he again placed himself at 
the disposal of the government, and was 
allowed in consideration, apparently, of his 
evident ill-health and extreme youth, to be 
at large on his own responsibility—forbidden 
only to visit the north, the seat of his rela- 
tions, and most intimate connections. Of 
any thing like personal narrative strictly, we 
find little more. In the heat of the insur- 
rections, it was necessary for him, he says, 
to have an interview with his brother, and in 
attempting it, he came within the lines of 
the rebels, and on explaining, was allowed 
to proceed. In returning he narrowly 
escaped the royal troops, but crossing the 
Boyne, reached a cabin occupied by “ Pa- 
trick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, who kept a 
house of entertainment, sold good liquor, 
and had good call.”” His noble host, not 
too lofty for his occupation, took the bridle 
of his horse, but Teeling, filled with vener- 
ation for the glories of his country, and the 
renown of her defenders, and respect for their 
descendants, exclaimed, “* Pardon me—the 


[ Aveust, 


descendant of Sarsfield shall never be my 
groom,”’ &c. Mine ‘ host of the garter’ re- 
fused his money even—with this magnifi- 
cent sentiment— Sarsfield’s cabin is too 
humble to entertain an Irish gentleman, 
but a true Irish heart would not refuse the 
only cheer it could offer—take this back, if 
Sarsfield’s friendship is worth your keeping.”’ 


Commentaries on the Life and Reign of 
Charles the First, by J. D’Israeli. 2 vols; 
1828.—Notwithstanding his propensity to 
prattle and overrate minute matters—not- 
withstanding the very bad taste of his com- 
position—notwithstanding the comfortable 
complacency, the undoubted assurance of 
unequalled sagacity visible and invisible in 
all he says—notwithstanding the decided 
bias he shews in the teeth of professions of 
imperturbable impartiality, D’Israeli has 
produced a not unamusing, nor uninstructive 
book for idle or leisurely people. His ob- 
ject has been to write neither history nor 
memoirs, but both—to couple secret history 
with public, as the surest means of fully 
estimating the characters of agents, and 
fairly judging of the effect and bearing of 
events. The two volumes before us em- 
brace about four years of Charles’s life, and 
those of course very far from being the 
busiest part of it; and his intention is to 
pursue it to a conclusion, on the same scale 
we suppose, which with the writer’s insa~ 
tiable passion for inquiry, and paraphrastic 
style of discussion and digression, will ex- 
tend to at least twenty tomes—may the good 
man live to complete, and we to review 
them. But the simplicity with which he 
deals out his truisms is really admirable— 
in the extreme naiveté of his feelings he 
evidently thinks himself in possession of a 
new and most invaluable test, detected by 
himself, and known to himself alone, and 
likely to remain so—a clue to thread the 
labyrinths of “ state secrecy, state policy, 
and state craft’-—“ in the humours of in- 
fluential persons, in the projects of the mo- 
ment, in divided interests, the strength and 
weakness of parties.’? An open avowal is 
never, it seems, to be looked for among 
Statesmen, and consequently the ostensible 
motives are never the real ones, and the 
very signs and symptoms of the passions 
must be construed as tokens of any thing 
but what they have been wont to indicate. 
Though whigs, as he says, have called him 
tory, and tories called him whig, his lean- 
ing is manifestly on the side of power; but 
altogether the book presents the strangest 
medley of liberal and illiberal sentiments 
that ever were mixed together in any man’s 
brains. When he speaks radicalism, it is 
like the prophet, blessing where he would 
willingly curse. We question strongly if he 
felt the full force of what is well said by 
himself, in speaking of the boasted perfec- 


tion of the judicature of our forefathers— 


“ For ancient laws to retain their perfec- 
tion, every thing must remain in the same 


ee a 


1828.] 


state as when those laws were planned ; but 
as all things have altered, do alter, and will 
alter, an amazing absurdity is the conse- 
quence of resting laws on precedents ; since 
by adopting this popular error, we shall find 
that we have laws for things that no longer 
exist, and none for things that do exist.” 

Yet with all Mr. D’Israeli’s laborious re- 
searches, even among manuscripts, which 
scarcely any other eye has scanned, it is 
really surprising how little fresh information, 
important or unimportant, he has routed 
out. ‘“ Hume,’ says he, “ composed his 
immortal pages before our great historical 
collections were given to the werld; and ere 
the public repository of our national history 
was yet opened. Our epicurean philoso- 
pher, when librarian of the advocates’ 
library, loved to indulge his inquiries reclin- 
ing on his sofa, rather than busying himself 
among the shelves. Without a tithe of his 
penetrating genius, we can multiply his 
scanty information; but with more know- 
ledge we shall often be compelled to come 
to the conclusions of the philosophical his- 
torian.’’ This is as true now as before Mr. 
D’Israeli began. Hume has of late suf- 
fered considerable depreciation. ‘‘ We 
writers,’ adds D’Israeli, ‘“ are but sheep, 
and one bell-wether will serve to lead the 
flock.”” Though a thousand petty mistakes 
have been detected—and it be desirable to 
see them corrected—the correction will 
scarcely modify his great results. Hume 
has often, perhaps, guessed at the truth; 
but his guesses have been the happiest man 
ever made. 

The almost irresistible tendency of an 
historical critic is to contradict, and this 
same spirit of contradiction Mr. D’ Israeli is 
quite unable to repress. Buckingham no- 
body praises—even Hume can say little in 
palliation of his follies; but the reader will 
not be surprised to learn D’Israeli becomes 
his champion. He finds him to have had 
much of an English spirit, and numerous 
good points about him—but to make good 
his case, he is obliged to darken the shades 
of Williams’s character — Buckingham’s 
protégé, rival, and supplanter—and_ un- 
doubtedly he has given a new aspect to the 
matter. The “ secret history of the Spanish 
and French match’’ adds scarcely any thing 
to our previous information—nothing, in- 
deed, but some perhaps suspicious matter 
from the manuscript: of one Wadsworth, 
who was employed to teach the Infanta the 
English language. He has left a voluminous 
catalogue of both Buckingham’s minutest 
impropricties, and his more flagrant out- 
rages. “ This person,” observes D’ Israeli, 
“ was an English jesuit, and on his return 
renounced his Catholicism; and, dubbing 
himself captain, the renegado proselyte ap- 
pears to have been himself a loose liver. The 
charges were doubtless exaggerated, for (a 
very unsatisfactory for) the minutest is not 
lost in the enumeration. Buckingham 
ealled the prince ridiculous names, in mere 


Domestic and Foreign. 


191 


playfulness, and admitted the lowest women 
into the king’s palace. He fell ill at Ma- 
drid, from political vexation, or some other 
cause, and the court of Spain declared they 
*¢ would rather put the Infanta into a well 
than into his hands.” Perhaps the secret 
history of the loan of ships to the French at 
the siege of Rochelle, is the most success- 
ful instance of the author’s researches. 

We have hinted at D’Israeli’s political 
leaning, and perhaps we could furnish no 
better proof than the manner in which he 
has raked together the ancient scandal 
against those whom he sneeringly terms the 
first patriots ; and so decided is it, that he 
cannot conceal from himself the necessity 
of finding some cover to screen the malig- 
nity—and what does the reader suppose it 
tobe? Why—Moses was passionate, Abra- 
ham lied, Aaron was idolatrous, Sampson 
was a woman’s slave, Thomas was incredu- 
lous, Paul was a persecutor, and Peter the 
denier of his master. What then could be 
expected from these patriots ? 

He begins with Elliott, whose fiery pa- 
triotism is assigned solely to personal ran- 
cour against the favourite Buckingham. In 
early life he had been Buckingham’s inti- 
mate companion and fellow-traveiler ; and, 
on Buckingham’s rise, was among the fore- 
most of his flatterers. In the distribution 
of the loaves and fishes he was not forgotten 
—Buckingham was lord high admiral of 
England, and made his friend vice-admiral 
of Devonshire. By-and-bye Elliott had a 
quarrel with his neighbours the Moyles—a 
reconciliation was attempted by common 
friends, and in the hour of conviviality, 
with wine before them, he treacherously 
stabbed the father in the back. On this 
barbarous act Elliott fled to London, to 
solicit his pardon from Buckingham, which 
was however refused, and a heavy penalty 
inflicted to expiate the offence. Moyle un- 
expectedly recovered, and Elliott applied to 
the duke for a remission of the fine; but 
the impoverished state of the exchequer 
made return impracticable, and all he could 
get was a knighthood. LExasperation at 
this refusal—coupled with his pressing em- 
barrassments for money—was the source of 
Elliott’s opposition to Charles’s government. 
The reader will see at a glance how much 
of this is conjectural, and how little it is 
worth. 

Dr. Turner, it seems, “had long haunted 
the court, but had been contemptuously 
treated by the king for his deficient vera- 
city.” This was the foundation of his pa- 
triotism. We confess (adds the author), 
that we little value the patriot made out of 
a discarded place-hunter ; a man who hates 
the court, because the court does not love 
him. 

Upon Hampden he has a difficulty in fix- 
ing any invidious motive, and only discovers 
that “he retired to a more reserved and 
melancholy society,” and brooded upon po- 
litics, and so resolved to overturn the go- 


192 


vernment. When in parliament, his policy 
was, it seems, always to speak last in a 
debate, and so by perplexing the weaker, 
and tiring out the acuter judgments, he 
rarely failed of attaining his ends. But 
then, was there not a ¢errible ambition con- 
cealed under the public virtues of the pa- 
triotic Hampden? What was his motive 
for wishing to be governor to the prince >— 
To make him a root and branch reformer. 

Pym was originally a clerk in the Exche- 
quer, and was aiming at the chancellorship 
of that court, and laboured under the sus- 
picion of taking a heavy bribe from the 
French minister, and had well deserved the 
soubriquet of King Pym. The fact of the 
bribe is stated from recollection—the author 
cannot recal his authority—but nothing, 
of course, was to be omitted. 

Lord Say and Sele’s patriotism was 
melted by the mastership of the wards—a 
possession of which Cottington, like the 
beaver,. stript himself to save his own neck, 
and successfully. No patriot breathed a 
word against Cottington, after one of their 
own body got possession of the spoil. 

Haslerigg was the fierce exterminator of 
the bishops, because he was gorging on the 
fatness of three manors, and the fruitfulness 
of deaneries and chapel lands—and wanted 
more, &c. &e. 


A Ramble among the Musicians of Ger- 
many, by a Musical Professor; 1828.— 
Though no professors, and quite incapable 
of comprehending the prodigious learning of 
these pages—with which we have no doubt 
they will be deemed, even by the fondest 
amateurs, to be sadly overdone—we have 
glanced over the contents of this little vo- 
lume with singular and very unexpected 
pleasure. The author has an eye and an 
understanding, as well as an ear, for any 
thing that is sweet and pleasurable in paint- 
ing and society, as well as in music, and 
fancy and feeling as well as musical science. 
The impressions he conveys of the sense of 
enjoyment existing among the Germans— 
their simple habits, and musical propensities 
—are extremely agreeable ; attributed mainly 
by the author to early rising, and living in 
the open air, and above all, to cheap living 
and light taxation. The general gaiety and 
animal spirits contrast very curiously with 
our ignorant but inveterate notions of the 
phlegmatic among them; but this light- 
heartedness applies chiefly, we presume, to 
the south: nearer to the fogs of the Baltic 
will be found some justification of the com- 
mon conceptions. 

The main object of the tour is German 
music, which required, the author thinks, 
to be heard and appraised by English ears, 
to correct the perhaps erroneous notions 
which the magazines and journals of the 
country, written of course by natives, spread 
ignorantly among us. The admiration of 
German taste in the sciences has produced 
in some, he says, a ludicrous exaggeration 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Aueusr, 


of respect towards people who have no claim 
to it—just as if we thought none but a Ger- 
man could be a musician, as we do certainly 
that none but Germans can be sugar-bakers 
and tailors. Music is, indeed, much more 
extensively cultivated in Germany than in 
England; and though no band may be 
found equal to that of the Philharmonic, 
fifty may be found but just inferior. In 
their singers and wind-instrument players 
(always excepting certain individuals), they 
are, in the author’s opinion, decidedly our 
superiors ; but, in their violin-school, they 
appear inferior both to England and France. 
—Then, again, music is the passion of the 
people, and it is every where cultivated by 
them more for love than money. In their 
theatres, too, nothing can exceed the pa- 
tience of the audience, or their complacency 
and docility. The desire to be instructed 
predominates ; and an exercise of their cri- 
tical powers is the last thing they think of— 
Germany is the very paradise of composers. 

The reader shall judge of the style in 
which the author speaks of the more cele- 
brated composers :— 


Weber was formerly director of the opera in 
Prague, but quitted the place on his marriage, to 
reside at Dresden. At the time of his employment 
at Prague, he had composed no work of importance, 
merely cantatas and songs, with full accompani- 
ments; and the good fortune of this musician is 
worthy of observation, as a circumstance, I believe, 
altogether unprecedented in the history of the art. 
That aman should live on to within a few years of 
forty in obscurity, not distinguished in Germany 
from a host of the same stamp,—that he sliould be 
as little endowed by nature as any composer that 
ever lived, with a store of melody such as the 
populace might troll about to gladden themselves ; 
yet by one work just suited to the cast of his 
genius, to leap at once into the most extraordinary 
favour throughout Europe, not only gaining credit 
for that he had done, but a certain passport for 
what he might do,—to be invited to foreign coun- 
tries—wreathed with laurels in concert-rooms— 
deafened with applause—and made a show of 
every where, is a wonderful concatenation of 
events in the life of a middle-aged gentleman. 


Beethoven was just dead when the writer- 
reached Vienna. Tne Germans have for 
this composer a very pretty appellation: they 
call him Tondichter (the poet of sounds), 
instead of the ordinary name, Tonkiinsiler 
(the scientific musician) :— ; 

How melanclioly was the fate of this composer— 
condemned young and ardent, at the age of 
twenty-eight, by an incurable deafness, to have 
his mind imprisoned for ever within itself—the 
world of sounds for ever shut to him—no rural 
flute, as he himself pathetically lamented, to dis- 
tarb in a country walk the sad monotony of his 
quiet. Though the poet is privileged to enjoy, if 
he please, the morning sun, or the fresh song of 
the birds without quitting his apartment, yet con-. 
fine him to his chamber thoughts, and he shall be 
as miserable as a lover compelled to live for ever 
on the idea of his mistress. This was the situation 
of Beethoven ; yet it must have been some alle~ 


1828.) 


yiation to his melancholy, that, though unable to 
share in the pleasure of a new composition, he 
could at least readin the smiles on the faces of 
his friends, a proof of the beauty of his ideas, and 
in that version must have enjoyed them. 

In his younger days Beethoven consented to 
the jurisdiction of musical laws, and obeyed them ; 
his earlier piano-forte works, and his first and 
second instrumental sinfonias, are pure with 
respect to progressions, classical in their episodes 
and general construction, but in advanced life, he 
set the pedants too heartily at defiance—as he 
grew older he became more tenacious of the merit 
of those productions in which he had, as it were, 
trodden on the confines of forbidden ground— 
hovering between genius and extravagance. 
When his friends pra‘sed the regularity ofhis early 
writings, he preferred the wildness of his later 
ones ; and there never yet was, I believe, a writer 
who did not reserve the weight of his own liking 
for the sickliest and ugliest bantlings of his 
imagination—for what all the world agrees to 
call beautiful is in no want of patronage. 


One little passage is worth quoting for the 
information it conveys of German musicians, 
and the lesson it might read :— 


No artists can be less mercenary in the exercise 
of their profession, nor more ready to play for the 
pleasure of their friends, than the great musicians 
of Germany; but they have no skill in flattering 
the great, and no appetite for worthless praise. 
Most of them enjoy that enviable competency, 
whieh enables them to pursue fame at their lei- 
sure; the little duties of their employment, such 
as directing an orchestra, or composing a few 
pieces for the entertainment of the noblemen of 
whose establisiiment they are apart, are so easily 
discharged, as to leave them plenty of time for 
idleness if it was their taste to indulge init. But 
this is not the case—they have that last infirmity 
of noble minds—an appetite for fame, and labour 
as hard for the mere pleasure of inventing and 
combining, as others do for the vulgar acquisition 
of wealth. The ennobling power of the divine 
art of music is best felt when among a number of 
professors each strains to penetrate the deepest 
into its mysteries, without envy and without sordid 
interest; and I believe it is the advantageous 
equality upon which they all start in pursuit of 
their favourite science, which makes them liberal 
and ingenious inthe appreciation of contemporary 
talent. Until men of genius in other countries are 
placed out of the reach of vulgar wants, or the 
fear of poverty, there can be no competition in any 

of Europe with the musicians of Germany. 


We cannot forbear whispering that there 
is one other source, and one in their own 
_ hands—rconomy—less ambition to shine 

like gentlemen, in the splendour of furni- 
ture and equipage, and the profusion and 
costliness of dinners and wines. Were men 
content with the plain accommodations of 
life, there need be few complaints of this 
- Five out of six, in these parading 
times, get into difficulties by display. 


Two Years in Ava; 1828.—The title 
misleads—for the book contains nothing but 
a narrative of the late war conducted by 

_ General Campbell, which has been already 

M.M. New Series. —Vox.VI. No. 32. 


Domestic and Foreign. 


193 


communicated, in a manner sufficiently 
ample, by Major Snodgrass, the military 
secretary to the expedition. Major Snod- 
grass left the army as soon as the treaty of 
Melloon was concluded, on the 4th January, 
1826, to obtain the signature of the governor 
general. That treaty, in the mean while, 
was rejected by the emperor; and the chief 
value of the present volume is, that it pre- 
sents the detail of occurrences on the march 
from Melloon to  Yandaboo, where, in 
March, the final treaty was made; and the 
subsequent route of a detachment of the 
army from the Irrawaddy across the country 
to Aeng in Arracan. In general,.the ac- 
counts vary little, and scarcely furnish any 
ground for preferring one to the other.. The 
most remarkable variation consists in the 
statement of numbers. Major Snodgrass 
talks, we remember, of sixty and seventy 
thousands opposed to the handful of British 
forces ; but we do not find the present au- 
thority ever venturing on more than /ive- 
and-twenty thousand. This is a little un- 
accountable, where both parties must have 
had pretty much the same opportunities 
of information—the one military secretary, 
and the other in the quarter-master-gene- 
ral’s department—though he does not give 
his name. The maps and plans are marked 
as drawn by Captain T. A. Trant, of the 
95th ; and he, we conclude, is the man. 

In noticing Major Snodgrass’s work, we 
sketched the course of the campaigns ; and, 
with respect to the volume before us, we shall 
confine ourselves to a few circumstances, 
which we marked as we went along. 

Of the Andamas—the island where the 
expedition rendezvoused before starting for 
Rangoon, and which was some years ago 
colonized as a receptacle for convicts from 
the presidencies, but since abandoned from 
the malignity of the climate—the author re- 
marks :— 


The inhabitants are represented (it does not ap- 
pear hesaw any) asamost savage and miserable 
race, almost destitute of the necessaries of life. 
They are diminutive in stature, and possessing 
most hideous features, differing materially from all 
the nations in the vicinity, with the exception of the 
inhabitants of the Nicobar islands. Their habita- 
tions are formed with a few boughs of trees, and 
their food consists of the produce of the ocean, or 
indeed almost any thing they can lay their hands 
upon. Instances have been related of their voracity, 
which are quite disgusting ; but still there is no 
fact known, which convicts them of the dreadful 
habit of devouring human flesh, with which they. 
have been taxed. Nature, in one itstanee, has 
provided for their wants, by the immense quantity 
of oysters, and other shell-fish, to be found on the 
rocks of Port Cornwallis; but when this food 
fails, and bad weather prevents any other kind of 
fishing, the poor wretches have literally nothing 
to exist upon. 


Are there no roots, or fruits, or animals ? 


In describing the splendid Shoe Dagon- 
Prah—thus awkwardly syllabled by the au- 
thor—the great pagoda of Rangoon—the 

2C . 


194 


natives, he says, represent it as the combined 
labour of spirits and men, many thousand 
years ago; but the sphinxes, crocodiles, 
griffins, and other customary symbols, seem 
to indicate a remote connexion with Egypt. 
No other testimony, however, exists to con- 
firm any such conjecture. 

One of the Burman commanders, on tak- 
ing leave of the “‘ Golden Foot,’’ received 
from his paw—his hands, we mean—a small 
fan, which his majesty assured him would 
turn off all the English balls, if he only 
wayed it to and fro. The notion of invul- 
nerability was very prevalent among 
them :— 


One of their magic charms consists in preparing 
amall pieces of gold, of the size and shape of a 
silyer penny, on which certain mystical character's 
are engraved, aud inserting them into small in- 
cisions made in the upper part of the arm; and 
when the skin has closed upon them, the charm is 
effected. Others again have mystical emblems 
tattooed with red on their arms and breast, But 
the supposed efficacy—adds the author very care- 
fully—of any of these precautions, must have been 
soon called into question by the Burmahs them- 
selves, as we used to find many of their soldiers, 
marked in the manner which I haye here described, 
lying amongst the dead after our engagements, 

One man, in particular, made himself very con- 
spicuous by his apparent contempt of danger, 
which he manifested by jumping and dancing on 
the trench, as if in defiance, and addressing us 
from thence in the coarsest strain of abuse (could 
the authorconstrue it?). For some time he was 
fortunate enough to escape, and Lrepeatedly saw 
from forty to fifty shots (what shots the shooters 
must be!) fired at him without effect ; but one 
day, his protecting charm loosing its virtues, or 
his good luck failing him, he was struck by a 
musket-ball, and giving one convulsive bound, 
fell back, and appeared no more. 

At Dalla, the Burmabs had Leen directed to 
fire at the officers, and a tall officer of the 89th, 
who was leading on his men, particularly attract- 
edtheir notice. Twenty of the best shots imme- 
diately selected him as a mark, and fived, but 
missed—when seeing that several men around 
hin had fallen, though he was unburt, they con- 
cluded he bore a charmed life, and immediately 
fled, e 


After General Cotton’s failure, Bundoo- 
lah, the Burmese crack-champion, dis- 
patched two or three Burmahs with a mes- 
sage pretty obviously insidious, but which 
was exposed in the following manner :— 

One of the party struck the fancy of a jolly tar, 
who was present, and either from good nature or 
mere frolic, went up to him and said—* Jack, 
will you drink a glass of grog?’ when, to the 
astonishment of all the spectators, the Burmah 
answered in capital English—* No; I thank you, 
Sir.” This immediately led to his apprehension, 
when he confessed he had been educated by one 
of the king’s linguists, (?) and had aequired con- 
siderable knowledge of the English language—the 
Bundoolah therefore desired him, on this occasion, 
fo accompany the other Burmahs to the English 
fleet, and while seemingly inattentive, gather all 
the intelligence he could-from the conyersation of 


Monthly Review of Literature. 


[Aueusr, 


the bystanders. His life was spared (!) and he 
subsequently was taken into the service of Sir A. 
Campbell, as interpreter, whence he deserted at 
Melloon. 


Blind musician and prophet :— 

I chanced one day to meet with a young Bur- 
mah who had been stone blind from his birth, bat 
who, gifted witl great talent for music, used to 
console himself for his misfortune by playing on a 
species of guitar, and accompanying his voice. 
When I expressed a wish to hear him perform; he 
immediately struck out a most brilliant prelude, 
and then commenced a song, in a bold tone, the 
subject of which was a prophecy that had been 
current at Rangoon Lefore we arrived. It predict- 
ed the appearance of numerous strangers at that 
place, and that two masted ships would sail up 
the Irrawaddy, when all trouble and sorrow would 
cease, 


The Burmahs plume themselves on their 
knowledge of medicine, but make no great, 
pretensions, it seems, to surgery :— 


Talking of the bravery of the white people, they. 
said it was of no use cutting off an arm, when a 
British soldier seized the summit of a stockade to’ 
assist himself in getting over, for that he imme- 
diately made ase of the other; and that after the: 
action, the English doctors went about the field 
looking fer the severed legs and arms, which they 
fastened on again, : 

And once when a Burmah was brought in 
wounded, and the surgeon cut off his leg; the 
poor fellow, after amputation, supposing it tobe a’ 
new kind of torture, calmly held up the other to* 
the surgeon to be served the same way. 


The unsuccessful commander in one of. 


the engagements—a wretch who appears to. 


have inflicted all sorts of cruelties on those. 
who were subjected to his command—was. 
ordered himself for execution; and, when 
forced along, amid the hoctings and indig-: 
nities which the enraged populace were: 
pouring upon him, and on the point of 
losing sight of the imperial palace, suddenly 
turned round, and inclining his head, “ Let 
me make one parting obeisance to the resi- 
dence of my sovereign!” This the author 
characterizes as ife burst of a fine senti- 
ment of loyality—it furnishes a pendant 
for the libelist in Elizabeth’s reign, who, 
when one hand was cut off, raised his hat 
with the other, and shouted “ God save the 
queen !” 

In the author’s march to Aeng, he passed 
through the territories of the Kizaans—how 
the word is to be uttered, we know not—a 
people apparently independent of all civil 
government—herding in thirties and forties. 
in the recesses of mountains. The only trace» 
of authority was in the priest. The tenets. 
of these Kizaanese, it seems are very sim- 
ple, and of the supreme deity they have no_ 
conception : for, “ to my inquiries on the: 
subject,’ says the author, * my informer 
answered that they were the offspring of the 
mountains and of nature ; and nature alone © 
(he adds) appears to have any claims on> 
their feelings.” These Kizaanese, more- 


ee lL 


1828.] 


over, have no idea how the world was formed, 
and hold drugs in abhorrence. Truly, very 
ignorant animals! The writer’s superiority, 
in these matters, nobody will think of con- 
testing. He took a likeness of a male and 
female Kizaan. “ The blue-faced lady, on 
my examining the manner in which her 
face was tattooed, hung down her head— 
would, no doubt, have blushed, had her 
Swarthy visage permitted it—and said, very 
coyly, that she was “‘ so much ashamed.” 


Sonnets by David Lester Ftichardson ; 
1828.—These are some of them very beau- 
tiful effusions—proceeding from feelings, 
which shrink from the tumults of life, and 
Sigh for the solitudes of nature, and sympa- 
thise solely with quietness and peace— 
whose fondest enjoyments consist in contem- 
plating the glories of the setting sun, and 
communing with the shades of evening— 
tolerating no sounds beyond the tones of the 
nightingale, the bubbling of the brook, the 
warblings of a village maid, or rather their 
distant echo—and soliciting the softer 
Scenes, which speak, or remind, of the inno- 
cence of childhood, the whispers of early 

ove, and the imperturbedness of unsullied 
tonscience. The whole are set too much to 
the same tune, but that is a very sweet one, 
though perhaps too plaintive. 
4 SUN-SET. 
The summer sun had set—the blue mist sailed 
Alorig the twilight lake—no sounds arose, 
Save such as hallow nature's sweet repose; 
And charm the ear of Peace. Young Zephyr 
hailed 
The trembling Echo; o’er the lonely grove 
The night’s melodious bard, sweet Philomel, 
er plaintive music breathed—the soft notes fell 
ike the low-whisper’d vows of timid love! 
T paused in adoration, and such dreams 
As haudt the pensive soul—intensely fraught 

th sacred incommunicable thougtt, 

And silent bliss profound—with fitful gleams, 
Caught from the memory of departed years, 
Flashed on my mind, and woke lucurious tears. 


This would be unexceptionably beautiful 
were it not for Philomel and his music, 
which is neither soft nor plaintive, save only 
inthe poet’s imagination. Nor is it every 
eu who would think the personification of 

Gepys and Echo quite in its place. 

Poems by Eliza Rennie ; 1828.—The 
‘collection consists of forty or fifty small oc- 
pieces, almost, without exception, 

gloomy and sorrowing cast—of broken- 
and broken hearts—treacherics of love, 
a ions of friendship—tloss of beloved 
and ruin of happier prospects—sug- 
apparently, by personal experience, 

) decided a bent must surely have re- 
ot mn the reality of facts. So much 
an expression could spring 

from nothing but natural Sealine: gets 
mane to the matter are her thoughts, and-so 


We aw felicitous and tuneful her language. 


quote a few lines written after viewing 


monumental group by Chantry, to the 


Domestic and Foreign. 


195 


memory of Marianne, daughter of the late 
John Johnes, Esq., of Hafod, South Wales. 


She sleeps—the graye, 
With all its deep and solemn mysteries, 
Hath closed its drear and awful portals on her. 
Yet genius, with its mighty power, hath burst 
The tomb’s strong gate, and given to the eye, 
In all its sweet and touebing loveliness, 
Ere yet decay had sullied with its breath 
One grace or charm, her matehless form again. 
How fair and beautiful she looks! Grief's burning 
brand 
Not yet hath stamp’d its sign upon her brow. 
Smooth, polished, pure, and delicate it gleams, 
Her pale, round check lies pillow’d on her arm. 
What though joy’s rosy smile will never light 
Its pallid tents again—the tears of care, 
The coin with which all pay for life’s stern lease, 
Will never sully its unblemish’d snow. 
Listless and cold is streteh’d the hand which oft 
Hath swept the lute’s soft strings, and hush’d the 
: voice 
Which music breathed, when that sweet lyre was 
mute, 
Grasp’d in her hand that sacred volume lies, &c. 


The Boy’s own Book; 1828.—This is 
really a very pretty and tasteful publication 
--at once appropriate and infelligible—fitted 
admirably fer holiday and birth-day presents, 
and a superior substitute for the worthless 
trash on which boys commonly throw away 
their hoarded shillings. A wider field, as 
the publishers observe, could not have been 
taken. The plan embraces a succession of 
“ minor’’ sports—games with toys—games 
of agility—cames-of skill, as chess and 
draughts — feats of legerdemain — tricks 
with cards;—and more athletic sports, 
cricket, archery, gymnastics, and fencing— 
with angling and swimming. A conside- 
rable space, moreover, is occupied with 
what are called scientific recreations, framed 
on the principles of arithmetic, chemistry, 
optics, magnetism, and acoustics; with a 
series of paradoxes, puzzles, queries, riddles, 
&e. Numerous wood-cuts, of very superior 
execution, accompany and illustrate every 
page. The whole may safely be recom- 
mended as unexceptionable—except, per- 
haps, the fire-works. A still more splendid 
present is preparing for the young ladies by 
Christmas next, from the same quarter. 


Memorable Events in Paris iv 1614— 
from the Journal of a Détenu; 1828.—Mr. 
Britton, the very respectable topographer, 
stands sponsor for the writer, who withholds 
hisname. He was one, it appears, of the 
détenus of 1814 (the number of whom, on 
the authority of the writer, amounted to be- 
tween nine hundred and a thousand), but 
had the good fortune, from some connexion 
with the leading savans of the day, to pro~ 
eure the privilege of residing at Paris, in- 
stead of being consigned to Valenciennes. 
He was at Paris on the approach of the allied 
troops in 1814, looking with intense anxiety 
for their arrival and success—not from any 
admiration of legitimacy, but as’ the means 
of deliverance from a wearisome captivity of 

2C2 


196 


eleven years. The contents of the volume 
are the results of his own knowledge, or the 
communications of persons for the most part 
of distinction, whose veracity he had no 
reason to question, and whose names he 
usually gives. The notes commence in Ja- 
nuary of that year, and extend through the 
period in which the city was occupied by the 
allies, and end with an account of Buona- 
parte’s journey to Elba—constituting a va- 
luable addition to the information we already 
possess of these eventful times.—We select 
a few anecdotes by way of specimen. 

Early in January, when preparations were 
making for defending Paris, but when few 
had any apprehensions the enemy would 
venture to attack the capital, a paper was 
found stuck on the base of the column in 
the Place Vendome—“ Passez vite, il va 
tomber.”’ 

And quite as early, an officer was ex- 
pressing his inability to comprehend what 
was going on—alluding to the confusion 
which began to appear in the public offices— 
when Talleyrand observed, “ C’est le com- 
mencement du fin.’’ 

Of Talleyrand, so strong were Buonaparte’s 
Suspicions, that just before his departure for 
the army, when Savary and Regnaud St. 
Jean d’Angeley and Talleyrand were with 
him in his closet, he said, “ I think, for my 
own security, I ought to send you to Vin- 
cennes—your conduct is equivocal,”’ &c. 

In receiving his last instructions from 
Buonaparte, who was on the point of starting 
for the army (24th Jan.), Count Real asked, 
“ Tf, in the course of the campaign, a corps 
of twenty-five or thirty thousand should 
elude the French army, and make a dash on 
Paris, what am I to do ?”?—“ The inhabi- 
tants will rise and defend the capital armes 
aux bras.’’—“ They are more likely to meet 
the enemy armes aux pieds,’’ was the count’s 
significant reply. 

While with the army, the emperor in- 
sisted on Savary writing, every night, all the 
information of all sorts he could possibly col- 
lect. When the impression began to be ge- 
neral that he must be got rid of, and the im- 
perial government be subyerted, Desmarest 
said to the Duke of Rovigo, “‘ What can 
you say to the emperor? who will venture 
to tell him the truth ??—“ Look there,’’ 
says Rovigo, handing to him the letter he 
had just finished ; “‘ I can give you no hope 
—you are lost—and if a cannon-ball does 
not carry you off, I cannot answer what will 
be your end; such is the feeling of disgust 
and hatred for the government, and such the 
wish for your destruction by every rank and 
class, that there can be no safety for you, or 
chance of preserving the government.” 

During the whole of February the streets 
were filled with soldiers and raw conscripts, 
whose route lay through the city. No pro- 
vision was made for subsistence or convey- 
ance, and they were forced to Jeg. On the 
7th, sat a court-martial at Meaux, to deci- 
mate these miserable wretches. The author 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Aveusr, 


saw the judgments, with the names of those 
who were shot, stuck against the walls of the 
metropolis. The 2wmber should have been 
mentioned. 

While walking along the skirts of the 
Place de Grenelle, the author beheld innu- 
merable marks of bullets on that part of the 
wall near to which the military executions 
took place of the unfortunate victims of the 
jealousy and despotism of the imperial go- 
vernment. In a few places a cross had been 
traced on the wall, and also the name of the 
unfortunate being who had there ceased to 
exist. This surely requires explanation. 

In the advance upon Paris (28th March), 
Blucher established his head-quarters at 
Plessis Belleville, and forbade the adjacent 
village of Ermenonville to be occupied by 
any part of his army, out of respect to the 
spot where J. J. Rousseau died and was 
buried ! 

Of the conduct of the boys of the Poly- 
technic School, much was said at the time. 
According to the author, 270 were engaged 
in working the guns. M. Francais was the 
only sufferer, and he languishedseven months 
of his wounds. “ Yielding to public opi- 
nion,’’ says the writer, ‘‘ Louis XVIII. con- 
ferred some crosses of the Legion of Honour 
on these young gentlemen; but, instead 
of giving one to the unfortunate M. Fran- 
¢ais, and to those who were engaged in the 
Vincennes road, he bestowed them on those 
who remained at the school the whole of the 
day.” 

In the splendid procession of the sove- 
reigns into Paris, the Grand Duke Constan- 
tine of Russia quitted the line, and placed 
himself on the side of the road to observe 
the troops as they passed, and entered into 
familiar conversation with the by-standers, 
commenting on the troops.“ Those are 
Mahommedans. ‘That is the regiment you 
were told was cut to pieces. That is the 
hero who beat Vandamme.’’—Some one 
asking him if Vandamme was sent to Sibe- 
ria—* No, he is at Moscow.”——“ Is Mo- 
reau really dead ?’?—“* Does any body doubt 
it??? He smiled and nodded to many of 
the common soldiers, crying, ‘“ Brave! 
brave !”-which was returned by a most 
risible grimace. At length, his own regi- 
ment of cuirassiers coming up, he put him- 
self at their head, and joined the procession. 
“ He is tall, stout, well-made, with a fair 
complexion ; his profile is scarcely human 
—his nose that of a baboon; he is near- 
sighted, contracting his eyes when looking 
attentively, which are covered with uncom- 
monly large, light, bushy eyebrows; his 
voice is hoarse and husky ; he has a rough, 
soldier-like manner; and is sarcastic, yet 
affable.”” 

The barracks of the Quai Buonaparte 
were filled with Russian cavalry and infan- 
try. Under the walls of the Quai, on the 
banks of the river, the author saw a consi- 
derable body of Russian soldiers bivouacking~ 
—round the blazing fires many were sleep- 


1828.] 


ing—some washing thelr linen—others cook- 
ing. Several, entirely naked, were cleansing 
themselyes—and some were holding their 
shirts over the flames, and turning them ra- 
pidly round to prevent their catching fire 
—the inflated and scorching shirt was then 
suddenly rolled up, to destroy its minute 
and many-legged inhabitants. 

Among the first acts of the provisional 
government was a decree emancipating the 
schools—giving parents and guardians, that 
is, permission to remove those who had been 
placed in the public schools against their in- 
clinations—and doing so on the ground that 
the late government had given too violent 
a direction to military pursuits, and thus 
cramped the varying energies of nature, 
which would otherwise have operated to the 
more general benefit of the nation. 

The foreign troops generally—as was na- 
tural—were odious to the Parisians ; but the 
first time the public hatred was expressed 
against the English was at the Théatre 
Frangais, on the representation of Hamlet ; 
“ T/ Angleterre en forfaits trop sowvent 
Sut féconde,” was received with loud accla- 
mations, though the same line had often been 
repassed without the slightest notice. 

“ Tt was not,’’ says the author, “till the 
llth of June that appeared the first official 
but full demonstration of Talleyrand’s obser- 
vation—that the Bourbons had learnt no- 
thing, and forgotten nothing.”? In con- 
tempt, or rather in ignorance, of the change 
of manners, customs, prejudices, an ordon- 
nance was published for the strict observance 
of Sundays, consisting of thirteen articles. 
One of them, which forbade coffee-houses 
being open between eight and twelve, under 
the penalty of 300 francs, excited the great- 
est dissatisfaction, as the number of persons 
who breakfasted in these houses from neces- 
sity as well as pleasure—particularly on Sun- 
days—was incalculable. By another, book- 
stalls were forbidden, and all shops were to 
be closed except those of the apothecaries, 
which were to be half-closed. A caricature, 
with the title “ Un déjetiné selon Pordon- 
nance,” represented a person at the half- 
opened door of an apothecary’s shop, through 
which he was in the act of having a clyster 
administered; and several others waiting 
their turn for the injection. Ordonnance is 
used for a physician’s prescription.—On the 
Sunday following also appeared, for the first 
time since the Revolution, the proces- 
sion of the Féte Dieu (Corpus Christi). In 

lic countries, all who meet it kneel 
when the Host passes; and this kneeling 
was enforced by some of the more national 
guards with the butt-end of their muskets, 
which so incensed the people, that the next 
Sunday it was received with shouts, and mis- 
siles, and mud.—<* Thus began,” concludes 
the author, “ a series of follies on the part 
of the Bourbons, the ancient noblesse, and 
the priests, which brought on a state of feel- 
ing in the nation that produced the most 
extraordinary event in ancient or modern 


Domestic and Foreign. 


197 


history—the journey of Napoleon from the 
coast of the Mediterranean to Paris, on his 
return from the Isle of Elba !—an event as 
honourable to the French nation, as his re- 
pression of the spirit of liberty, which thus 
placed him a second time on the throne, was 
disgraceful, and which met with its merited 
reward.”’ 

Some of this may sound like gossiping; 
but there is much in the book of a more im- 
portant character,, though not so easily com~ 
pressible. 


A General Biographical Dictionary, by 
John Gorton, 2 vols. 8vo. ; 1828.—A very 
slight comparison will prove the superiority 
of this work over all similar abridgments. 
It consists of considerably more than 2,000 
pages of very close type, comprising thus 
treble the matter containedin Dr. Watkins’ 
—the one in most general circulation—and 
published at a price scarcely exceeding the 
cost of Dr. Watkins’, more than one-fourth. 
Selected from the best authorities, and col- 
lected from all quarters, the articles have 
been carefully examined, and generally re- 
written, to give an uniform tone. A liberal 
and impartial spirit runs through the whole 
of it. All acrimonious censure is sedulously 
avoided, and merit allowed without reference 
to any exclusive political or sectarian preju- 
dice. Accumulation has not, by any means, 
been an object. On the contrary, a number 
of obscure, unimportant, and forgotten 
names have been withdrawn, to enable the 
very competent compiler to do more justice 
to men of more undeniable pretension. The 
names, however, thus withdrawn are thrown, 
or rather intended to be thrown, into an 
alphabetical appendix, in a smaller type ; so 
that nothing, even the worthless, will be 
wholly lost. 

As to the principle of selection, the com- 
piler has omitted names essentially historical 
—those only being selected in which, as he 
says, the character of the individual distin- 
guishes him from and amidst the transactions 
in which he was engaged. Generally, 
sketches of sovereigns, rulers, warriors, and 
statesmen, can only supply a vague summary 
of public events, which, in the necessary ab- 
sence of all detail, must be unsatisfactory. 
Scripture names are wholly omitted, as con- 
stituting a distinct department, and usually 
omitted in collections of this kind. The 
same may be said of mythological ones. 

The number of new names, brought down 
to the latest period, is very considerable, and 
very creditable to the industry of the com- 
piler—some of them, to be sure, not of the 
most memorable cast. Sir Charles Bam- 
fylde, for instance, of whom it is recorded 
that he was the fifth baronet of his family— 
sat in seven parliaments—was known in the 
first circles of fashion, and, moreoyer, on the 
turf—and finally assassinated at his own 
door, in Montague-square, by a man whose 
wife had lived in his service. 

_ A book of this kind is essentially one for 


198 


reference, and should, we think, be written 
exclusively with this view. The capital 
qualification required is accuracy as to dates, 
connexions, actions, writings, discoveries, in- 
ventions ;—any very nice or elaborate esti- 
mate of talents or character, is wide of the 
purpose ; and for a compiler to be indulging, 
as Dr. Watkins does, his high church and 
Tory spleen, and damning every person 
whose creed or whose philosophy does not 
square with his own narrow conceptions, is 
perfectly intolerable. We are glad to see a 
work calculated so usefully to supersede his 
very contemptible performance, and have 
no doubt it will soon be in every body’s 
hands. 


Gomez Arias, or the Moors of the Alpa- 
jarras, by Don Telesporo de Truebo y 
Cosio, 3 vols. 12mo. ; 1828.—This romance 
is the production of a Spaniard, and exhibits 
a command of the English language very 
rarely attained bya foreigner. The phrase- 
ology is not merely free from offences against 
common correctness, which study might 
readily secure, but from violations of idiom, 
from which nothing but extraordinary tact, 
by which we me2zn some unusual facility in 
catching the niceties of propriety, could 
enable the author to steer clear. The whole 
production has as little as possible the air of 
a foreign performance, but rather that of a 
man with a good ear, and no bad taste, not 
yet thoroughly drilled into the mysteries of 
composition, and wanting only ease and 
variety. Not half-a-dozen slip-slops per- 
haps could be detected through the volume— 
averred for acknowledged—ungracious for 
graceless—invulnerable for insensible—and 
vails for wages—just preclude the suspicion 
of their not having been well looked over by 
an English eye. Such success: prove the 
possession of intellectual vigour—though of 
a kind perhaps not very valuable, if indeed 
of any, to society, nor, except exerted in 
particular directions, and that depending on 
the fashion of the times—very serviceable to 
the individual. The highest attainable suc- 
cess can scarcely place the most laborious 
student completely on a level with even the 
uncultivated native. If there were such a 
thing as universality of genius, the same 
labour spent upon some art or science might 
work up a man into distinction; but pro- 
bably the superior person in one line, would 
make but a very poor figure in another, with 
his utmost exertions. After all, the trial 
can scarcely ever be made—or the fact esta- 
blished—for distinction in one pursuit swal- 
lows up a life. 

The tale itself is one mixed up of pro- 
fligacy and revenge. Gomez, the hero, is 
another Don Juan. Prompted by ambition 
—after a series of successful adventures— 
Gomez is engaged on legitimate terms to a 
lady, the heiress of the richest and noblest 
family in Spain, and the marriage is delayed 
only from the necessity of a temporary ab- 
sence, while the life of a rival, wounded by 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Aueusrt, 


him in a-recent encounter, is yet in danger. 
In this little interval, he meets with another 
lady, the sole daughter of a noble house, 
whom he tempts from her home, and in a 
few days, growing weary of his prize, leaves 
ona mountain, sleeping from fatigue, under 
the protection of a servant; with instrue- 
tions to take her, on waking, to aneighbour- 
ing convent, whither he himself was pro- 
ceeding, to make preparations for her recep- 
tion, and abandon her for ever. Searcely, 
however, is he out of sight, when a party of 
marauding Moors come up—the servant 
flies, and the lady is conveyed to the Moorish 
chief. It was in the reign of Isabella, and 
the Moors were again, after the capture of 
Grenada, in rebellion. 

The chief, delighted with the prize, would 
have taken immediate advantage of his good 
fortune, but for the opposition of a renegado 
companion, who recognises the lady, and 
immediately sees the chances of obtaining 


satisfaction for injuries he himself had sus-~ 


tained from Gomez—for Gomez was inde- 
fatigable in the pursuit of his profession, 
and spared neither mistress nor maid. 
Events, however, interrupt the plans of 
revenge instituted by the renegade—the 
Christians advance—the Moors are routed— 
and the lady fells into the hands of Don 
Alonzo de Aguilar—brother of the great 
Gonsalyo de Cordova. This Don, more- 
ever, is the father of the very lady to whom 
Gomez is engaged. The triumphant. party 
speed to Grenada, and the recaptured lady, 
whose name is Theodora, is, for the present, 
placed under the protection of Leonor, his 
daughter, whose marriage with Gomez is 
now actually to be consummated in a day or 
two. 

Discoveries of course take place—Theo- 
dora learns that her betrayer, Gomez, is the 
hero who is to marry Leonor, and Gomez, 
to his most serious annoyance, that Theo- 
dora is in the house of the bride. On the 
eve of the marriage Theodora presents her- 
self, dagger in hand, by Gomez’ bed-side, 
but love withheld the meditated blow. 
Gomez awakes—she announces her resolu- 
tion, if he perseveres in the marriage, to face 
him at the altar, and disclose his rascality. 
Gomez, thus hampered, has nothing for it 
but. dissembling—he promises to break off 
the said marriage, and conduct herself the 
very next night to her father’s, and make 
her an honest woman—and on the faith of 
this promise, the lady with the dagger con- 
tentedly withdraws. i 

Day at length dawns upon the hero’s per- 
plexity, and he demands of the father, and 
next of the bride, a day’s delay, under some 
unsatisfactory pretence. While conferring 
with his servant on the means of extricating 
from his embarrassments, the renegado 
comes up, and overhearing the conversation, 
undertakes at once to relieve him. Ars 


‘yangements are consequently made, and in 


the night, he conducts his victim to a place, 
pointed out by the renegado,. where he finds’ 


1828.] 


the aforesaid Moorish chief, and according 
to agreement, with all possible coolness, de- 
livers her into his hands, and his servant 
also, upon his reclamation against this act of 
villainy. Thus rid of his embarrassment, 
he flies back to the bride, to solicit the im- 
mediate performance of the ceremony, but 
the young lady’s pride is up—some private 
communications also had enlightened her a 
little on the subject of the putting off—and 
she, in her turn, demands a delay—a month 
—a year—an indefinite period. 


Meanwhile the Moors rebel again. Gomez 
has himself the command of the Spanish 
forces, and quickly routing the rebels, he 
returns in triumph to receive the welcome of 
his sovereign, and, as he fondly hopes, the 
now not unwilling hand of his offend- 
ed bride. — Unluckily, the first object 
which meets his gaze is Theodora, her 
father, and his own servant. The queen 
makes short work in the business of justice. 
She insists upon instant satisfaction. He is 
compelled to marry Theodora on the spot ; 
and the next moment is committed to prison, 
on a charge of high treason, for conserting 
with Moors—for he had delivered, personally, 
hisTheodora into the hands.of the Moor 
chief, and all intercourse with Moors was 
expressly prohibited. He is readily con- 
victed, and sentenced to die. The queen is 
inflexible ; but fortunately a noble courtier, 
now on his death-bed, holds 2 pledge of favour 
from the queen, and this pledge he puts into 
Theodora’s hands, who immediately de- 
mands the fulfilment, and Gomez is thus 
rescued on the very scaffold, by his injured, 
but devoted wife. From the scaffold he is 
conducted to the queen’s court, where he 
Was eagerly expected—the queen herself was 
delighted at his escape, for he had done good 
service to the state—when on his entrance, 
the renegado, in the disguise of a monk, 
Tushes upon him, and plunges a poisoned 
dagger into his bosom. A finish is thus put 
to his profligate career, and the poor lady, 
whose honour was thus forcibly redeemed, 
but whom happiness seemed to be awaiting — 
for the hard heart of the traitor was softened 
by her devotion—is left to pine and wither 
—and a few months hides her and her sor- 
rows in the grave. 


Solitary Walks through many Lands, 
Derwent Conway, Author of “ Tales 
f Ardennes,” &c. &c. 2 vols. ; 1828.— 
_ This is a mixture of the tour and the tale, 
sketched lightly and agreeably—consisting 

of personal adventures and unusual 

with a tact and delicacy very far 
| common. The author professes to 
have travelled over the greater part of Eu- 
rope, and much of it on foot, solo—taking 
+ he chance companions, and trusting to 

good fortune, and conciliating manners, 
and prompt payments, for civil treatment, 
and usually finding it. A little affectation 
is scattered over the volumes—bits of senti- 


ment not always consistent—and bons bons 


Domestic and Foreign. 


199- 


of loyalty, with flings at the Holy Alliance 
as little compatible—the result, of course, 
of occasionally aiming more at effect than 
sticking to truth of feeling. Here and 
there, too, a morsel of Shandyism—never 
much to our taste even in Sterne, but which, 
imitated a thousand times as it has been, 
and as often failing, has fully established 
its claims to originality—as something be- 
yond the reach of acquirement. 

Among the more attractive scraps is the 
author’s voyage in a two-oared bark, from 
Marseilles across the Bay of Toulon to 
Nice, where he touches on his way, or 
rather out of his way, at the unoccupied 
islet of St. Honorat—over a calm sea— 
solely for the pleasure of floating on the 
quiet waters, and the enjoying his own sen- 
sations—exciting a sense of pure voluptu- 
ousness, with which any one must sympa- 
thize, and long to share. Of the writer’s 
power to describe scenes of peril, the sud- 
den flooding of the Adige is a favourable 
specimen—but a still better is the following 
—an imaginary one. It is of two newly 
married young people— 

We talked of our journeying on the morrow, 
and of our return home; and while we spoke of 
the many happy hours we had spent on this beau- 
tiful shore, we had insensibly turned upon the 
ridge of rocks, “ Not this evening,” Agnes said, 
“let us go rather through the citron wood.” 
“ Let us first,” said I, “take a farewell of onr 
chosen resort.” We went forward, remarking 
that we had never seen the Mediterranean so per- 
fectly realize our early impressions of it—se calm 
—so lovely. As we proceeded, we separated ; for 
towards the extremity, the ledge next the water is 
narrow. ‘* Agnes,” said I, as I walked on first, 
“step carefully,”—searce had I spoken these 
words, when a piereing shriek, and a plunge— 
reason is again leaving me; merciful God, pre- 
serve it to me yet a little while—I turned, only in 
time to see her sink, with outstretched arms, be- 
neath the water that calmly closed above her. I 
saw her, for the water was clear as chrystal; I 
saw her as if standing: I knew her face—my 
Agnes’ face—and her arms were stretched to- 
wards me; but the sea-weed was tangled round 
her, and held her—and her form waved slowly to 
and fro. God of heayen—what a sight! the clear- 
ness of the water mocked me; I thought I could 
reach her, and I stretched my arm towards her, 
but I was deceiyed; she seemed to look reproach- 
fully at me; and again, with extended arms, ap- 
peared to implore me, her husband, to save her. 
T cried, in the agony of despair, for help; but the 
sound was conyulsed in the throat, and would not 
come forth. If I cannot save thee, I wil perish 
with thee ; and from that moment I but remember 
the plunge, and that I retained sense long enough to 
know, tliat I clasped my wife in my arms beneath 
the water. This is all Iam able to record; I was 
rescued from the waves; how, I know not; but 
when I awoke fo lite, Agnes was not with me. 


The second volume is filled chiefly with 
the Netherlands, particularly Ardennes. 
All accounts seem to concur as to the ex- 
treme unpopularity of the government. A 
vexatious system of taxation interferes with 


200 


the commonest comforts of life, as if the go- 
vernment had no other object than to make 
itself be felt ; and the writer infers, the next 
revolution in Europe will be in that quarter. 
They have house duty, and window duty, 
and hearth duty, and many other taxes bear- 
ing heavily upon the poor. ‘‘ But the most 
oppressive of them all,’’ adds the writer, 
‘Cis the tax which is laid on the actual con- 
sumption of articles of sustenance. Until you 
have actually eaten your pig, it cannot be 
said to be your own—not, at all events, until 
it is roasting. Your corn is not yours, al- 
though you have bought it and paid for it. 
Before one is at liberty to kill a pig, the 
king’s permission must be obtained ; and 
for this half-a-crown is paid. An ox, of 
course, pays proportionally more ; and be- 
fore you dare grind your corn, you must 
also pay a tax to his majesty.’ But this is 
treacherous ground—when we think of our 
own barley, tallow, skins, tea, coffee, bricks, 
oil-cloth, &c. &c. 

The reader will meet with neither 
churches nor pictures—a well-known work 
upon Italy, at the conclusion of a long 
chapter, filled from beginning to end 
with descriptions of paintings, says — 
"put they must be seen in order to convey 
any idea of the wonders which the creative 
art can work.”’ The writer is of the same 
opinion; but in the work from which he 
quotes, “‘ the discovery,”’ he adds, “is made 
too late, by the whole length of a chapter.” 
—The author recommends a new route— 
which may be worth some traveller’s notice. 
Instead of going from Paris to Milan by 
Mount Denis, a far more varied and agree- 
able route would be, to descend the Rhone 
from Lyons to Avignon ; to travel by land 
from Avignon to Toulon ; to make a coast- 
ing voyage from Toulon, either to Nice or 
Genoa, and from thence to Milan. 


Modern Domestic Medicine, by T.J. 
Graham, M. D.; 1828. — Most people, 
when they fall ill, fly to the physician, 
and lose all confidence in their own judg- 
ments, however propped by previous study. 
The very physician will seldom prescribe for 
himself. Nevertheless, most people like to 
pore over ‘“ domestic medicine ;’’ and few 
publications have a more general and steady 
sale than books of this character. Buchan’s 
reign was once universal, till Thompson, 
with no very legitimate claims, hurled him 
from his throne; and Thompson, in his 
turn, is beginning to be pushed from his 
stool by Dr. Graham, whose book—which 
now lays before us, and of which we will 
read as much as we can—has at least the 
merit of plain sense and distinct statements. 
Within a few months, it has actually reached 
a third edition. The writer’s main view, 
he tells us, was to produce a work which 
might be serviceable to unprofessional peo- 
ple—to the clergy—they not having enough 
in the cwrative way upon their hands—to 
heads of families and travellers ; and he has 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Aveust, 


accordingly confined himself, with sound 
discretion, to clear and correct description 
of the nature, symptoms, causes, distinctions, 
and most approved treatment of diseases. 
And as to remedies—none are recommended 
by him, or detailed, but the best and most 
manageable for the relief of pain and irrita- 
tion. The relief of irritation is (he ob- 
serves) the great object of medicine—the 
means which are most serviceable in allaying 
irritation, are the most speedy and effectual 
in the relief and cure of diseases: the rest 
may be left, we suppose, safely enough to 
the vis medicatria of life. : 

Though dwelling as he does upon what 
he terms manageable remedies, he has 
avoided—and he marks it in his preface— 
any “ dissertation on the passions ;’’ a re- 
mark which implies a lurking belief that the 
passions are the sources of disease, or at 
least have a mighty influence on the career 
and intensity, and the control of which, we 
suspect, would prevent many, and check 
more. To detect the effects of passion—the 
physical effects, we mean—is the physician’s 
especial province ; and we have no doubt 
the printings of the physician will, nine. 
times out of ten, be more effectual than the 
denouncings of the preacher: and we have, 
moreover—which is, by the way, an opinion 
of our own, and we give utterance to it in 
the teeth of education-mongers—as little 
doubt it is of: far greater importance to the 
welfare and happiness of their children, for 
parents to discipline their passions—mean- 
ing here their ¢emper, which is the great and 
early indicator of the passions—than their 
brains. 


Religious Discourses, by a Layman ; 
1828.—This is too ridiculous. Sir Walter’s 
great name—deservedly great as it is—will 
not carry with it an excuse for every folly. 
There is no reason upon earth why Sir 
Walter Scott—if he put his soul into the 
effort—or any other layman of common 
sense and literary habits, should not write 
a tolerable sermon—but these are utterly 
worthless—nor will either the alleged mo- 
tives, or the real ones, at all justify the pub- 
lication. The true history is this—and for 
the author’s credit at least, it should be 
known. While writing the Waverley no- 
vels incognito, Sir Walter had his MSS. 
copied by a gentleman who was studying © 
for the church ; and when the time arrived 
for his delivering two sermons before the 
presbytery—one of the usual tests of com- 
petent ability in the Scotch church—he ex- 
pressed in Sir Walter’s hearing his appre- 
hensions of failure ; upon which Sir Walter 
offered to write them for him, and actually 
wrote them, as we learn, the next morning. 
The sermons were read, and the candidate 
passed; but failing in getting any church 
employment, he obtained, through Sir 
Walter’s interest, a place under government 
in London. Mr. G., however, still wishing — 
to turn these sermons to account, prevailed _ 


: 
: 


| 


1828.) 


on Sir Walter to permit him to do so, and 
he accordingly sold them to Mr. Colburn 
for £250. 

The subject of the first is a comparison 
of the Jewish and Christian dispensations, 
containing nothing but the commonest ar- 
guments of the very commonest pulpit dis- 
courses—unillumined by one single ray of 
his undoubted genius—to stamp it as his 
own. ‘* I came not to destroy, but to 
fulfil.’ The words are plainly—if we refer 
to facts—used in a specific and limited 
sense. Literally, and in the general appli- 
cation of them, the law was destroyed, for 
the Christian renounced the use and autho- 
rity of it as an institute; and the Jew, 
expelled from his native seat, could no 


Domestic and Foreign. 


201 - 


longer execute its provisions. The specific 
sense, to which we allude, Sir Walter la- 
bours hard, and has more difficulty than 
half the curates—the lowest caste, of course, 
of theologians—in the country would have 
had to establish ; and concludes with sin- 
gular infelicity thus: —“ In no sense, there- 
fore, was the ancient Mosaic law destroyed ;”” 
—followed up with a very brilliant, but 
scarcely intelligible, and perfectly inappli- 
cable and unillustrating figure. The other 
sermon is on the blessedness of the righ- 
teous, and is as miserable a piece of twaddle 
as ever was compiled by a fagged or a lazy 
Saturday night performer, to be inflicted on 
some unfortunate audience the following 
morning. 


, PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 


—s 


INSTITUTE—ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Paris.— March 3.—M. Ampere made a 
verbal report on a work of M. Opoix, re- 
garding the soul when waking and sleeping. 
M. Arago presented, in the name of M. 
Fiedler, many vitreous tubes which the 
donor had collected in sundry parts of Ger- 
many. A conversation arising with regard 
to them, M. Mongez said, that in the cabi- 
net of natural history belonging to the li- 
brary of St. Genevieve, of which he was 
the conservator, there was a packet of nails 
which had been half melted by lightning 
on board a vessel: the nails were four or 
five inches long, melted together by the 
demifusion, and pierced like the vitreous 
tabes. MM. Dumeril and Latreille re- 
ported on a memoir of M. Milne Edwards, 
relative to certain crustacea inhabiting the 
western shore of France: the three new 
species described were the rhea, cuma, and 
pontia—the fourth was already known but 
imperfectly, and belonged to the genus ne- 
balia—the paper was thought worthy of 
being inserted in the “ Mémoires desSavans 
Etrangers.’’ MM. Prony, Poisson, and Sa- 
vart, made a report, at the requisition of the 
minister of the interior, on an improved 
steelyard, made by M. Paret, a mechanist 
of Montpellier; they considered the instru- 
Ment might be employed with advantage. 
_M. Coquebert-Montbret made a verbal re- 
port on an English work presented by M. 
Cesar Moreau, entitled a chronological ex- 
amination of the finances of Great Britain. 
—10. MM. Dumeril and Magendie re- 
ported on a memoir of M. Malebouche, 
relative to the method pursued by a Mrs. 
Leigh for the cure of stammering. The 
process consists in a series of exercises for 
the organs of speech, but is as yet a secret. 
The reporters stated that they had submit- 
ted some persons to the care of M. Male- 
bouche, who had been entirely or partially 
cured—the latter depending upon the pa- 
tient’s) own want of attention to the rules 
M.M. New Serics.—Vo1,.V1. No. 32. 


prescribed. It was referred to a committee 
to see whether the persons possessed of the 
secret could be allowed to receive the prize 
founded by M. Monthyon, in order to ob- 
tain its publication. M.Ampere made a 
verbal report on M. Opoix’s pamphlet rela- 
tive to the sensations of sound and of light. 
A letter was read from M. Gendrin, con- 
taining numerous observations which he had 
made on the employment of iodine in cases 
of gout.—17. A letter was communicated 
by M. Brongniard from M. J. Acorta, en- 
gineer, in Colombia, stating that it was not 
the city of Bogota, but that of Popayan, 
which had been destroyed by an earthquake. 
Bogota, which is 80 leagues distant from 
the latter place, had, however, been seriously 
injured. M. Warden informed the Aca- 
demy that Captain Joshua Coffin, of the 
Ganges, of New York, had discovered in the 
South Sea four new islands, not laid down 
in the charts. The first, which he called 
Gardner’s Island, from the name of his 
owner, is in lat. 4° 3’ S., lon. 174° 22’ W. 
of Greenwich; the land here is low and 
woody. The second, called Coffin Island, 
is in lat. 31° 13’ S., lon. 178° 54’ 15” W.., 
about twelve miles to the north of which 
are some very dangerous reefs. The other 
two were named the Islands of the Ganges, 
lat. 10° 25’ S., lon. 160° 45° W., and 10° 
S. and 161° W.: they were inhabited, and 
the natives were unacquainted with fire- 
arms. M. Arago gave verbally some new 
details relative to M. Fiedler’s fulminary 
tubes, in answer to various objections made 
at a preceding sitting; he also communi- 
cated an account of certain aurore boreales 
obseryed in the United States on the 27th 
and 28th of August, 1827. MM. Patal 
and Dumeril reported on a memoir pre- 
sented by MM. Martin and Isidore, of St. 
Hilaire, relative to the peritonean canals in 
the tortoise and crocodile. This paper pre- 
senting a new and important fact in physio- 
logy, will be published in the ‘ Recucil des 
2D 


202 


Savans Etrangers.”” M. Fourier read a note, 
entitled “ experimental researches on the 
conducting power of thin bodies submitted 
to the action of heat, and a description of a 
new thermometer of contact.”” M. Hericart 
de Thury communicated a notice, and exhi- 
bited a section of the strata in a well made 
by boring, near Epinay—the depth from 
which the water issued was more than 200 
feet, and it rose above the surface, supplying 
about 36,000 quarts, of the temperature of 
14°, in 24 hours.—24. M. Poinsot present- 
ed a note on the formule for the exact de- 
termination of the plane of the area resulting 
from all the areas described round the centre 
of the sun by all the parts of our planetary 
system—comprising the sun itself. _M.Cu- 
vier exhibited the fossil jaw of an animal, 
bearing some analogy to an animal found in 
Van Dieman’s Land, the didelphis cynoce- 
phala of Havis, or thilacine of Temminck, 
recently discovered ‘in the quarries of Mont- 
Martre. M. Damoiseau made a verbal re- 
port on a chronological work published at 
Rome in 1827, by M. E. Olieri.—_31. Some 
letters relative to the death of Major Laing 
and Captain Clapperton, from M. Rousseau, 
consul-general of France at Tripoli, were 
read by M. Barbiedubocage. Dr. Fevenon 
intimated a design of submitting to the 
Academy the results of his researches on 
the circulation and respiration of different 
classes of animals. MM. Arago and Ma- 
thieu reported on a memoir of Major Roger, 
relative to measurements of Mont Blanc— 


Proceedings of Learned Societies. 


[Aveust, 


for which he received the thanks of the Aca- 
demy, and was solicited to extend his obser- 
vations to other mountains of Europe. M. 
Girard commenced the reading of a memoir 
relative to the supply of water in Paris, and 
M. Brusant read a memoir on the chemical 
analyses for determining the composition of 
minerals.—April 7. A society for mining 
for pit coal and other mineral substances in 
the department of the Jura, solicited the 
advice of the Academy, who referred their 
memoir to the council of mines. M. G, St. 
Hilaire announced that some doubts which 
had arisen relative to the anatomical facts 
mentioned in the paper of MM. Martin 
and J. St. Hilaire, had been removed, by 
the inspection of a tortoise which had died 
at the Royal Menagerie on April6. M. 
Chevreul. read a memoir on the influence 
which two colours may have upon each 
other when seen simultaneously.—Annual 
Meeting of the four Academies. April 25. 
Great interest was excited at this meeting 
by a remarkable discourse by -M. Fourier 
on the progress of science at the present 
day—also by an abridged account of M. de 
Labord’s recent voyage in the Levant—and 
by a learned memoir of M. G. St. Hilaire, 
on the state of natural history among the 
Egyptians. The commission charged to 
examine the works sent in to contest the 
prize founded by Volney, reported by M. 
de Sacy that the prize was divided between 
M. Massias and M. Schleyermacher, li- 
brarian of Darmstadt. 


VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


Earihquake.—Between ten and eleven 
o'clock at night, on the 9th of March last, 
an earthquake was felt at Washington and 
other places in the United States, and which 
consisted of two distinct shocks, which 
lasted a little less, than thirty seconds—the 
first was very much stronger than the se- 
cond. The houses were so shaken, that 
many persons who were asleep jumped from 
their beds, and could with difficulty be re- 
covered from the fright they had sustained. 

Electric Eels.—It is not only the croco- 
dile and jaguar which in America lie in 
ambush for the horse, but even among fishes 
this animal has a dangerous enemy. The 
marshy waters of Béra and Rastio are filled 
with the electric eel, whose slimy yellow 
spotted body sends forth at will terrible 
shocks. These gymnoti are from fiye to 
six feet long, and sufficiently strong to kill 
the most robust animal when they bring 
their organs properly into action. At Uri- 
tuca they have been obliged to change the 
direction of the road, because the number 
of these eels had so much increased in a 
little river, that annually a number of 
horses in passing the ford were.killed. All 
.animals of their own element fly from these 
-formidable creatures; even man is surprised 
when angling by the river side; and receives 


the fatal shock by means of the wetted line. 
The fishing for the gymnoti, presents a pic- 
turesque spectacle. The Indians inclosea — 
marshy spot, and then drive horses and 
mules into the water, until the noise excites 
these courageous fishes to the attack. They 
are seen swimming on the surface like 
snakes, and adroitly insinuating themselves 
under the belly of the horses, many of — 
which fall under the violence of these invi- — 
sible blows; while others, panting, with — 
streaming mane and haggard eyes, expres- 
sive of anguish, strive to evade the storm 
which threatens them, but the Indians, — 
armed with long bamboos, drive them back 
again into the middle of the water. The ‘ 
impetuosity of this unequal combat at Iength ~ 
diminishes ; the gymnoti fatigued, disperse 
like clouds deprived of the electric fluid, 
and require long repose and abundant nou- 
rishment to repair the loss of the galvanic 
force. Their strokes getting feebler and 
feebler, produce a less sensible effect, until 
frightened at length by the trampling of the 
horses, they timidly approach the banks, 
and are then struck with harpoons by the 
Indians, and subsequently pulled on the 
steppe with dry sticks, non-conductors of 
the fluid. 4 
Statistics —Commerce.—From an official 


1828. 


statement recently published at New York, 
it appears that there were 593 vessels of dif- 
ferent sizes in the harbour of that city, viz. 
96 ships, 124 brigs, 137 schooners, 167 
sloops, 24 tow boats, and 43 steam boats ; 
besides a great number of coasting vessels. 
Of the above 96 ships, 33 were built at 
New York, and their tonnage amounted to 
16,000. 

Preservation of Eggs.—Various experi- 
ments haye at different times been made to 
ascertain a sure process for preserving eggs 
from putrefaction : it was discovered a short 
time since that chlorate of lime was effec- 
tual for the purpose—this substance being 
manufactured in England on a very large 
scale, may be obtained at a very trifling ex- 
pence, and it is only necessary to dissolve 
one ounce of it in a pint of water. 

Mammoth.—In excavating the Morris 
canal near Schooley’s Mountain, New Jer- 
sey, United States, the skeleton of a mam- 
moth was found, in July 1827, about three 
feet beneath the surface, in a remarkable 
state of preservation. It is said to be enor- 
mously large, and that one of the tusks 
weighs 150 pounds, being two feet in cir- 
cumference, and seven in length, and from 
appearances it is supposed to have been of a 
much greater length. The teeth are entire ; 
the enamel on them is round and perfect, 
and of a shining bright blue veined marble 
colour: the dimensions of one of them 
taken on the grinding surface, were three 
and a half inches wide, and seven long; it 
weighed four pounds. The remains of a 
huge megatherium were also discovered, at 
the beginning of this year, in New Jersey, 
in a marl pit nine miles south-east of Phi- 
ladelphia. 

The Comet of 1832 ( Damoiseaw’s ).— 
‘Some mischievous wag has been terrifying 
‘the old women, as well in petticoats as 
without, both in this country and on the 
_ ontihent, with fearful prognostications of 
‘the destruction of the world in the year 
1832, by a ballistic visitation from a comet 
—the one of which the elements were deter- 
mined by Damoiseau, whose name it bears, 
‘and the periodic time of which is 6-75 
‘years. It is almost needless to say, that 
‘from this body there can exist no rational 
“cause of apprehension; at its nearest ap- 
roach to the earth it will be more than 44 
millions of miles distant from it, and might 
‘approach a million of times nearer without 
‘Oceasioning any serions consequences. In 
me @ comet approached within 2,062,500 
: Lalande estimates at 35,750 miles 
‘the distance at which a comet might pro- 
‘duce upon the earth any sensible effect. 

Gold and Platinum Mines of the Oural 
*Mountains.—The following statements col- 
ected from some official Russian journals, 
will not, we conceive, be devoid of interest, 
‘particularly in connexion with some articles 
_we have already published on the subject. 
“The quantity of gold obtained during the 
year 1825, and the first six months of 1826, 


_ 


Varieties. 


203 
amounted to 17,448 pounds. Of these; 
5,030 pounds were found in the mines be- 
longing to the crown, and the remainder, 
12,418, in the mines belonging to private 
people ; making an excess of 7,388 for the 
latter. The value of this prodigious quan- 
tity of gold, estimating it at £62. 10s. per 
pound, is £894,063 sterling. In the same 
space of 18 months, 1,031 pounds of plati- 
num were procured; of which 410 came 
from the mines of the crown, and the re- 
mainder, 621, from the mines of private 
persons—giving an excess in favour of the 
latter of 211 pounds. The town of Cathe- 
tineburg, near which ali this quantity of 
gold and platinum has been obtained, and 
which consequently is of some importance, 
is situated in the government of Perm, 
under the 56° 50’ 38” of northern latitude, 
and with longitude 20° 30’ E. of Peters- 
burg; about 1,105 miles from Moscow, 
1,560 from Petersburg, and 225 from the 
city of Perm. 

Spontaneous Human Combustion.—The 
phenomenon of spontaneous human com- 
bustion is one that has been much can- 
vassed of late years, and from their own 
peculiar views of the subject been rejected 
by some philosophers. A distinguished 
French physiologist, M. Julia Fontenelle, 
having investigated the subject, and paid 
strict attention to every case of this nature, 
supported by credible testimony, has com- 
municated to the Institute the result of his 
researches. 1. Persons who have died by 
spontaneous combustion have for the most 
part made immoderate use of alcoholic li- 
quors. 2. That this combustion is almost 
always general, but may be only partial. 
3. Itis much rarer among men than among 
women; and nearly all the women who 
have been the victims of it, have been aged 
—one only being of the age of 17 years, and 
her combustion was but partial. 4. That 
the trunk and the entrails have been con- 
stantly burned, while the feet, the hands, 
and the top of the skull have almost always 
escaped. 5. Although it is known from 
experiment that a considerable quantity of 
wood is required to reduce a body to ashes 
by the ordinary process of cremation, yet in 
spontaneous combustion the incineration 
takes place without the most combustible 
surrounding objects being burned. In one 
instance, very remarkable from the coinci- 
dence of a double spontaneous combustion 
taking place in two individuals in the same 
chamber, it was found that the apartment 
and furniture did not take fire. 6. It is 
not proved that the presence of an ignited 
body is necessary to develop spontaneous 
human combustion—every thing leads to a 
different conclusion. 7. Water, far from 
extinguishing the flame, seems to increase 
its activity ; and when the flame has disap- 
peared, the internal combustion still con- 
tinues. 8. Spontaneous combustions take 
place more frequently in winter than in 
summer. 9. Partial combustions have been 
2D2 


204 


eured, but general combustions never. 10. 
The victims of spontaneous combustion suf- 
fer a very strong internal heat. 11. The 
combustion developes itself at once, and 
consumes the body in a few hours. 12. 
The parts of the body which are not affected 
by combustion, mortify. 13. The bodies 
of those affected by spontaneous combustion 
have a tendency to putridity, immediately 
inducing gangrene. 14. The residue after 
this combustion is composed of fatty cinders, 
and of an unctuous soot, both having a fetid 
odour, which pervades the apartment, im- 
pregnates the furniture, and is perceptible at 
a great distance. Without entering into 
the other theories which have been formed 
to account for this dreadful phenomenon, 
we shall state the causes which M. Julia 
Fontenelle assigns of it. We regard, he 
Says, what are called spontaneous human 
combustions, not as true combustions, but 
as internal and spontaneous re-actions due 
to new products, to which a deprivation of 
the muscles, tendons, entrails, &c. gives 
rise. These products, when uniting, yield 
the same phenomena as combustion, with- 
out depending at all on the induence of 
external agents. It may be objected to this, 
that let the cause which determines the 


Varieties. 


[Aveust, 


combustion be what it may, the caloric dis- 
engaged must be considerable, and conse- 
quently would ignite all the neighbouring 
substances. In answer to this it is replied, 
that all combustible substances are very far 
from disengaging an equal quantity of ca- 
loric by combustion. While from various 
experiments of Davy, it seems probable that 
the products due to the deterioration of the 
body may be very combustible, yet without 
disengaging as much caloric as the other 
combustible bodies known, and without 
leaving a residue like some of the gases; 
and it “would appear that in some subjects, 
particularly women, there exists a particu- 
lar disposition which, united to the weak- 
ness occasioned by age, an inactive life, and 
the abuse of spirituous liquors, may occasion 
a spontaneous combustion. But Mr. L. is 
far from considering either alcohol or hy- 
drogen, or excessiye fat, as a material cause 
of this combustion. If alcohol have much 
to do with this morbid affection, it is in 
contributing to its production, that is to 
say, to produce with the above-mentioned 
causes this deterioration, which gives rise 
to new products very combustible, of which 
the reaction determines the combustion of 
the body. 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


WORKS IN PREPARATION. 


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A Summary of the Englirh Language; 
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tein in a 


_ Society of London. 


1828. ] 
LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


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The Anecdotonian, containing a great 
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List of New Works. 


205 


Note Philologice et Grammatia in Eu- 
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206 


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1828.J 


[ 207 ] 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


| New Patents Sealed in July 1828. 

To John Baring, of Broad-street Build- 
ings, London, merchant, for an improved 
mode of making machines for cutting fur 
from skins for the use of hatters, to be 
called Cant twist blades fur cutter—3d July ; 
6 months. 

To John Johnston Isaac, of Star-street, 
Edgeware-road, Middlesex, engineer, for 
improvements in propelling vessels, boats, 
and other floating bodies —-5th July ; 
6 months. 

To Thomas Reyis, of Kennington-street, 
Walworth, Surrey, watchmaker, for an im- 
proved method of lifting weights—10th July ; 
6 months. 

“To John Hawks, of Weymouth-street, 
Portland-place, Middlesex, iron-manufac- 
turer, for an improvement in the construc- 
tion of ships’ cable and hawser chains— 
10th July ; 6 months. 

To John Henry Anthony Gunther, of 
Camden Town, Middlesex, piano-forte ma- 
nufacturer, for an improvement on piano- 
fortes—10th July ; 2 months. 

To William Muller, of Doughty-street, 
Bedford-row, Middlesex, Captain of our 
German Legion, for an instrument for in- 
structing in mathematical, geography, astro- 
nomy, and other sciences, for the use of 
resolying problems in navigation, spherics, 
and other sciences—10th July ; 6 months. 

To Benjamin Rider, of Redcross-street, 
Southwark, Surrey, hat-tip-manufacturer, 
for certain improvements in the manufac- 
ture of hats, which he intends to denomi- 
nate Rider’s patent hat-tips—1l7th July ; 
6 months. 

- To Joseph Jones, of Amlweh, Anglesea, 


North Wales, Gentleman, for an’ improve- 
ment in certain parts of the process of smelt- 
ing or obtaining metallic copper from copper 
ore—17th July ; 6 months. 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in August 1814, expire in the present 
month of August 1828. 


4.—J. Sykes, Sheffield, for improve- 
ments on fire-arms. 

—. J. Collier, London, for a machine 
Sor combing wool, hemp, flax, cotton, &c. 

—. J. Thomson, Yarmouth, Norfolk, for 
making ships governable. 

—. E. C. Howard, London, for separat- 
ing insoluble substances from fluids. 

—. T. Michell, London, for a machine 
Sor raising water with less power than hi- 
therto, and for impelling machinery. 

—. T.S. Pauly, London, for improve- 
ments in fire-arms. 

—. G. Courtald, Braintree, for a spindle 
Sor the manufacture of silk thread. 

—. S. Erard, London, for improvements 
in musical instruments. 

16.—M. Larkin, London, for improve- 
ments in ships’ windlasses. 

17._H. W. Vandercleft, London, for a 
walking staff, to contain a pistol, powder, 
ball, telescope, pen, ink, paper, pencil, 
knife, and drawing utensils. 

22,—R. Salmon, Woburn, for machines 
Sor making hay. 

24,—_J. and G. Dickenson, of Nash Mills, 
for improvements in.machinery for making 
paper. 


BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 


— 


SIR RALPH WOODFORD, BART. 

This respected and lamented individual 
died on the 17th of May last, in his passage 
from Jamaica to Falmouth. He had been 
nearly fifteen years ‘governor of Trinidad ; 
and his good judgment, steadiness, and sua- 
vity of manners, brought that island from 
its turbulent, self-ruining condition, into a 
state of order, prosperity, and internal hap- 
piness. His health being at last affected 
by so long a residence in a tropical atmo- 
’ e, he made a cruise to Jamaica for 
change of air and scene. But the remedy 
appears to have proved an ill-advised one ; 
for, quitting that island with an increase of 
alarming symptoms, his valuable life termi- 
mated, as has been described, during his 
voyage home, to the more salubrious airs of 
his native country. Sir Ralph Woodford 
was the only son of a worthy and accom- 
plished baronet of the same name; who 
must still be fondly remembered by the few 
Jeft, who, like himself, adorned. by their wit 


and graceful conversation the charming 
circle of the late celebrated Mrs. Montague. 
He was maternally descended from a family 
of old eminence for genius and loyalty—the 
Brideokes, of clerical memory; of whom 
Dr. Brideokes, the ‘‘ sometime’ chaplain 
to James, the fourth Earl of Derby, in the 
reign of Charles I., was one noted instance. 
He afterwards became Dean of Salisbury, 
and, by his extraordinary presence of mind, 
courage, and address, saved the heroic 
Countess of Derby, and her house of La- 
tham, from being stormed by the Cromwell 
army. From this brave and worthy member 
of the church, descended the more imme- 
diate maternal ancestor of Sir Ralph Wood- 
ford, Archdeacon Brideokes, the friend of 
Atterbury : and from whom the family of 
Woodford now possess the Bible which had 
belonged to King James the First. Sir 
Ralph Woodford, the regretted subject of 
this memoir, was, in every respect, worthy 
of his descent from such persons. His 


208 


powers of mind were equal to theirs; and, 
with similar energy, directed to the most 
honourable purposes. It was always his 
ambition, wherever he went as a servant of 
his country, “‘ to do his duty!’’ and, we 
may say, that, fulfilling it to the utmost, in 
a distant and dangerous climate, he at last 
terminated his life in the “ very gate of his 
post !’? Never having married, whatever 
honours are hereditary in the family, devolve 
on his cousin, General Alexander Wood- 
ford, who, while commanding the Foot 
Guards of Houguemont, behaved with dis- 
tinguishing gallantry in the memorable day 
of Waterloo. This gentleman is at present 
in a military station at Corfu. 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 
Tue Most Reverend Father in God, his 
Grace, Charles Lord Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, Metropolitan of all England, &c., 
was a branch of the ducal family of Manners, 
descendants from the sister of King Edward 
the Fourth. He was grandson to John, the 
eleventh Earl, and third Duke of Rutland. 
His father, Lord George Sutton—-so called, 
from a family alliance with Bridget, only 
daughter of Robert Sutton, Lord Lexing- 
ton—married, in the year 1749, Diana, 
daughter of Thomas Chaplain, of Blankley, 
in the County Palatine of Lancaster, Esq. 
Charles, his fourth son, the subject of this 
sketch, was born on the 17th of February, 
1755. He was educated at the Charter 
House, whence he removed to Emanuel 
College, Cambridge; where, in 1777, we 
find him one of the triposes, on which occa- 
sion he took the degree of A.B. He after- 
wards proceeded to D.D., and soon obtained 
ecclesiastical preferment. After holding se- 
veral livings in succession, he was made 
Dean of Peterborough, in 1791. On the 
death of Dr. Horne, in 1792, he was ele- 
vated to the See of Norwich ; when he re- 
linguished his other livings, and in lieu 
thereof accepted the Deanery of Windsor. 
Dr. Sutton’s residence at Windsor intro- 
duced him particularly to the late King, 
whose excellent sense and sound discrimi- 
nation soon led him to a just estimate of the 
merits of the new Dean. Dr. Sutton had 
married, as far back as the 3d of April, 
1778, Mary, the daughter of Thomas Thor- 
ston, Esq. This lady was honoured with 
the friendship of her Majesty, Queen Char- 
lotte. It was probably from a knowledge 
of this favourable combination of circum- 
stances, that the author of ‘‘ The Pursuits of 
Literature”’ was led, in 1797, to predict, for 
Dr. Sutton, the possession of archiepiscopal 
honours. To these eminently characteristic 
lines, we find the following note appended : 


Nay, if you feed on this celestial strain, 

You may with Gods hold converse, not with men; 
Sooner the people’s rights shall Horsley prove, 
Or Sutton cease to claim the public love ; 

And e’en forego, from dignity of place, 

His polished mind and reconciling face. . 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Avueust, 


“ Dr. Charles Manners Sutton, Bishop 
of Norwich, a prelate whose amiable de- 
meanour, useful learning, and conciliating 
habits of life, particularly recommend his 
episcopal character. No man appears to me 
so peculiarly marked out for the HIGHEST 
piecniry of the church, sede vacante, as 
Dr. Sutton.” 

On the death of Dr. Moore, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, in 1805, there were three 
competitors to succeed him :—Dr. Tomline, 
supported by Mr. Pitt; Dr. Stuart, who 
claimed on a promise made to him, when 
he accepted the See of Armagh; and Dr. 
Sutton, enjoying the especial fayour of the 
King. His Majesty’s congé d’élire having 
been issued, Dr. Sutton was duly elected on 
the 12th of February, and conjix‘med on the _ 
21st; when he was also nominated a mem- 
ber of the King’s Most Honourable Privy 
Council. 

This Prelate never greatly distinguished 
himself as a politician. When the Clergy 
Farming and Residence Bill, introduced by 
Sir William Scott, was discussed in the 
House of Peers, in June, 1803, he spoke 
several times; and, while he insisted on_ 
the necessity of the measure, he pointed out 
the spirit of persecution introduced into the 
Act of Henry the VIIIth, some of the, 
clauses of which afforded a lucrative employ- 
ment to informers.—His Lordship spoke for 
the first time in his archiepiscopal capacity 
on Moor’s Divorce Bill, on the 13th of 
June, 1805. He availed himself of the 
occasion, ‘* to deprecate every thing that. 
might give facility to divorces; which, if 
carried beyond a certaint extent, tended in 
fact to afford a direct encouragement to the. 
practice of adultery itself.”” 

His Grace was a steady and consistent op- 
ponent of the Roman Catholic claims. As 
early as the year 1805, on the resumed de- 
bate on the Roman Catholic Petition, after 
the Earl of Suffolk and Lord Hutchinson 
had spoken in behalf, and the Earl of Buck- 
inghemshire against the prayer of it, he arose, 
and immediately fixed the attention of the 
House. Enumerating the various privileges 
which had been conceded to the Roman 
Catholics, by the 18th, 22nd, 31st, and 
33rd, of his Majesty, George III., his 
Grace “ expressed his surprise, that after 
such a series of concessions, a petition like 
that on the table should be brought forward. 
Toleration ’’ he added, ‘‘ was the brightest 
ornament of the Church of England; but 
the claims now meant to be obtained were 
inconsistent with the very idea of toleration ; 
for they struck at the act of settlement, and 
tended to give not only equality, but eventual 
superiority, to the Roman Catholic religion 
in a Protestant state.”’ The claims of the 
Protestant Dissenters were treated by his 
Grace in a different manner. He gave his 
voice and his vote against Lord Sidmouth’s 
Bill, in 1811; and on the late settlement of 
those claims, he gave them his vote by 
proxy, and, so far as iu absence he could, his. 


1828.] 


sentiments, through the medium of his 
friend, the Bishop of Chester. 

Dr. Sutton “* was a man of mild, but im- 
posing presence, mingling the humility of 
the religion, of which he was the eloquent 
teacher, with the dignity of high birth and 
lofty station. His voice was full and tune- 
able, his elocution distinct and unaffected, 
his arguments well weighed, his words well 
chosen, his manner grave and simple, his 
learning accurate, his knowledge compre- 
hensive, and his judgment sound. He spoke 
fluently and impressively on most subjects, 
even on those which might have appeared 
most averse from his general course of study.”” 
Notwithstanding his powers in the pulpit, 
his Grace published only two sermons: one 
preached before the Peers, on the Fast Day, 
1794; the other, before the Society for Pro- 
pagating the Gospel, in 1797. 

- He is understood to have been eminently 
happy in the marriage state. Mrs. Sutton 
was the woman of his choice ; one who, as 
a wife and as a mother, has been an honour 
to her station, and a pattern to all. By this 
lady he has had a family of thirteen chil- 
dren; all of whom, with two exceptions, 
have been females. His eldest son, the 
Right Hon. Charles Manners Sutton, is the 
Speaker of the Honse of Commons; an 
effice which he has filled with great ability, 
and unqualified approbation, ever since the 
resignation of Lord Colchester, in the year 
1817. His Grace’s eldest daughter was 
married, in 1806, to the Rev. Hugh Percy, 
D.D., Bishop of Carlisle, the third son of 
Algernon, Karl of Beverley. His Grace’s 
fourth daughter was married, in 1812, to the 
Rey. Dr. Croft, Archdeacon of Canterbury. 

After a long illness, his Grace expired at 
Lambeth Palace, about half past.ten in the 
forenoon of Monday, the 21st of July. 


LORD MOUNT-SANDFORD. 

Henry Sandford, second Baron .Mount- 
Sandford, of Castlerea, in the county of 
Roscommon, was born on the 10th of March, 
1805 ; and he succeeded his uncle, Henry 
Moore Sandford, the late lord (so’ created 
on the 30th of July, 1800,) on the 29th of 
December, 1814. His lordship was the son 
of the Rey. William Moore Sandford (who 
died in 1809), by Jane, second daughter of 
the Right. Hon. Siber Oliver, of Castle 
Oliver, in the county of Limerick. This 
amiable and unfortunate young nobleman 
died at Windsor, on Saturday, the 14th of 
June, from injuries which he had received 
in an affray on the morning of Friday, the 
6th. It appeared, from the evidence given 
the coroner’s inquest, that his lord- 

aitipy with some other gentlemen, had been 
at Ascot races; that, afterwards, they ad- 
journed to Eton, to play at billiards ; and 
that, between twelve and one in the morn- 
ing, as they were returning to the Castle 
Inn at Windsor, where they had been stay- 
ing, they encountered a drunken rabble of 
mechanics, with whom, by some means, a 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No.32. 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


209 


quarrel ensued. His lordship was perfectly 
sober at the time, and was interfering only 
to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, 
when, in a minute or two, he was knocked 
down, and received the brutal blows and 
kicks which occasioned his death. The 
jury returned a verdict of “ wilful murder” 
against Samuel Brinkbett (a shoemaker), as 
principal, and George and Thomas Hunt, 
as aiders and abettors therein. The jury 
also expressed themselves unanimously of 
opinion, that the treatment received by his 
lordship, and which caused his death, had 
been entirely unprovoked on his part. His 
lordship’s remains were interred in the 
parish church of Windsor on the Tuesday 
following his decease. His lordship is suc- 
ceeded by his uncle, George, now third Ba- 
ron Lord Mount-Sandford. 


SIR WILLIAM CONGREVE, BART., M.P., 
F.R.S., &e. 

Sir William Congreve was descended from 
a family said to have been settled in Staf- 
fordshire when that county formed part of 
the kingdom of Mercia. His father, the 
first baronet (so created in 1812), was an 
officer of rank in the artillery. Sir William 
was born in the year 1770, and entered 
young into the same branch of military ser- 
vice. Having a great mechanical genius, 
he effected many important improvements. 
In 1808, he invented a formidable engine of 
military annoyance, which, having been 
tried and approved, was used by Lord Coch- 
rane in Basque Roads—in the expedition 
against Walcheren—in attacks on several 
places in Spain—at Waterloo, &c. The 
effects of these weapons, generally called 
Congreve rockets, and now adopted in the 
armies of all the European powers, are tre- 
mendous. They have been employed, also, 
in a modified form, in the whale fishery. 

Sir William Congreve was Equerry to the 
King, Comptroller of the Laboratory at 
Woolwich, &c. Besides many other works, 
abounding in ingenious ideas, he published 
treatises on the Mounting of Iron Ord- 
nance, on his Hydro-Pneumatie Lock for 
saving Water, on the Means of preventing 
the Forgery of Bank Notes, &c. 

- About two years ago, Sir William Con- 
greve was conceived to be deeply implicated 
in some of the Stock Exchange bubble con- 
cerns ;. after which he retired to the Conti- 
nent, where he continued to reside. His 
death was thus announced in the Moniteur 
of May 23 :—“ Sir William Congreve, the’ 
English general of artillery, who acquired so 
much renown by the deadly rockets which 
he invented, died lately at ‘Toulouse, at the 
age of fifty-seven. It is said, that having. 
foreseen for some time that war would break 
out in the east, he had submitted two pro- 
jects to his government—one for the de- 
fence of Constantinople, and the other for 
its destruction, according as England might 
be favourably or inimically disposed towards 
the Turks, Towards the latter part. of his 
2E 


210 


life, ‘having totally lost the use of his legs, 
he had invented a mechanically arranged 
chair or sofa, which enabled him to move 
himself about his apartment without any 
assistance : this machine occasionally served 
him as a bed, whereon to repose himself. 
He latterly also discoyered means of propel- 
ling ships at sea, without the aid of oars, 
sails, or steam: the details of this plan were 
printed ; it appeared, however, to be more 
ingenious than practically available. He has 
left a widow, several children, and an im- 
mense fortune.”—By Sir William’s death, 
a vacancy occurred in the representation of 
Plymouth. 

MARSHAL COMTE DE LAURISTON. 

This gentleman, said to be a descendant 
from the family of the celebrated Law, of 
Mississippi notoriety, was the son of a ge- 
neral officer in ‘the French army. He was 
born in the year 1768. At an early age he 
embraced the military profession, and obtain- 
ed rapid promotion in the artillery. He was 
active, and he enjoyed the friendship of 
Buonaparte, who made him one of his 
aids-de-camp. Buonaparte also employed 
him on several important missions. In 1800 
he commanded, as brigadier-general, the 
fourth regiment of Flying Artillery at La 
Fére. In 1801 he brought to England the 
ratification of the preliminaries of the peace 
of Amiens. He was received with custom- 
ary enthusiasm by the London mob, who 
took the horses from his carriage, and drag- 
ged him in triumph to Downing-street. 
This circumstance afforded to Cobbett a 
theme of vituperation for months. 

After the death of the Duc d’Enghien, 
General Lauriston happened to be in the 
antechamber of the consular court of Buo- 
naparte with M. de Caulaincourt ; when, the 
conversation having turned upon the mur- 
der of the prince, and upon the part which 
Caulaincourt had performed in the affair, 
Lauriston spiritedly exclaimed— The first 
consul has too much esteem for me, to em- 
ploy me in such a transaction.”” The con- 
versation grew warm, and it was only through 
Buonaparte’s interference that the quarrel 
was not carried to a greater height. Though 
displeased with Lauriston’s remark, the con- 
sul did not dismiss him, but sent him on an 
unimportant embassy to Italy, and contrived 
that he and Caulaincourt should never: meet 
again in his presence. 

- M. de Lauriston was in every campaign 
of note in Spain, Germany, and Russia. In 
1809 he penetrated into Hungary, and took 
the fortress of Raab, after a bombardment 
of eight days. It was Lauriston who de- 
cided the victory in favour of the French at 
the battle of Wagram, by coming up to the 
charge, at full trot, with 100 picces of artil- 
lery. In 1811 he was appointed ambassa- 
dor to the court of St. Petersburgh. This 
mission—the object of which was to obtain 
the occupation of the ports of Riga and Re- 
vel, and to exclude English ships from the 


Buwgraphical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Aveusr, 


Baltic—having failed, he was employed in 
the Russian campaign; and, after the tak- 
ing of Moscow, he was sent to the Emperor 
Alexander, with proposals for am armistices 
These proposals were rejected, 

General Lauriston, after the retreat from 
Moscow, commanded an army of observa- 
tion on the banks of the Elbe. During three 
months, he defended that river with a small 
force, and prevented the enemy from enters 
ing Hanover. Having distinguished him- 
self at the battle of Leipsic, he retreated to 
the bridge between that town and Lindenau. 
Finding the bridge destroyed, he plunged 
into the river with his horse ; but was taken 
prisoner, and conducted to Berlin, where he 
was treated with much ‘favour and kind- 
ness. 

After the conclusion of the general peace, 
Louis XVIII. created him a knight of St. 
Louis, grand cordon of the Legion of Ho- 
nour, and captain-lieutenant of the Grey 
Musketeers, an appointment rendered va< 
cant by the death of General Nansouty. 
After the 20th of March, 1815, he followed 
the royal household to the frontiers of 
France ; and then retired to his estate of 
Richecourt, near La Fére, without taking 
part in any of the transactions of the hun- 
dred days. 

On the return of the king, General Laus 
riston was made president of the Electoral 
College of the department of L’Aisne, 
lieut.-general of the first division of Royal 
Foot Guards, and member of the commis- 
sion appointed to examine into the conduct 
of such officers as had served from the 20th 
of March to the &th of July, 1815. He was 
created a commander of the Order of St. 
Louis in 1816; and, having become an 
ultra-royalist, he presided, in the course of 
the same year, over the councils of war ap- 
pointed for the trial of Admiral Linois, 
Count Delaborde, &c. 

Marshal Lauriston terminated his life at 
Paris, in a fit of apoplexy, on the 17th of 
June. 


DUGALD STEWART, ESQ. 

Dugald Stewart, son of Dr. Matthew 
Stewart, eminent as professor of mathema= 
tics in the university of Edinburgh, was 
born in the year 1753. In the eighth year 
of his age he was sent to the High School of 
Edinburgh, to commence the rudiments of 
the Latin tongue. There he formed an in- 
timacy with Robert Thomson, afterwards a 
great promoter of classical erudition in his 
academy at Kensington. These youths 
were, after a course of six years, at the head 
of the school. In October, 1766, Mr. Stew- 
art was entered at the university, under the 
tuition of Dr. Blair and Dr. Fergusson. 
Through the instructions and example of 
the former, he became an enthusiastic ad- 
mirer of beautiful, pathetic, and sublime 
poetry, in ancient and in modern languages. 
His principal intellectual pursuits were his- 
tory, logic, metaphysics, and moral philos 


2 
*y 
’ 
Re 


iy 


1828.) 


sophy. To the study,of mathematics he 
paid no more attention than was necessary 
to avoid the censure of negligence; yet, in 
the nineteenth year of his age, his father 
having been seized with an indisposition 
which incapacitated him from continuing his 
professional labours for the benefit of his 
family, he was deputed, as his substitute, 
to read the mathematical lectures. Such was 
his ability, that he not only taught his 
scholars the customary and prescribed les- 
sons of mathematics, but inspired them with 
a love for the science. About this time, 
Mr. Stewart, in addition to his intimacy 
with Mr. Robert Thomson, became ac- 
quainted with Mr. John Scott, Mr. Thomas 
Stewart, Mr. John Playfair, and Dr. Wil- 
liam Thomson. 

Haying taught the mathematical class for 

about seven years, he was called to the per- 
formance of a duty more congenial. to his 
own taste. When Dr. Fergusson was sent 
to North America ona mission, Mr. Stew- 
art undertcok to teach his class in moral 
philosophy until his return—a task which 
he performed with ability. and reputation. 
_ Mr. Stewart, by the death of his father, 
‘was now sole professor of mathematics. Dr. 
Fergusson had resigned his professorship of 
moral philosophy. Mr. Stewart was allowed 
to be the fittest man for succeeding Dr, 
Fergusson, and Mr. Playfair for succeeding 
‘Dr. Stewart. It was, therefore, arranged 
that Dr. Fergusson and Mr. Stewart should 
‘exchange: consequently, Mr. Stewart be- 
came sole professor of moral philosophy, and 
Dr. Fergusson emeritus professor of mathe- 
matics, with Mr. Playfair for his acting de- 
puty and eventual successor, Mr. Stewart 
was now extremely intimate with the learned 
and profound Dr. Reid, to whose talents we 
are indebted for many valuable additions to 
our knowledge of the human mind. 

Mr. Stewart having devoted much of his at- 
tention tosimilar pursuits, he, in the year 1792, 
published the first volume of his Elements 
of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, the 
second volume of which did not appear’till 
1613, and the third not till 1827. He 
published Outlines of Moral Philosophy for 
the use of Students, in 1793; Dr. Adam 
Smith’s Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 
with an Account of the Life and Writings 
of the Author, in 1801; an Account of 
the Life and Writings of Dr. Robertson, 
1803; an Account of the Life and Writ- 
‘ings of Dr. Reid; a Statement of Facts 

relative to the Election of a Mathematical 
Professor of the University of Edinburgh, 
1805 ; Philosophical Essays, 1818. Since 
the last-mentioned period, he wrote a part 
of the Dissertations prefixed to the Supple- 
ment to the Encyclopedia Britannica. 
- After the peace of Amiens, Mr. Stewart 
accompanied Lord Lauderdale upon his mis- 
sion to France. This was the means of ob- 
taining for him a sinecure appointment, 
which rendered him independent for life. 
The Marquis of Lansdowne, when Chan- 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


211 


cellor of the Exchequer, made him gazettes 
writer for Scotland. 

Mr. Stewart’s writings procured for him 
the honour of being elected a member of 
the Academy of St. Petersburgh, and also 
of the Academy of Philadelphia. We have 
heard the style of his compositions termed 
heavy and prolix, confused and obscures 
This opinion is not in accordance with ours. 
On the contrary, we think, with one of his 
earlier biographers, that ‘the Elements of the 
Philosophy of the Human Mind will trans- 
mit the author to posterity as a man who 
united most profound metaphysical genius 
with elegance and taste; whose learning, 
with the whole circle of philosophy, included 
agreeable and light literature; who knew 
the human understanding and affections in 
their anatomy and their active force ; who 
comprehended the human character in its 
genuine nature and operations, as modified 
by different circumstances, and exhibited in 
the existing manners of modern society.” 

Mr. Stewart possessed the manners of a 
gentleman, as well as the science and genius 
of a philosopher. He closed a long, meri- 
torious, and amiable life at Edinburgh, on 
the 1]th of June. 


THE REV. WILLIAM COXE, A. My . 
F.R.S., &e. 

The Rey. William Coxe was bor in 
Dover-street, Piccadilly, in the year 1747. 
His father was a physician, and originally 
intended him also for the medical profession. 
After about eight years’ instruction from 
the Rev. William Fountaine, whose son 
became a canon of St. David’s, he was sent 
to Eton, and subsequently to King’s Col- 
lege, Cambridge, where he was matriculated 
in 1764. In the year following, he obtained 
the scholarship founded by Mr. William 
Battie, M.D., who assigned an estate of 
£30. per annum, chiefly as an encourages 
ment to those who were intended for the 
study of medicine. In 1770, then a middle 
bachelor of arts, he obtained one of the 
annual prizes given, for. Latin prose compo- 
sition, by the two representatives of the 
university, in parliament; and, in 1771; 
having become a senior bachelor, he was 
equally successful. He afterwards obtained 
the degree of M.A.—the highest he ever 
took—and a fellowship in King’s College, 
In 1772 he took priest’s orders, and, for 
some time, officiated as curate of the parish 
of Denham, in Essex—a situation which 
he relinquished to superintend the education 
of the Marquess of Blandford, now Duke 
of Marlborough. The latter appointment 
he held two years; and, subsequently, he 
was engaged as travelling tutor to the late 
Earl of Pembroke, the late Samuel Whit. 
bread,. Esq., Mr. Portman, and the late 
Marquess of Comwallis. With the Earl 
of Pembroke, he visited France, Germany, 
and Italy ; and, with Mr. Whitbread, his 
tour was yet more extensive. Thus herens 
dered himself acquainted with the men and 

Z2E2 


212 


manners, the customs, languages, and 
opinions of most of the European nations— 
was introduced to the first company—and 
had the honour of associating and convers- 
ing with the highest circles. 

Mr. Coxe was chaplain to his Grace the 
Duke of Marlborough; but we are not 
aware that he obtained any church prefer- 
ment through the influence of his grace’s 
family. When he had reached the age of 
forty, his college presented him with the 
vicarage of Kingston-upon-Thames ; which, 
two years afterwards, he was obliged to re- 
sign, on obtaining the rectory of Tuggle- 
ston-cum-Bemerton, near Salisbury. In 
1801, after he had passed his grand climac- 
teric, he was presented by Sir Richard 
Hoare with the rectory of Slousten ; and, 
nearly at the same time, Dr. Douglas, whose 
early years had been spent in a manner si- 
milar to his own, nominated him one of the 
six canons of Salisbury cathedral, archdea- 
con of the county of Wilts, and made him 
his own domestic chaplain. 

It was in the capacity of an author that 
Mr. Archdeacon Coxe obtained the greatest 
distinction. In 1799, he published Sketches 
of Switzerland; in 1780, an Account of the 
Russian Discoveries between Asia and 
America—to which are added, the Conquest 
of Siberia, and the History of the Transac- 
tions and Commerce between Russia and 
China; in 1781, an Account of the Prisons 
‘and Hospitals in Russia; and, in 1784, 
Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and 
Denmark. In 1787, Mr. Coxe published 
a Comparative View of the Russian Disco- 
veries, with those made by Captains Cook 
and Clarke ; his Travels in Switzerland ap- 
peared in 1789; in 1790, he sent forth a 
Letter to Dr. Price, on his Discourse on the 
Love of.our Country, and Biographical 
‘Anecdotes of Handel and Smith; in 1792, 
an Explanation of the Catechism of the 
Church of England ; in 1793, an Explana- 
tion of the Service of Confirmation of the 
Church of England; and, in 1796, Gay’s 
Fables, with Notes. 

Mr. Coxe’s succeeding works were yet 
more important: Having, in 1796, been 
admitted by the Walpole family to inspect 
the papers in their possession, he published, 
in 1798, his Memoirs of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, in three volnmes, quarto —a work which 
forms a> useful addition to the history of 
England. In 1801, having, three years be- 
fore, accompanied his friend, Sir Richard 
Hoare, on a journey to Wales, he published 
his Historical Tour in Monmouthshire, 
with Notes by Sir Richard C. Hoare, Barts 
In 4802, after examaining and digesting the 
contents of one hundred and forty folio vo- 
lumes, his Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole 
was followed by his Memoirs of Horatio 
Suord Walpole. In 1807, he published a 
History of the House of Austria, from the 
Foundation of that Monarchy to the Death 
of Leopold, in three volumes, quarto ; and 
Memoirs of the Kings of Spain, of the 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Avaust, 


House of Bourbon. In 1811, he became 
editor of the Literary Life and Select Works 
of Benjamin Stillingfleet, in three volumes, 
octavo. His latest production, the third and 
last volume of which was published in 1819, 
was the Life of John Churchill, Duke of 
Marlborough, in three volumes, quarto. 
Amongst Mr. Coxe’s works, we also find 
mentioned a Letter on the Secret Tribunals 
of Westphalia, addressed to the Countess of 
Pembroke ; anda Sermon on the Excellence 
of British Jurisprudence, preached before 
the Hon. Sir Francis Buller, Bart., and 
the Hon. Sir Nash Grosse, Knt., March 10, 
1799, in the cathedral church of Salisbury. 

Mr. Coxe was a man of much and various 
learning. As a historian, he is industrious, 
profound, and accurate; as a biographer, 
clear and discriminating, but eulogizing, 
perhaps, too much, the virtues, and soften- 
ing the vices, of his subject ; as a traveller, 
he is entertaining, moral, and instructive. 

Mr. Coxe was a member of the Royal 
Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and the 
Royal Society of Literature, of London ; of 
the Imperial Economical Society of St. Pe- 
tersburgh; and of the Royal Society of 
Sciences, at Copenhagen. At a meeting of 
the council of the Royal Society of Litera- 
ture, on the 14th of April last, one of the 
two royal golden medals, of the value of fifty 
guineas each, presented annually to indivi- 
duals distinguished by the production of 
works eminent in literature, was adjudged 
to Mr. Archdeacon Coxe, as thé author of 
many volumes of great historical research. 
At the succeeding general annual meeting. 
of the Society, on the 24th of the same 
month, this adjudication was announced 
from the chair, by the Bishop of Salisbury, 
as president. The reception of this honour 
was acknowledged by the aged and venerable 
author in a strain of much feeling ; and, 
within a month afterwards, his earthly ca- 
reer was closed ! 


THE BARON RAMOND. 
Ramond, from his earliest youth, seems to 
have been animated with the love of study- 
ing on the spot the beauties of mountain 
scenery ; for which purpose he frequently 
attained on foot the romantic summits of © 
the Vosgien mountains, and haunted the 
ruins of their ancient castles: indeed, such 
effect had these excursions upon his mind, 
that he there composed not only elegies, but 
even dramas. “ These imposing remains of 
the middle ages,” says M. Cuvier, “inspired 
him with the idea of painting the manners 
of those times in a series of continued dia- 
logue pictures, like the historical tragedies 
of Shakspeare. This work was printed at 
Basle, in 1780, under the title of Guerre 
@ Alsace pendant le grand Schisme d’Oc- 
cident. But, at an epoch when the classic 
rules bore unbounded sway over our lite- 
rature, it was no wonder that such a 
work was scarcely ever known beyond 
the chain of the Vosgien mountains. More 


1828.) 


fortunate, however, on the other side of 
the Rhine, it met with a translation into 
the German language, and was represented 
at different theatres. Its Introduction, en- 
titled Avant-Scéne, ought to have ensured 
it a reception every where, for it is a piece 
of history written with energy, and giving, 
in a few pages, a very interesting idea of a 
most important epoch.”’ 

After Alsace, M. Ramond visited Swit- 
zerland ; and an idea of the forcible impres- 
sions that country made on him may be 
seen in his notes to his translation of Coxe’s 
¢ Letters on Switzerland.” M. Ramond’s 
work had this singularity attending it, which 
perhaps leaves it almost without a parallel ; 
viz. it was re-translated into its original 
language with his additions, and, under that 
form, had more success than the original 
itself; and at which its English author had 
the weakness to be offended ; and, in a new 
edition which he afterwards published, he 
did not even condescend to mention the 
name of the writer who had so powerfully 
contributed to make his name and his work 
known all over Europe.—Cwvier. : 

On M. Ramond’s arrival at Paris, he 
became connected with the coterie at the 
Hotel de Larochefoucauld, which introduced 
him to the acquaintance of the Cardinal de 
Rohan, and with his friend, the miracle- 
worker, Cagliostro; and, being endowed 
with a magisterial charge in the little 
sovereignty of that prince, on the right bank 
of the Rhine, he enjoyed his favour and con- 
fidence. This début in the highest circles 
presented to the orator the frequent neces- 
sity of considering with due attention the 
lives of certain great lords of that epoch, 
their futile agitations, and their political and 
philosophical inconsistencies, and that spe- 
cies of inquietude of mind which prompted 
them to unite the most gross superstitions 
with avowed infidelity. 

In 1781, the miraculous Cagliostro ar- 
rived at Strasburgh, preceded, accompanied, 
and followed by a number of poor people, 
whom he supported or healed gratuitously, 
and with true believers, whom he pretended 
to illuminate with supernatural lights.— 
Such at least are the terms in which M. Ra- 
mond describes his arrival in his Mémoire 
now lying before us. ‘This brilliant assem- 
blage never ceased celebrating him; but 
nobody knew where he came from, who he 
was, or from what source he drew his riches, 
nor by what secret power he exercised over 
his followers unbounded empire ; still every 
one made his conjectures, and advanced as- 
Sertions, each more strange than the other. 
The Cardinal de Rohan not only saw, but 
entertained him; and, what seemed stranger 
than all, a Prince of the Church—a no- 
bleman of the first order, who had exercised 
the highest functions of diplomacy—an aca- 
demician, united with the most learned men 
—became, in a short time, the friend, the 
disciple, nay, the slave of the son of a pub- 
lican (as it was said) of Palermo. ‘They 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


213 


could not even be separated; or, at least, if 
that was necessary for particular. purposes, 
they were obliged to have recourse to a mu- 
tual friend to keep up their communications 
—and that friend was M. Ramond, who 
avowed that he was on the most intimate 
terms with the grand magician, and that he 
was witness to several of his miracles ! 

The conduct of M. Ramond during the 
revolution was perfectly honourable, and his 
reputation gained him a seat in the Legisla- 
tive Assembly, as one of the deputies for 
the city of Paris. He appeared on several 
remarkable occasions in the tribune, the 
friend of liberty and the enemy of anarchy; 
and, when the opinions he supported fell, 
he was arrested, and confined (and happily 
forgotten) in the prison of Tarbes, until the 
celebrated 9th Thermidor arrived, when he 
escaped the guillotine. 

In 1796 he was nominated prefessor of 
natural history to the central school of the 
Upper Pyrenees, sitting at Tarbes. His 
frequent journies to the Pic du Midi, which 
he ascended no less than thirty-five times, 
gained him the appellation of “ ww savant 
chamois.” His attempts, finally crowned 
with success, to gain the summit of Mont 
Perdu, the most elevated of the chain, fur- 
nished him with materials for a third work, 
which he published under the title of Voyage 
au Mont Perdw, and which presents a ge- 
neral theory of the Pyrenean mountains, 
both new and important for the study of 
geology. 

Mont Perdu is the first of calcareous 
mountains, as Mont Blanc is of granitic, 
and, although less elevated, it neither cedes 
to Mont Blanc by the aspect of the ruins 
which surrounds it, nor by the imposing 
spectacles which characterize these monu- 
ments of the sublime revolutions of nature. 

“The most interesting of M. Ramond’s 
researches,’’ says M. Cuvier, ‘‘ were his 
views on the vegetation of mountains, and the 
comparison of their zones with t4e climates 
of our hemisphere. A little before his death 
he again brought them before the public, 
with a more extensive discrimination, in a 
work entitled, Mémoire sur la Végétation 
du Pic du Midi. Every one admired his 
history of those living plants which, under 
perpetual ice, and the double protection of 
snow and earth, perhaps never see day ten 
times in a century, but run through their 
circle of vegetation in the short space of a 
few weeks, to sleep again in the winter of 
many years; and of those common plants, 
lost in some measure in the midst of others, 
but where the ruins of a. hut, or the dis- 
jointures of a rock, exhibit their existence.” 

In 1800, M. Ramond, being elected to 
the corps législatif, fixed the attention of 
Buonaparte ; who, on the establishment of 
the prefectures, offered him one, which he 
refused. At length, however, in 1806, hay- 
ing been noticed for his independence of 
character, he was offered the prefecture of 
Puy-de-Dome on such terms that he could 


214 


not refuse, which gave him the opportunity 
of frequently remarking that he was made 
a prefect par lettre de cachet! Thus he was 
placed at the head of the most classical de- 
partment for geology. He saw himself on 
the spot where Pascal* had caused to be 
made the discovery of heights by the baro- 
meter; and here it was that M. Ramond 
brought it to perfection. It was here, also, 
that he announced his curious views on 
the diurnal movements of the atmosphere. 
Nor will his memory be easily forgotten at 
Auvergne ; for it was during his administra- 
tion that the establishment for the baths of 
Mont-d’Or took place. 

In January, 1813, he obtained leave to 
retire, and established himself once more at 
Paris, with the intention of applying the re- 
mainder of his days to the education of his 
son, and in editing definitively his researches 
on natural history, geology, and botany, to 
which he added memoirs of his life. But, 
during the invasion of the allied armies into 
Paris, his journals, correspondence, and all 
the materials he had collected, were in one 
fatal day destroyed by the Cossacks ; and, of 
all his works of forty years, recollections 
only remained. In such a calamity, nothing 
now was left him (says M. Cuvier) but to 
plunge himself again into immediate occu- 
pation. He fulfilled, in the most honour- 
able and advantageous manner for France, 
different functions with which he was 
charged ; and at last was nominated (June, 
1818) conseiller d’état ; from which, with- 
out any apparent cause, he was deprived, in 
1802. He supported this last disgrace, per- 
fectly unmerited, as he had the other inci- 
dents of his life to which fate had exposed 
him. Neither the gaiety of his conversation, 
nor the piquant energy of his ideas, suffered : 
indeed, one might have said that age had 
added fire to his discourses; and, even to 
his last homents, his temperament and the 
vivacity of his manner not only brought to 
one’s recollection the painter of the moun- 
tains, but the historian also who ably charac- 
terized those persons who had appeared on 
the political, scientific, and literary horizon, 
well judging his fellow-beings through all 
the phases of an adventurous life and a 
sanguinary revolution.—He died in the pre- 
sent year. 

THE HON. MRS. DAMER. 

The Hon. Mrs. Damer was the daughter 
of Field Marshal Conway, by his wife, the 
beautiful and accomplished widow of the 
Earl of Aylesbury. Miss Conway was born 
in the year 1748. Her father lived on terms 
of intimacy with all the men of genius and 
taste who were his contemporaries. The 
Hon. Horatio Walpole, afterwards Earl of 
Orford, was one of his oldest friends. Struck, 


* The famous experiment made at Puy-de- 
Dome was performed by M. Perrier, the brother- 
in-law of Paseal ; but it was repeated afterwards 
onthe tower of the chureh of St. Jacques-de-la- 
Boucherie, at Paris, where Pascal himself ascer- 
tained its complete success. 


Bwgraphical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Aveust, 


at a very early period, with the dawning ge- 
nius of Miss Conway, his lordship employed 
every means within the power of friendship, 
cultivated taste, and polished society, to 
render her as complete: in every classical 
perfection of mind, as nature had made her 
in person. Of all the minor accomplish- 
ments indispensable to an elegant woman, 
she soon became mistress. Nor did she rest 
satisfied with these, but made herself con-~ 
versant with the best authors in the English, 
French, and Italian languages, and also 
acquired a competent knowledge of ‘Latin. 
After the dismissal of many a lover, Miss 
Conway, in 1767, married Mr. Damer. 
With that gentleman she lived until 1778, 
when a melancholy death deprived her of his 
society and protection. 

Mrs. Damer was long an interesting ob- 
ject of anxiety to her relatives and friends. 
It was from her own resources, however, 
that she derived the truest consolation. She 
dedicated all her hours to the cultivation of 
her talents : she read during whole days; and, 
when reading fatigued her, she took up the 
pencil, or applied herself to the chisel. 
Early in life she had began to model in wax ; 
and she gradually attained higher flights of 
art, until, at length, she established a claim 
to be ranked amongst the artists of her coun- 
try. What Maria Cosway and Angelica 
Kauffman were in painting, Mrs. Damer 
was in sculpture. Indeed, had it not been 
for an express, and certainly very ungallant, 
decree of the Royal Academy, for the exclu- 
sion of female artists as members of that 
body, Mrs. Damer would have been duly 
enrolled at Somerset House. Ceracchi, who 
was executed at Paris, in the year 1802, had 
been one of her masters in sculpture. 
Amongst the productions of Mrs. Damer’s 
chisel were—a noble statue of King George 
the Third, which formerly embellished the 
Leverian Museum ; a statue of Mrs. Sid< 
dons ; several fine busts ; the colossal heads 
of Thame and Isis, which form the orna- 
ments of Henley-bridge; and an eagle, 
which Horace Walpole fondly coneeees to 
the works of Praxiteles. 

Wherever taste, elegance, and accom- 
plishments were prized, Mrs. Damer found 
admirers and friends. His Grace the Duke 
of Richmond (grand-uncle to the present 
duke) distinguished her with a very marked 
portion of his esteem, and obtained, with 
sincere satisfaction to the lovers. of the dra- 
ma, her assistance in his private theatricals. 
Mrs. Damer was the Thalia of the scene. 
Her Violante, in “ The Wonder,” with 
Lady Henry Fitzgerald, as Don Felix— 
Mrs. Lovemore, in ** The Way to Keep 
Him,” with Lady Buckinghamshire as the 
widow Belmour—and Lady Freelove, in 
* The Jealous Wife,”’ with Lady Bucking- 
hamshire as Mrs. Oakley—are yet remem- 
bered by many with feelings of delight i 
admiration. 


Horace Walpole, Lord. Orford, the ola 
friend of Mrs. Damer’s father, participated 


—— 


1828.] 


in all her sentiments. Her genius and her 
talents shed lustre upon his lordship’s little 
gothic retreat at Strawberry Hill. When he 
died, in 1797, he left that charming villa to 
her who could best appreciate and cherish 
its agrémens. Here, after time had dried 
the tears that bedewed the grave of her vene- 
rable friend, Mrs. Damer drew around her 
a select circle, for whose amusement she 
fitted up an elegant little theatre. Amongst 
her occasional visitors were the accomplished 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


215 


attributed to the pen of Lord Orford, was 
first represented. Mr. Kemble obtained per- 
mission to transplant the promising flower to 
the boards of Drury Lane; but, alas! it 
was a hot-house plant, that could not with- 
stand the rude blasts with which it was as- 
sailed in that quarter. It was considered 
by the public that the author of the play had, 
in his exhibition of fashionable manner, 
raised the curtain too high. The gods 
exerted their prerogative, and the piece was 


damned. 

Mrs. Damer continued, we believe, to re- 
side at Strawberry Hill till her decease, 
which occurred on the 28th of May. 


Misses Berry, Mrs. Siddons, and the relict 
of the immortal Garrick. It was on the 
miniature stage of that theatre that a co- 
medy, entitled “ Fashionable Friends,” and 


MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 


As to the state of the weather and the crops, previously to the late destructive hurricanes, 
it had partaken of that variable character which has distinguished the spring and summer 
of the current year, though not to any great or hurtful extreme. Hope was still left of 
somewhat perhaps beyond the usual average ofcrops. But, oh! for the vanity of human wishes 
—or rather the folly of placing a dependence on the most uncertain of all uncertainties, that 
which itself depends upon wind and weather. Perhaps we may no longer dream of an 
average of corn crops. Wheat has already taken a start of three or four shillings, and the 
ensuing will probably be a fortunate season for the farmers of good lands and dry uplands ; 
and fortunate it will be for the great and hard pressed majority, that corn laws no longer 
exist, which might place an impediment in the way of purchase and importation. 

In early districts, and among early and sedulous haymakers, that harvest, a most ample 
one, has been successful. Its finale will be of a different character, and not to the credit 
of some, who, it is averred, are in the unthrifty habit of employing too few hands. The 
tares, it is said, so luxuriant and covered with blossom, from late unfavourable causes, will 
not be productive of seed. On dry and good lands, the wheats blossomed sufficiently early, 
and were affected by no chills or atmospheric changes, but by too much moisture, and by 
the rain penetrating and lodging within the flower, which necessarily has an unfavourable 
effect on the maturing grain. A cold and blighting temperature, accompanying the rains 
at this critical period, would have ruined the crop. The frequent gales of wind, however, 
did much mischief to the bloom, and beat down much of the corn. Of the rye, barley, 
and oats, there is no novelty of report; in general, the corn has not eared so fully to size 
and weight, as was too sanguinely expected, but promises to be so productive of straw, as 
to constitute the present a great fodder, as well as grass and hay year. The continual 
moisture has promoted the generation of an enormous brood of slugs, to reduce which, wilt 
by-and-by require the serious and persevering exertion of the harrow and roller, joined 
with the superinduction of saline and ash manures. In some parts, the beans have suffered 
so much, from both the slugs and the rooks, that considerable breadths have been mown 
for cattle. The fly also, has been. too free with the peas, both those crops are, never- 
theless, of good promise. The turnips, mangel, and potatoes, flourish at the head of our 
crops. The present season has served to rectify the popular error that, mangel wurtzel is 
impenetrable to the attacks of the blight fly; since some small part of the crop has suffered 
considerably from that cause. On the annual large increase of the culture of this plant of 
paramount utility, a very distant correspondent remarks to us, that it has, at length, 
overcome the almost indomitable prejudices of the veriest old codgers’ of the soil. This 
is encouraging news to us, who laboured ineffectually during so many years, to introduce 
the culture, on our own annual and unfailing experience. The same, an intelligent, active, 
and successful cultivator, writes that he has found it the most useful, in regard to the 
worth of the second crop, to run the scythe over his extensive grazing pastures. Great 
annual benefit is lost by the general neglect of this obvious proceeding of common sense. 
The constant actions of the rain and wind upon the hop plant has no doubt cleared the 
bine of vermin; but it remains a question whether the early damage received has not 
been sufficient to outweigh the hope of a heavy crop. ‘The summer fallows, particularly of 
broad-east farmers, yet the majority, are foul in the extreme ; and will not contribute to 
repair the difficulties under which our farmers labour. An article has lately appeared in 
the newspapers, respecting spurry grass, a favourite sheep-food with our ancestors. ‘The 
writer speaks of it as a weed and as worthless. He probably did not obtain good seed, 


216 Monthly Agricultural Report. [Aveusr, 


which may be had of Mr. Gibbs. We have grown spurry during some years, with success, 
and experienced no aversion to it in sheep. ‘The hay when made at its full growth and in 
flavour, is most excellent food for sheep. Harvest is in hand in the southern counties, 
but the present constant rains may occasion the turn of a dry and propitious season for those 
who can defer a while, and for the later districts. ‘The labourers seem generally employed. 
It is now pretty well ascertained that the old stock of wheat will meet the new with a 
good face. A reduction of rents is spoken of, particularly in Essex, always the lowest 
rented, though the first corn county in England, and one of the easiest to cultivate. 
That fine county has been invariably mistaken by strangers, from days of yore, both in 
the above respect, and in reference to salubrity. Notwithstanding the great plenty of com- 
mon summer fruits, much apprehension is entertained on the score of those proper for. 
preserving, during the present rains. The accounts from North Britain, previous to the 
late tempestuous weather, were highly satisfactory ; and with regard to Ireland, it is encou- 
raging to record her decided superiority of late years, in the important articles of butter and 
bacon, of which she furnishes such an immense supply to this importing country. Irish 
butter has, some time since, commanded far the highest prices in the English markets, and 
Trish bacon fully equals the best Wiltshire, which indeed it has long since driven out of the 
general market. Hibernia, after centuries and iliads of miseries and oppressions, is at 
length destined to emerge, and that in the most honourable and profitable mode—through 
her own native energies. They who can deliberate impartially on her long oppressions 
and disgraces, will never wonder at her enthusiasm, however closely it may seem to border 
upon madness. 

On live stock, little is required to be said, but that there is great plenty in the country, 
with a superabundance of food for their nourishment. Store cattle have yet been too dear, 
which has caused much feeding land to be understocked. Prices, however, are declining 
in some degree. There is little or no variation in the wool market, nor is it probable, in 
regard to price. This luxurious country must and will be attired with the finest cloth, 
and our flock-masters, whether they can or not, will not grow wool equal in fineness for 
such a manufacture. 4 

A recital of the melancholy effects of the late hurricanes and overwhelming rains we 
must leave to the diurnals. Great and ruinous distress must have been produced in the 
northern and north western districts, particularly. Overwhelming floods, in one instance, of 
even twenty miles extent. Buildings, corn, hay, cattle, property of all kinds driven away 
by the overwhelming element : even lives lost. The damage to the crops of corn beaten 
down will be immense, in which the whole country will share in various degrees. Whilst 
writing, we have opened several letters from the middle and eastern parts of Essex, which 
concur not only in the accounts of the great damage done to their corn crops, by being 
beaten down by the late storms, but previously, by the variable and blighting effects of the 
atmosphere. Great part of their wheat will be discoloured, and much smutted. A similar 
calamity affects Suffolk and Norfolk. All accounts from the opposite continent, state 
that the late hurricanes extended thither in full force. Every intelligent farmer, ambitious 
of knowing his true position with that of his country, should read Mr. Jacob’s reports. 

Smithfield. — Beef, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d.—Mutton, 4s. to 4s. 10d.—Veal, 4s. 4d. to 5s. 8d. 
—Pork, 4s. 6d. to 5s. 6d.—Lamb, 4s. 6d. to 5s. 2d.—Raw fat, 2s. 3d. 

Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 48s. to 73s.—Barley, 26s. to 36s.—Oats, 18s. to 30s. 
—Bread, 94d. the 4 Ib. London loaf.—Hay and straw nearly as per last report. 

Coals in the Pool, 30s. to 36s. 6d. per chaldron. 

Middlesex, July 25, 1828. 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 


Sugar.—The demand for Muscovadoes during the last week was steady—the purchases 
extensive ; being estimated at 38,000 hogsheads and tierces. There was not the slightest 
alteration in the prices. The transactions in refined goods, last week, were considerable 5 
and they would have been extensive if any adequate supplies had appeared. The fine goods 
met a ready sale. 

Coffee.—The public sales of coffee last week were not extensive ; the British plantation 
descriptions declined from Is. to 2s. per cwt. ; the foreign 6d. to 1s. per cwt. Good ordi- 
nary pale St. Domingo, 34s. 

Rum, Brandy, and Hollands.—The purchases of fine Jamaica Rum, last week, were 
extensive; the prices for strong descriptions were from 4s. to 4s. 3d. Several parcels ‘of » 
Leewards were disposed of at a shade lower. Brandy was heavy: Geneva without 
alteration. 

Hemp, Flax, and Tallow.—Tallow has been steady. Jn Hemp and Flax there is 
jittle variation. 


1828.] 217 


Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 3.—Rotterdam, 12. 3.—Antwerp, 
12. 3.—Hamburg, 13. 133.—Altona, 13. 134.—Paris, 25. 45.—Bordeaux, 25. 70.— 
Frankfort, 150.—Petersburgh, 10.—Vienna, 10. 3,—Trieste, 10. 3—Madrid, 354.— 
Cadiz, 363.—Bilboa, 354.— Barcelona, 35.—Seville, 35}.—Gibraltar, 46.—Leghorn, 483. 
—Genoa, 25. 40.—Venice, 46.—Naples, 363}.—Palermo, 118.—Lisbon, 46.—Oporto, 
454. Dublin, 174.—Cork, 174. 


Monthly Commercial Report. 


Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. 0d.—In Bars, £3. 17s. 6d.—New 
Doubloons, £0. 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 0}d.—Silver in Bars, standard, £0. 0s. Od. 


Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
Wo tre, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. Birmingham Canax, 288/.—Coven- 
try, 1,080/.—Ellesmere and Chester, 106/—Grand Junction, 307/.—Kennet and Avon, 
291/.—Leeds and Liverpool, 406/.—Oxford, 700/._Regent’s, 263/.—Trent and Mersey, 
(; sh.), 8202—Warwick and Birmingham, 265/.—London Docks (Stock), 874/.—W est 
India (Stock), 215/.—East London Warrr Works, 116/.—Grand Junction, —/.— 
West Middlesex, 66/7.—Alliance British and Foreign Insurance, 94/.—Globe, 155/.— 
Guardian, 2037. Hope Life, 547.— Imperial Fire, 1007.—Gas-Licut Westminster Char- 
tered Company, 533/.—City, 6/.—British, 8 dis.—Leeds, 195l. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 


Announced from the 22d of June to the 23d of July 1828; extracted from the 
London Gazette. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


R. Atkinson, St. Paul’s Church-yard, linendraper 
J. Buckley, Upper Mill, Saddleworth, York, dyer 
C. Poyner, Winchcombe, Gloucester, mercer 

T. Brooks, Cheltenham, carpenter 

T. Snell, Bristol, common carrier 

A. Haas, Manchester, merchant 

J. A. Prudence, Miles lane, wholesale grocer 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 77.] 


Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 
Alderson, T. J. Chancery-lane, money-scrivener. 
Weymouth, Gray’s-inn 

Addison, J. Vriskney, Lincoln, miller. [Halland 
Bishop, Serjeant’s-inn ; Tuxford, Boston 

Areher, E, Wood-street, warehouseman. [Buw- 
den and Walters, Aldermanbury 

Alker, E. Wigan, iron liquor merchant, [Arm- 
strong, Staple-inn; Lord, Wigan 

Beadsmoore, S. Ashley-de-la-Zouch, bookseller. 
{Dax and Son, Gray’s-inn 

Bailey, J. Derby, mercer. [Adlington and Co., 
Bedford-vow ; Moss, Derby 

Boler, T, Lincoln, brick-maker. [Milne and 
Parry, Temple ; Lee, Newark 


Britten, W. Northampton, leather-seller. [Vin- 
cent, Temple ; Cooke, Northampton 
Barnard, J. Commereial-road East, baker. 


[Young and Gilbert, Mark-lane 

Brooks, J. Seymour-street, bill-broker. (Walker, 
Hatton-gardeo 

Brown, B. Grundisburgh, Suffolk, 
Emo mpeeD, George-street, Minories 

Bryon, Turnham-green-terrace, dealer*in hops, 

Templer, Tower-street 
Beeston, J. Betten Copy, Drayton-in-Hales, Salop, 


victualler, 


Grover. [Heming and Baxter, Gray’s-inn: 
Stanley, Drayton-in-Hales 
wn, G, Monmouth, innkeeper. [Ives, Mon- 
mout 

Chadburo, W. Sheffield, optician. [Tattershall, 


Temple; Palfreyman, Sheffield 

Chimley, E. Nottingham, miller. (Knowles, New 
Inn; Hurst, Nottingham 

Corlas, ‘T. Keighley, victualler. [Strangways 
and Walker, Barnard’s-inn ; Robinson, Leeds 

Crookenden, C. and U, Spislbury, Bermondsey, 
tanners, [Alliston and Hundleby, Preeman’s- 
court 

Cork, J. New Bonl-street, silk-mercer.. [Richard- 
#0n, Ironmonger-lane 


M.M. New Series.x—Vor. VI. No. 32. 


Delauncy, P. J. Regent-street, jeweller. [Crosse, 
Surrey-street, Strand 

Dodge, W. Sherborne, linendraper. [Humphrys, 
Temple 

Fraser, C. and G. C. P. Living, St. Helen’s-place, 
merchants. [Kearsey, Lothbury 

Faux, C. Bermondsey-wall, warehouseman. 
[Whiteley, Token-house-yard 

Fowke, W. Belper, Derby, joiner. [Wolston, Fur- 
nival’s inn; Ingle, Belper 

Flood, J. Leeds, surgeon, [Battye and Co., Chan- 
cery-lane 

Glass, J. W. Liverpool, commission agent. [Ellis. 
and Co., Chancery-lane; Lonsdale, Manchester 

Gregory, C. Great Surrey street, Blackfriar’s- 
ands cabinet-maker. [Hume, Blackfriar’s- 
roa 

Hardacre, G. Old Barge-house Wharf, Black- 
friars, wharfinger. (Sandon, Dunster-court, 
Mincing-lane 

Harrison, T. New Bond-street, husier. [Birkett, 
New Bond-street 

Hill, T. Red Lion-street, Spitalfields, potatoe- 
merchant. [Bartley, Somerset-street 

Hobson, C. Leeds, publican. [King, Bedford- 
place; Wilkinson, Leeds 

Hodge, E. Plymouth, grocer. [Blake, Essex- 
street ; Prideaux, Plymouth 

Holines, J. Kidderminster, grocer. [Dangerfield, 
Craven-street ; Brinton, Kidderminster 

Haviside, W. Jerusalem Coffee-house, master- 
mariner. [Kearsey and Co., Lothbury 

Hanson, R. Allen-street, Goswell-street, carman. 
{Vincent and Peall, Bedford-street 

Howarth, G. Liverpool, fiag-dealer. (Chester, 
Staple-iun ; Finrow, Liverpool 

Jardine, J. Birchin-lane, stationer. [Rice, Gray’s- 


inn 

a R. Sumerset-street, hatter. [Hill, Rood- 
ane 

Kershaw. E. Butterworth, Lancashire, flannel- 
manufacturer. [Wheeler, Gray's-inn; Hallsall, 
Middleton 

Lawrence, E. Charlton Kings, Gloucester, hallier, 
ivan and Blower, Lincoln’s-inn-Fields ; 
Pruen and Co, Cheltenham 

Lever, G. Nottingham, lace-manufacturer, [Hurd 
and Johnson, Temple; Fearnhead and Camp- 
bell, Nottingham 

Lancaster, 1, Leeds, i:onmenger, [Makinson and 
Sau ders, Temple; Foden, Leeds 

Mellanby, J. Stoektou-upon-Tees, ship-builder. 


2F 


218 


{Blakiston, Symond’s-inn ; Read, Bishopwear- 
mouth 

Mackrill, H. Whitechapel, chymist. [iisher, 
Queen-street, Cheapside 

Mills, W. Bath, oil-merchant. 
square 

Manby, T, Argarkirk, Lincoln, butcher. 
son and Hawkins, New Boswell-court 

Moffat, W. Bermondsey, yictualler. 
Furnival’s-inn 

Mathews, W. Crooked-lane, tin-plate merchant. 
Hindman and Goddard, Basinghall-street 

Owen, H. Jewin-street, draper. [Tanner, Fore- 
street 

Orme, D. Oldham, and Spencer, J. Royton, Lan- 
cashire, cotton-spinners. [Hurd and Johnson, 
Temple; Brackenbury, Manchester 

Palmer, A. Mincing-lane, merchant. 
Leach, Warnford-court 

Parsons, J. Mosterton, Dorset, miller. 
and Co., New-inn ; Murley, Crewherne 

Ruler, J. Dewsbury, York, draper. [Hurd and 
Johnson, Temple; Hadfield and Grave, Man- 
chester 

Ramage, T. New Bond-street, tailor. 
Barnard’s-inn 

Scholefield, R. Barnsley, leather-seller. ['Tatters- 
hall, Temple ; Palfreyman, Sheffield 

Saxon, T. Oxford-street, chinaman. 
and Son, Half-moon-street 

Stainton, J. Lincoln, bookseller. 
ple ; Wells, Gainshurgh 

Starling. J. jun. King’s Lynn, hatter. 
and Co., Temple; Jarvis, King’s Lynn 

Swaine, J. Bristol, innholder. [Jones, Crosby- 
square ; Saunders, Bristol 

Smith, B. Bristol, tailor and draper. 
Basinghall-street 

Smith, J. Diorama, Regent’s-park, and of Paris, 
printer. [Hyde, Ely-place, 


[Jones, Crosby- 
[Daw- 


[Downes, 


[Spur and 
[Holme 


[Thomas, 
[Robinson 
[Spike, Tem- 


[Clowes 


[ Brittan, 


Bankrupts. 


[Aueusr, 


Thompson, J. North Stoneham, Hants, nursery- 
man. [Slade and Jones, Bedford-row ; Bryant, 
Southampton 

Tanner, J. Wickwar, Gloucester, tailor. [Whit- 
Hngton, New-inn ; Whittington, Chipping Sod- 

ury 

Tranter, W. Greenwich, stone mason. 
Dunlop-court, Mincing-lane 

Townsend, R. Bristol,victualler, [Jones, Crosby- 
square ; Saunders, Bristol 

Venning, T. and T. Tucker, Truro, coachmakers, 
[Povle and Co., Gray’s-inn ; Cornish and Son, 
Bristol 

Vaux. J. Stephen-street, Tottenham-court-road, 
lamp-manafacturer, [Crosse, Surry-s reet 

Walmsley, J. Barnsley, linen-manufacturer. [Po- 
cock, Bartholomew-lane ; Mence, Barnsley 

Wright D. and Sykes, G. Sheffield, opticians. 
Lecce Temple; Paltreyman, Shef- 
fie 

Wearing, C. H. and W. Greenwood, St. Paul’s 
Chureh yard, merchants. [Hamilion and 
Twining, Berwick-street 

Walton, W. Manchester, timber-merchant. [Clarke 
and Co., Chancery-lane ; Foulkes and Sons, 


Manchester 
Woolcock, J. Truro, linen-draper, [Sole, Alder- 
Cheshire, 


manbury 
Whitelegg, T. Asliton-upon-Mersey, 
rectifyer. [Clarke and Co., Chancery-lane ; 
Palmer and Son, Bristol 
Williams, H. Bath, innkeeper, 
square; Hallings, Bath 
Wright, J. Charlotte-street, Perey-street, cheese- 


(Sandon, 


(Jones, Crosby- 


monger. [Gibbard, Stangate-street 

Withiel, W. P. Penzance, wine-merchant. ([Free- 
man and Co,, Coleman-street 

Wood, J. Manchester, oil-merehant. [Hurd and 


Johnson, Temple; Wood, Manchester. 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


Rey. J. Carter, to be Lecturer of St. Giles’s, 
Oxford.—Rey. J. Watts,to the Rectory of Tarrant 
Grenville, Dorset.—Rey. E. L. Davies, to be 
Perpetual Curate of Kenderehurch, Hereford.— 
Venerable Archdeacon Clarke, to be Prebend of 
Netheravon.—Rey. C, Grove, to be Prebend of 
Minor Pars Alton’s.—Rey. R. Bathurst, to the 
Rectory of Heigham, Norfolk.—Rev. A. P, Clay- 
ton, to the Rectory of Garvestone, Norfolk.—Rev. 
Dr. Fancourt, to the Vicarage of St. Mary. Lei- 
cester, and the Rey. M. St. Jolin, to that of All 
Saints.—Rev. T. Silver, to the Vicarage of Charl- 
bury, Oxon.—Rev. J. F. Jowett, to the Rectory of 
Kingston, Berks—Rev. W. Greenwood, to the 
Rectory of Thrapstone, Northampton.—Rey. W. 
H. Turner, to the Vicarages of Dilham with 
Honing, Suffolk.—Rey. T. Hubbard, to the Rec- 
tories of West Stow and Wordwell, Suffolk.—The 
Rey. President of St. John’s, Oxiord, to the Rec- 
tory of Handborough, Oxon.—Rev. J. M. King, 
to the Curacy of Chilton-super-Poulden, Somer- 
set.—Rey. W. L. Bowles, a Canon Residentiary 
of Salisbury Cathedral.—Rey. H. Richards, to the 


Benefice of Hortield, Gloucester.—Rey. J. M- 
Munden, to the Vicarage of Northover, Somer- 
set.—Rev. Dr. H. V. Bayley, to a Prebendary of 
Westminster.—Rey. E. Egremont, to the Living of 
Wroxeter, Salop.—Rey. J. East, to the Rectory 
of Croscombe, Somerset.—Rey. J. Vane, to the 
living of Wrington, Somerset.—Rev. A. Foster, to 
the Vicarage of Mudford, Somerset.—Rey. H. 
Hoskins, to the Prebend of Scampford, Wells 
Cathedral.—Rey. E. Bower, to the Rectory of 
Closworth, Somerset.—Rey. C. Heath, to the Rec- 
tories of Gunton and Suffield, and vicarage of 
Hanworth, Norfolk.— Rev. R. Wylde, to the 
Vicarage of Claverdon, with Norton Lindsey 
Chapelry, Warwick.—Rey. G. H. Webber, to be 
Chaplain to Lord Braybrooke.—Rey, A. Huddle- 
ston to the Rectory of Bowness,—Rev. 'T. W. 
Morley, to the Rectory of Birkby, York.—Rev. 
J.N. White, to the Vicarage of Reeshall, Nor- 
folk.—Rev. H. Legge, to the Living of East La- 
vant, Sussex.—Rey. E. Bower, to the Vicarage of 
Colsworth.—Rey. J. Thynne has been installed 
Sub-Dean of Lincoln Cathedral. 


POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS. 


T.G Turner, esq., to be Consul at Gibraltar, 
forthe Free Hanseatic Republics of Hamburgh, 
Bremen, and Lubeck.—Lord Stuart de Rothesay, 
to be Ambassador Extraordinary to His Most 


Christian Majesty.—Lord F. L. Gower, and H. 
Hobhouse, esq., to be Privy-councillors—Lord 
Westmoreland, to be Lord Lieutenant of North 
amptonshire. 


1828.] 


fr 219 J 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


CHRONOLOGY, 


June 21,—Anniversary Fete of the Horticultural 
Society held at Chiswick; fruits excellent—up- 
wards of 3,000 persons present. 

24.—The Bishop of London laid the foundation 
stone of Bishopsgate new church, which is to be 
called the Holy Trinity Church, 

26.—Meeting of Portuguese residents in Eng- 
land held at London Tavern, when the resolution 
to destroy the medal, formerly voted by them to 
be presented to Don Miguel, was confirmed. : 


July 4.—A charter of incorporation received 
the royal signature, constituting an institution of 
Civil Engineers, for the general advancement of 
mechanical science. 

— The late Lord Chancellor’s judgment affirm- 
ed in the House of Lords, relative tothe Wellesley 
Case, in separating a parent from his children,* 

— One culprit executed at the Old Bailey— 
another ordered for execution was found dead in 
the cell, having poisoned himself ; he was Cap- 
tain John Montgomery, who had been conyicted 
for forgery. 

July 5.—Mr. Stratford Canning left town on a 
special mission respecting the Greeks. 

— Public Meeting, at Freemasons’ Tavern, held 
for supporting the completion of the Thames Tun- 
nel, when a considerable subscription was entered 
into for that purpose. 

8.—The revenue statement, up to July 5, states 
an increase this year of no less a sum than 
1,274,651. 

— Sessions ended at the Old Bailey, when 9 
prisoners received sentence of death (2 of them 
women) ; and 66 were transported, besides several 
for imprisonment. 

— Tie Additional Churches Bill, given up by 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House 
of Commons, ‘‘ because,” he said, “ the oppo- 
sition to the measure had been carried beyond 
all fair opposition !!!” 

10.—Petition presented to the House of Lords 
in favour of the Jews, praying for the removal of 
all civil and religious disabilities !!! 

— Court went into mourning for one week, for 
the Grand Duke Charles of Saxe Weimar, 

— The surrender of Brailow to the Russian 
forces, afler a month’s siege, announced by the 
Foreign Gazettes—the Turks fought most des- 


* “As to evidence warranting the judgment,” 
said one of the seven lords who were present, 
“ the expression from oneo! Mr. Wellesley’s letters 
must abundantly satisfy their lordships— there 
are many things which ought to be let alone: a 
Court of Chancery tad uo business to interlere 
between a father and his children; they had a 
right to go to the devil in their own way.’” Hence 
may be inferred the danger of joking about the 
Devil and the Court of Chancery 1!!—Mr. Wel- 
lesley has fought one duel upon this subject, and 
has been challenged again by the same person, 
and (hat person a clergyman, and the second 
challenge dated on a Sunday too!!! The minister 


of the Gospel was, however, bound over to keep 
the peace! 


perately ; the Russians lost in killed and wounded 
more than 2,0J0 persons, 


11.—Public meeting of proprietors of Drury Lane 
Theatre held, when a favourable report of the 
state of their affairs was read—the debt had been 
reduced from £15,521 12s. to £11,161 12s. 


— The British Ambassador arrived from Lis- 
bon. Intelligence came also that all the Ambassa- 
dors from the different powers on the Continent 
had likewise left Portugal, in consequence of the 
usurpation of Don Miguel, who had caused him- 
self to be crowned King by the Three Estates. 

— A Deputation from the principal woollen and 
cotton manufacturers, brewers, distillers, &c., of 
Dublin and Belfast, had an audience of the Duke 
of Wellington. The subject principally urged 
upon the attention of his Grace, was the existing 
duties on coals, and the necessity of their repeal. 
—See Article ScoTLanD, of our present number, 

12,—Notice sent by Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, to Lloyd’s, stating that Government had 
sent a transport off Oporto, for the reception of 
such British subjects who may choose to embark 
with their property ; and that ships were in, and 
cruising off, the Tagus, protecting the British 
trade and interest. ; 

15.—The bill for the sale of game, and for im- 
proving the state of the game laws, lost in the 
House of Lords—64 were for, and 94 againstit !!!!! 


MARRIAGES. 


J. H. Langham, esq., to the Hon. Margaret 
Emma, daughter of Lord Kenyon.—Lieut.-Col. 
Willson, to Miss E. F, Jud.—Hon, A. F, Ellis, 
M.P., second son of Lord Seaford, to Mary Frances 
Thurlow, eldest daughter of Sir David Conyng- 
hame, Bart.—G. Musgrave, esq., son of the late 
Sir J.C. Musgrave, Bart., to Charlotte, daughter 
of the late Sir J. Graham, Bart.—Eugene de la 
Rive, esq., youngest son of Professor de la Rive, 
councillor of State at Geneva, to Miss Louisa 
Marcet—Sir Astley Cooper, Bart., to Miss Ca- 
therine Jones.—Captain Rawdon (Uoldstream 
Guards), to Lady Cremorne.—Rey. G. Sivewright, 
to Catherine, youngest daughter of Lady N. Gore, 
—G, C. Mostyn, esq., to Caroline, eldest daughter 
of A Vansittart, esq., and niece of Lords Auck- 
land and Bexley.—R. Ward, esq. (author of Tre- 
maine, and De Vere), to Mrs. P. Lewin,—Henry 
Lord Teynham, to Sarah, daughter of Sir Anthony 
Brabazon, Bart.—E. Saurin, R.N., son of Right 
Hon. W. Saurin, and nephew to Marquess Tho- 
mond, to Lady Mary Ryder, daughter of Lord 
Harrowby.—C. Brownlow, esq., M.P., to Miss 
Jane Macneill. 


DEATHS. 

In Piccadilly, Lady Charlotte Seymour, sister 
to Marquess Chélmondeley.—Lady Banks, relict 
of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.—George 
Nicol, esq., 89, many years bookseller to George 
IIL—At Twiekenham, Eleonora, Countess of Ux- 
bridge, 30.— Lieut. J. Spiller, R.N., superio- 
tendant of the telegraph at the Admiralty.—In 
Crawford-street, Lieut, Gen. Richardson.— At 

2F2 


220 


Canterbury, Rey. J. Francis, 80—Hon. C. Wynd- 
ham, brother to the Earl of Egremont.—At Hat- 
field House, the infant daughter of the Marquess 
of Salisbury.—In Duke strect, Westminster, Char« 
lotte Countess Dowager of Suffolk and Berkshire, 
75. —In Clarges-street, Lieut.-Col. Clements, 
Guards.—Lieut.-Gen, J. Macintyre, India Com- 
pany’s service.—Georgiana Maria Hutchinson, 
wife of General Sarrazin.—In Grosvenor-place, 
Lord Rivers, 77.In Wimpole-street, T. Divet, 
esq., M.P., Lymington.—James, second son of 
Sir Sandford and Lady Graham.—Viscount Mel- 
bonrne, 88,—At Lambeth, the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 75. 


MARRIAGES ABROAD. 


Mme. Talma (widow of Talma the celebrated 
performer) to the Count de Chalot, ancien Colo- 
nel of dragoons, &c.—Prince Gustavus of Sweden, 
to the Princess Marianne of the Netherlands, in 


Incidents, Marriages, &c. 


[ Aveusr, 


the presence of the Royal Family !!!—At Paris, at 
the British Ambassador’s chapel, G.C, Legh, esq., 
tu Miss Louisa Charlotte Taylor. 


DEATHS ABROAD. 

At Paris, Colonel Moreland.—At Torgau, Grand 
Duke of Saxe-Weimar.--On passage from Jamaica, 
Sir Ralph Woodford, governor of Trinadad.—At 
Dunkirk, Major Woodgate.—At Canton, the lady 
of his Excellency the Hoppo ; her death was an- 
nounced in the Tartar manner, by saying, “ she 
had gone to ramble among the Genii.”” The zo- 
vernor and all the great officers of the province 
called and expressed their “ yexation!” — At 
Zante (Ionian Isles), Capt. F. A. Hastings, son of 
the late Sir C. Hastings, Bart.—At Rosseau, J. 
O’Driscol, esq., late Chief Justice of Dominica, 
and author of a ‘‘ History of Ireland.”—At Dieppe, 
Sibella Matilda, daughter of Lieut.-Gen. Sir Hud- 
son Lowe. 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES; 


WITH THE 


MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 


A massy silver waiter has been recently pre- 
sented to S. Ilderton, esq., Ly the inhabitants of 
North Shields, as a public testimony of their high 
estimation, and grateful acknowledgments of his 
impartial services as a magistrate, during a period 
of several years. 

The following highly recommendatory notice of 
a day-school, appears in a window at Honghton- 
le-spring : ““ Skool hear for’ Boys and Garls, 
niten and sowen readen and speling.” 

At alate examination of paupers in All Saints’ 
parish, Newcastle, there appeared to be in Sand- 
gate Ward—a place enveloped in every descrip- 
tion of dirt and filth—about 100 poor women, 
whose ages average 73 years; the oldest Leing 
102, and the youngest 60, 

' Public baths are now about to be established at 
Durham, for the first time. 

The county of Durham has been visited with 
showers of rain, which caused the Wear to be 
swollen to a yreat degree: it did frightful damage 
to the adjacent fields in the vicinity of Durham, 
which were overflown to the extent of many hun- 
dreds of acres. A great part of the fine plain 
near the village of Shincliffe was covered with 
water by the tremendous overflowing of the 
Wear.* 

Married.) At Durham, Mr. G. Weddall, to 
Miss Gleason; Mr, H.W. Dodd, to Miss Martin. 
—At Doddington, the Rey. William Simpson, to 


Miss Lang.—At Lyme, Mr. Ham, to Miss Anne 
Hooke. 


Died.| At Gateshead Park, Mrs. Cook.— At 
Durham, Miss Burrell; Mr. Wm. Pearson.—At 
Neweastle, Mrs. Handasyde ; ‘Thomas Thompson, 
103.—At Whorton, Miss M. Dodas. 


* Similar complaints of the fatal effects of the 
Jate storms have reached us from almost all parts 
of the country, and if the rainy weather should 
continue, the consequences cannot fail to-be highly 
disastrous. 


YORKSHIRE. 


By the death of R.Creyhie, esq,, the office of 
one of the Receivers General for the West Riding 
is abolished. 

The affrays between the Irish and English, 
which so frequently oecur in the metropolis, have 
extended to Yorkshire. On the 30th of June, at 
Barnsley, a desperate battle took place betweena 
party of Irish and English weavers, in which one 
of the latter was killed. An Tishman is com- 
mitted to York castle for trial on acharge of man- 
slaughter, 

Goole, formerly a creek within the port of 
Hull, is now made a separate and distinct port 
for the warehousing of goods. 

From January to July 29 inquests were held 
for the town and county of Kingston-upon-Hull, 
28 of them within the town, 

Steps are taking to erect a new theatre in 
Leeds ; and it is probable that that necessary 
measure will be carried into effect. 

Sheffield and Dewsbury petitioned against the 
additional churches’ bill, There were also peti- 
tions sent frum Leeds and Sheffield in favour 
of it. 

From the 7th to the Mth of July, an immense 
quantity of rain fell in Yorkshire: not partially, 
but all over the county. Wednesday, the 9th, 
was a complete day of rain—it descended in tor- 
rents, and the low lands were every where flooded. 


- At Whitby, and its neighbourhood, three bridges 


were carried away. At Hull, Beverley, Pork- 
lington, Kirbymoor-Side, York, Leeds, Wetherby, 
Driffield, and, in short, generally throughout this 
extensive county, the hay which had not been got 
in was destroyed, the crops of corn were laid flat ; 
and in many places, boats could sail over acres of 
what had the day before been green fields. 

One thousand six hundred species of seeds, prin- 
cipally of hardy herbaceous plants, have been 
recently presented to the Botanic Garden at Hull, 
by Mr. Hunneinan, collected from all parts of 
Europe, and most of them hitherte unknown te 


*1628.] Yorkshire, Cambridge, Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, &e. 


the garden. Thirty rare species of plants, natives 
of New Holland, have been also presented by 
Mr. Mackay ; they arrived in excelleut order and 
are considered great curiosities. 

The new church of St. Philip, Sheffield, was 
consecrated July 2, by the Archbishop of York. 

At a meeting held at Leeds, a petition was voted 
to the legislature, against the New Church Bill 
passing into a law, and in 18 hours it was signed 
by no less than 19,712 persons, and sent off to 
town, the chairman of the meeting carrying it 
himself.—Leeds Mercury. 

Married.) At York, G.Legard, esq., to Miss 
Hawksworth ; the Rev. M. Staplyton, to Miss 
Donnison.—At Bradford, the Rey. James Ed- 
wards, to Miss Steadman.—At Halifax, Capt. 
Ask, to Miss M. W. Haigh.—At Leeds, J. D. 
Hepworth, esq., to Miss Snowden; Charles 
Grosyenor, esq., to Miss Bowers.—At Knares- 
borough, the Rev, A. E, Douglass, to Miss Collins, 
—At Pickering, John Watson, esq,, to Miss Kiteh- 
ing.—At Snaith, E. Gillson, esq., to Miss Moore.— 
At Hull, the Rey, C. J. Camidge, to Miss Hust- 
wick; W.G. Todd, esq., to Miss M, Stickney.— 
At Whitby, Capt. Power, to Miss Simpson. 

Died.| At Bishop Burton, Mrs. Watt.—At 
York, John Wearon, esq.—At Cawold, Mr. Geo, 
Sanley.—At Leeds, Miss Zouch; W. A. Smith, 
esq.—At Hull, Mrs. Cooper.—At Hedon, the Rey.. 
John Dixon,—At Halifax, Jobn Murphy, esq.— 
At Shaz, near Halijax, Miss Rawson. 


CAMBRIDGE AND LINCOLN. 


The Ancholme Navigation was opened June 21, 
when the neighbouring gentry proceeded ina de- 
corated barge, attended with a large sea-sloop 
laden with coals, and many others, sailed up the 
river to the head of the navigation at Bishop 
Bridge. We have great pleasure in recording the 
completion of so stupendous an undertaking, as 
the advantages which the country will ultimately 
derive from it are inealenlable; independent of 
the great benefit to that extensive tract of land, 
comprising the Level of Ancholme. 

The celebration of the Commencement at Cam- 
bridge was well attended; H.R.H.the Chan- 
cellor was present, and the produce, after all ex- 
penses paid, for the benefit of Addenbrooke’s 
Hospital, amounted to only about £500!!! The 
enormous demands of the first-rate vocalists, par- 
ticularly the foreigners (whose importance has 
been more puffed than merited), accounts for the 
charitable uverplus being so small. 


Died.) At Horbling, Rev, J. Shinglar, 72, re- 
sident curate at that place 43 years. 


DERBY AND NOTTINGHAM. 


ster») At Heanor, Mr. Thomas Gillott, 67, 
arish clerk, which situation has been punctually 
ultilled by the family for more than 150 years, 
and always by a Thomas Gillott !—At Derby, 
Grace, the wife of Mr. Noble, editor of the Derby 
Reporter. 


CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE. 

‘On St. Barnabas’ day (Sunday June 22) the 
majority of the children who receive gratuitous 
instruction in the Sunday Schools at Macclesfield 
were paraded, in due order, to the different 
churches and chapels; the following list we sub- 
join, as it is so extremely honourable to the 
liberality of the town. Macclesfield School, 
2,100; National School, 400; Wesleyan Metho- 
dists, 460 > Independents, 550; Wesleyan Metho- 


221 


dists, New Connexion, 850; Primitive Metho- 
dists, 145; General Baptists, 400; Particular 
Baptists, 135 ; Brokencross School, 210 ; Hurds- 
field, 200; Roman Catholics, 221 (these last 
assembled at the chapel, but did not parade the 
streets)—Total 5,661. 

At a public meeting of the inhabitants of War- 
rington, it was unanimously agreed to establish a 
company for the purpose of laying a branch into 
the Liverpool and Manchester rail-road, by which 
means a direct communication will also be made 
with the Bolton and Leigh rail-road. 


LEICESTER AND RUTLAND. 

June 30, at All Saints’ church, the sexton re- 
fused admission for the entry of the corpse of a 
deceased child into the church-yard, until double 
fees were paid, viz. those for Ais church-yard, 
and those for the sexton of St. Nicholas, as the 
parents of the child were living in that parish ; 
the corpse was left in the street for a considerable 
time, while the curate was waiting in the church 
to bury it. The circumstance having at length 
excited sensation in the neighbourhood, and 
crowds of persons, particularly females, haying 
collected, the corpse was moved into the church, 
where it remained till the afternoon of the next 
day, before it was interred !—Leicester Chronicle, 


WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. 

The committee of the Birmingham Society of 
Arts have opened their exhibition of paintings, to 
which the neighbouring nobility have contributed 
the loan of many of their chefs-d’ euvre, forming 
a collection, we may say unrivalled, out of the 
metropolis. We see the names of Claude Lor- 
raine, Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Rosa, Sney- 
ders, Cuyp, &c., nor can we forget to mention 
the portrait of that honour to Warwickshire, 
Sir William Dugdale. 

Married.| At Alveston, H. C. Wise, of the 
Priory, Warwick, to Harriet, third danghter of Sir 
Grey Skipwith, Bart.—At Castle-Ashby, Rey. C. 
J. Pinfold, to Miss Anna Maria Seagrave. 

Died.| At Leamington, 76, Sir Joseph Scott, 
Part., formerly M.P. for Worcester.—At War- 
wick, Susannah, 80, relict of Charles Gregory 
Wade, esq.—Clement Cartwright, esq., 68, uncle 
to the member for Northamptonshire. 

WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 

“At the 18th anniversary of the Ross Horticul- 
tural Society, no less than 893 specimens were 
ticketed. The lady of Gen. Sir R. Brownrigge 
sent a noble specimen of the Zeaf of the original 
gigantic talipa tree, which was taken from a tree 
in Ceylon, upwards of 100 feet high: the leaf 
measured 40 feet in circumference, and being 
placed behind the prize stand, formed a fan-like 
sereen, singularly interesting and unique !—Ched- 
tenham Chronicle. 

Describing the annual fair at Pershore, re- 
cently held there, the Worcester Journal says, 
“« We lament that year after year the church- 
yard continues to be desecrated by the scenes of 
riot, and sounds of ribaldry, which necessarily 
accompany a fair of this description !!” 

Married.) At Marcle, Rev. R. C, Wilmot, 
second son of Sir R. Wilmot, Bart., to Miss Ellen 
Money. 

Died.) Rey. J. Martin, of Ham Court.—At 
Evesham, Rev. L, Butterworth, 88; be had been 
for 64 years pastor of the Baptist church there,— 


222 


At Rochford, E, Harris, esq., 68.—At Worcester, 
Mrs. Barns, 93. 
GLOUCESTER AND MONMOUTH. 

Three unfortunate men have Leen lately suffo- 
cated with foul air, in emptying a large and deep 
vault, which received the contents of offices be- 
longing to several houses in Gloucester. They 
were all fine middle-aged men, of industrious 
habits, and have left large families to lament their 
loss. 

That beautiful specimen of taste and skill in 
architecture, St. Stephen’s Tower, at Bristol, is 
no longer to remain in the mutilated condition to 
which it was barbarously permitted to be reduced 
a few years since, the Bishop having ordered it 
to be restored to its pristine elegance ; the funds 
for the purpose are to be raised by the parishioners, 

The right of the corporation of Bristol to the 
import and export duties, has been confirmed by a 
verdict. This result, so favourable to their claims, 
was tried by a special jury before the Lord Chief 
Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. 

The Cheltenham Chronicle says that the sub- 
scription raised for the support of the widow and 
children of the late Rey. H. Fothergill, who 
perished in one of the desolating floods of last 
winter, amounts to £1,373. 2s. 9d., and has been 
vested in trustees for the family. 


Died.] Rev. B. Grisdale, 84, vicar of Ched- 
worth. 


Gloucester, Monmouth, 


DEVON AND SOMERSET. 

A meeting has been held at Torrington, for 
taking into consideration the best method of un- 
dertaking a new road from thence to Hatherleigh, 
when subscriptions were entered into for that 
purpose, 

A very numerous and respectable meeting was 
held at the 'Town Hall, Devonport, to consider the 
best means of making some provision for the Rey. 
J. Hawker, who, the chairman stated, had been 
curate of Stoke Daramel for upwards of thirty 
years, and who received dismission from the new 


rector, through the steward of the manor, re-— 


quiring him “ to provide an asylum for himself and 
numerous family within siz weeks!”—this too, 
although he had been promised to be continued in 
the curacy by the new rector. After several gen- 
tlemen had addressed the meeting on the hardship 
of the case, the chairman announced that the sub- 
scription amounted to upwards of £2,600, when 
the whole assembly simultaneously gave three dis- 
tinct rounds of applause !!!—The parishioners had 
some time past memorialized the late Lord Chan- 
cellor Eldon (when he was in office), for some 
small living for Mr. H.’s declining years, but 
without effect; and Mr.H., it seeins, had recently 
made application to his Diocesan, for some relief, 
in away of employ, or in a recommendation to 
some curacy, but received an answer from his 
lordship ‘‘ of his inability to do either !!!—Tawn- 
ton Courier, July 16. 

Died.] At Moorland, Mr. Thomas Macey, 
103!—At Bridgewater, Mr. J. Binning, editor and 
printer of the Bridgewater and Somersetshire 
Herald.—At Bath, J. Moody, 70, and his wife ; 
they were found drowned in their bed in the night 
of July 8, from the effects of a most tremendous 
storm that has more or less caused inundations in 
all parts of the country. 

OXFORD, BERKS, AND BUCKS. 
July 1, being the anniversary of the establish- 


Devon, Somerset, 5:c. [Aveusr, 


ment of the ‘“ Banbury Female Friendship So- 
ciety,’ the different members walked in grand 
cavalcade to the church, preceded by a band of 
music, and the girls of the Blue and National 
Schools, bearing banners, &c.; several ladies of 
Banbury, not forgetting the foundress of the So- 
ciety, walked also in the procession. After 
divine service a dinner was given. This useful 
society has been relieving the sick and lying-in 
members for these 22 years, in which time, up- 
wards of £4,000 have been expended, It is sup- 
ported by the foundress (Miss Long), the ladies of 
Banbury, and the neighbouring gentry. The 
‘ Beneficent Society of Friendly Brethren,” also 
held their anniversary the same day, and joined 
in the procession to and attendance at church. 


At the recent annual festival of the Oxford 
Branch of the Associated Brethren Benefit So- 
ciety, the chairman announced that it had heen 
established 26 years; that the contributors ex- 
ceed 3,500; and that full 200 persons ave support- 
ed weekly from its funds; and that it had, since 
its commencement, expended not less. than 
£170,000 for benevolent purposes among its 
members !!! 

At Oxford assizes, 4 prisoners were recorded 
for death, 4 transported, and a few imprisoned. 
At Abingdon, 6 for death; 5 were transported, 
one of them was sentenced to transportation for 
life, “ to afford,” said Baron Vaughan, “ an ex- 
ample of the punishment which the laws of this 
country awarded to crimes beyond description in 
brutality’—the culprit had stepped back, and 
looked one of the witnesses in the face, and then, 
with great violence, kicked the unfortunate Lord 
Mountsand{ford on the head, as he lay bleeding on 
the ground—the verdict was manslaughter. 


NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 

The first annual meeting of the members of the 
Lynn Mechanic, Scientific and Literary Institu- 
tion, took place July 7, when a very satisfactory 
report was made of the first year’s proceedings, 
both as regarding donations, and the purchase of 
books, not forgetting the instructive lectures 
which had been delivered. 

July 4, the first stone, weighing nearly 5 tons, 
was laid at the Company’s works, at Mutford 
Bridge—thus commencing a harbour at Lake 
Lothing, and Norwich a port. 


At the annual meeting of ‘‘ The Norfolk and 


Norwich School Society,” the report stated that 
four new daily, and seyen Sunday Schools, compri- 
sing about750 children, had been established during 
the last year—making im toto 186 schools, in this 
county and city only, and thus affording the bless- 
ing of education to more than 10,000 children I} 
July 17, the children of the City Schools, to the 
number of 2,000, were assembled in the nave of 
the cathedral, all neatly dressed, with their banners 
arranged up the centre. They were afterwards 
regaled at St. Andrew’s Hall, and sang God save 
the King! 


Died.) At Swaffham, Mrs. Gostling, 91, of 


East Derebam,—At Dunwich, Barne Barne, esq., 
late M.P.—At Twinsted Hall, Lady Denys, wife of 
Sir G. W. Denys, Bart.—Mrs. Green, 83, relict of 
the late E. Green, esq., of Lawford Hall.—Capt. 
J. M. Browne, son of the late Rey, N. Browne, 
Minor Canon of Norwich cathedral ; Capt. B. 
bad been in the Peninsnlar War, and was author 
of “The State of Portugal, by an Eye-Wit- 


. 


1828.] 


ness,” lately published. — At Lynn, Mrs, Ann 
Wannack, 99. 


WALES. 


Within the last 10 years only one individual of 
the Roman Catholic persuasion was to be found 
in Wrexham and vicinity ; but the number now 
residing in the neighbourhood has been deemed 
sufficient to call for the erection of a place of 
worship.—Accordingly one built by subscription, 
with the co-operation of the Protestants, has been 
opened, and dedicated to St. David. The chapel 
was completely filled by the gentry, and respect- 
able inbabitants of the town and neighbourhood. 
High Mass (one of Mozart’s) was celebrated by 
the Bishop of Eurofrum, assisted by about 20 
priests, all in grand costume. After the service a 
dinner was given, at which upwards of 50 ladies 
and gentlemen attended, when the usual loyal 
toasts were given. 

On Saturday week, as the Hazlebeach ferry- 
boat was crossing to Pembroke Dock, under sail, 
with two passengers, it was overtaken by a tre- 
mendous whirlwind, and which was observed by 
the boatman, before it reached him, to draw up 
the water to a height of between 30 and 40 feet. 
Before he could lower his foresail, it was shivered 
to pieces, the boat whirled round and sunk, the 
water falling upon them, asif from a water-spout. 
The two men seized an oar each ; the woman the 
sprit, with one hand, having her basket firmly 
held with the other ; they thus buoyed themselves 
up for about fifteen minutes, when they were re- 
lieved from their perilous situation by a boat that 
had, on discovering the accident, shoved off from 
his Majesty's dock-yard.— Shrewsbury Chronicle, 
July il. 


SCOTLAND. 


The first railway coach constructed in this 
country, for the conveyance of passengers, made a 
trial journey in the neighbourhood of Airdrie, 
lately. It is dragged Ly one horse, and is to ply 
on the Kirkintilloch railways in carrying passen- 
gers to boats on the canal, It is meant to carry 
24 passengers, but started in high style with no 
less than 40 within and without. 

There is likely to be a source of great rivalry 
between the Scotch manufacturers and the Irish, 
if the duty on coals should be taken off in Ire- 
land, as it is well known, that both in Dublin and 
Belfast, the woollen and cotton manufactures are 
making considerable progress. In consequence, 
however, of the repeal of all protecting duties in 
Ireland, and the great improvement in steam 
navigation, the Irish manufacturers are very 
hardly pressed by the close and direct competition 
which they bave to sustain with the manufacturers 
of Glasgow and other places, This competition, 
the deputation from Ireland that waited lately on 
the Duke of Wellington (see Curono.oey), stated, 
they ‘were willing to encounter upon terms of 
perfect equality; but that this equality does not at 
present exist, inasmuch as coal, whichis now so 
indispensable in every department of their opera- 
tions, is, in Glasgow, &c., wholly free of duty, and 
in Dublin and Belfast subject to very considerable 
taxes,—although in Glasgow and Leeds coal is 
worth five shillings the ton, in Ireland, owing to 
its weneral searcity, it cannot be purebased, ex- 
elusive of duty, for less than thirteen or fourteen 
shillings. The Duke entered into the question at 


Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 


223 


considerable length, and concluded by promising 
the deputation, that during the approaching recess 
he would cause a minute inquiry to be made into 
the whole subject, with a view to granting the 
relief sought for. He further stated, that the 
question of the coal trade of England, and espe- 
cially that of the port of London, was about to be 
very fully considered by Government, as he was 
personally aware that abuses existed, and that the 
present system tended to enhance the price of 
coals, especially in London, in a most unreasonable 
degree. 

Married.] At Balgay, Sir William Scott, of 
Ancrum, Bart., to Miss Anderson.—Sir Paul 


Bagshot, to Miss Jane Maxwell, of Brediland, 
Renfrew. 


Died] At Hallbeath, near Dumfernline, John 
M‘Lean, collier, 101 ; his mental faculties re- 
mained unimpaired till within a few days of his 
death.—Dr. Andrew Duncan, 83, senior professor 
of theory of medicine in the University of Fdin- 
burgh, and first physician to his Majesty, in Scot- 
land.—At Ran-Keillour, General the Hon. C, 
Hope, of Craig-hall. 

IRELAND. 

From the unprecedented occurrence of a Ro- 
man Catholic attempting to sit in Parliament, 
the attention of all the inhabitants of this country 
has been wholly directed to the election of a ree 
presentative fov the county of Clare, occasioned 
by its late inember, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, having 
accepted of the offices of Treasurer of the Navy, 
and President of the Board of Trade and Pianta- 
tions. The candidates were Mr. V. Fitzgerald, 
and Mr, O‘Connell. At the close of the election 
several freeholders lodged a protest against the 
return of Mr. O‘Connel, who had gained the 
Majority, on the ground of his being a Catholic, 
upon which the assessor said :—‘* If we had the 
power, T would advise the High Sheriff to give 
one return for Mr. O’Connel, and another for Mr. 
Fitzgerald ; but that course is not open to a 
Sheriff in Ireland, and we are not permitted to 
make a double return to the King’s writ. We 
must select between one candidate and another 
and if Mr, O’Connell shall have, at the close of 
the poll, a majority of qualified votes, I will advise 
the Sheriff to declare him duly elected. But in 
this novel situation, I will advise the Sheriff to 
state, on the face of his return to the writ, that 
after having given notice to the freeholders, two 
candidates were proposed, Mr. V. Fitzgerald, a 
Protestant, and Mr. O’Connell, a Catholic; and 
that the latter announced that he was a Catholic ; 
and further, that a protest against his return was 
lodged by a certain number of freeholders; but 
that Mr. O’Connell had a majority of qualified 
freeholders at the termination of the poll. What 
responsibility the gentleman thus elected may 
incur, for, inthe words of the Act, presuming to 
appear in the House of Commons without taking 
the oaths, is beyond my office to inquire,” 

The High Sheriff announced the gross poll to 
be—for Mr. O’Connell, 2,067 ; and for Mr, Fitz- 
gerald, 982; and declared that Daniel O’Connell, 
esq., was therefore duly elected as a Knight to 
represent the county in Parliament. This elec- 
tion proceeded and terminated without drunken- 
ness, and without disorder of any description 
whatever. The leaders and the priests said the 
word, and all was attention, calmness, and good- 
will; no man of any party was molested, 


[ 224 J 
DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 
From the 26th of June to the 25th of July, 1828. 


& | Bank [3 Pr. Ct.{3 Pr. Ct. 34Pr.Ct./33Pr.Ct. N4Pr.C, Long India | India | Exch. |Consols 
5 | Stock. | Red. |Consols.|Consols.| Red. Ann, Annuities. | Stock. | Bonds, } Bills. |for Ace. } 
ar | ’ : 
JO | 
26 211 12] 88 4 _ 95% 2 | 95 _ 193 a _ 65 66p | 883 89% . 
27 — gsi on 95 95 — _ — _ 64 G6p | 89 
2s| — | sst i = | 95% 95: = 193 13-16 - 102p | 6567p | 89% i 
29 _— — —_ — — — _ = C- —_ — ; 
30 |), “<u (NEB mente —=) ESHR 953 #]| — — — — | 66 G7p | 88% 893 
July 
1 | 21021131 88 3| — | 952 952 i = SS — | 102 3p | 67-70p | 88% 89 
2| — "| 873 83h} — | 95% 954 = 193 11-16 a 102p | 6370p | 883 2 
3 | 2093 10) 88 = — | 954 _ 19 11-16 —_ 103p | 6870p | 884 
4 | 2093103) 88 en egane gt 4] — 193 11-16 = 103p | 67 69p | 88Z 89 
5 -- 88 _ — 954 _ 19g 11-16 _ 102 3p | 68 69p | 88% 89 
6 = — = — =e = = = = = Es 
7 _ 88 +} | 873 955 95, 101% 2 198 —_ 104p | 6870p | 882 
8 |2094 10 | 873 88 | 87 95% 95% 1013 3 198 11-16 = 104p | 6870p | 88 
Oh, SM teres 863 874| 954 gst 4] 1014 4 | 193 11-16 = 104p | 6970p | 88 
lo} — | 863 6 4/943 J] 94f 95 | log 14) 194 11-16 21st 103 5p | 69 70p | 87} 853] 
alae si) 853 %| 948 914i 2| 1002 3] 194 9-16 | 2464 | 103 5p |,6870p | 87 
12 _— 85# 85$ 86} _ 943 95 | 1003 1 |19 9-16 11-16 2463 — 683 69p | 87 
13 — _ _— = _— — —_ —_ —_ —_ 
14) — | 87g 4/863 2] — 2/101 $ | 19 11-16 § — | 104 5p | 6870p | 88) 4 
15 | 2103 3 | 87 i | 865g | 953 2| 101g 4 | 19 11-16 2453 | 104 5p} 6971p | ssh 
16 | 2103112) 874 88 | 875 4 | 953 3 1013 19% 13-16 — | 104 5p! 7072p | 88% 3 
17 | 210gl14) 87g 88] 87, jf | 953 1014 193 13-16 = 105p | 7273p | 88 i] 
18}. — | 87488] 87h + | 952 1014 19 13-16 — | 105 Gp| 7273p | 88g 3 
19 — — I — — — — — — — = 
20) a oe = = = = = = = = = 
21 | 2103 | 872 853 — | 95% 2| 10123} 19 11-16 $ | 244) 1o7p | 7374p | 88 
92 | 210 113 ee 86 i 954 oot i | 101y ? 1911-16 3 | as ~ 73 +4p Be i 
23 | 2103112) 87% 862 3 | 952 954 i 1014 4| 198 13-16 = — | 7374p | see 4 
24 | 2104213] 864 874] 864 # | 954 95 luli ~ | 19 13-16 2 | 244 41] 111 12p| 7374p | 86% 4 
2) — — — = - - = — _ _ = 
E, Eyton, Stock Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street. 
a 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 
From June 20th to July \9th, 1828. 
By Witriam Harris and Co, 50, High Holborn. 
rr LL LT Nn, PD Pe ee ee eee 
Th Barometer De Lue's Winds Atmospheric Variati 
iS erm. mi . Hygro. . pheric Variations. 
= dss ON: 
3 . - 
oO oi os 
é [2/6 gj bos tei] 2 Ae M.|10P.M. ail 9A.M. | 10 P.M. |9A M./ 2P.M. | 10 P.M. 
i] Sc = 
a pel slea/= |= a|s 
20 62173 | 57 | 29 85 | 29 84] 80 | 83 SW W Clo. Clo. Clo. 
21 33 | ) | 60 | 68 | 56 29 73 | 29 75) 96 | 82 WNW Ww Rain Fine Fine 
22 | 47 57 | 75 | 55 | 29 70 | 29 65 | 87) 82 SW WSW A Rain — 
23 57 | 75 |.55 | 29° 90 | 30 13 | 80)| 82 NW NNW | Fine Fine — 
24 67 | 72 | 88 | 29 13 | 30 13 | 83) 76 N N _ — = 
25 71 | 75 | 61) 29 15 | 30 18] 81 | 77 WNW NW _— a = 
26 50 |74| 64|29 18 | 3u 14] 79| 74 N Sw = ac Beh 
27 74 | 80 | 60 | 29 10} 30 18} 87 | 78 SW SK — — pes 
28 74 | 79°| G0 |°29 94 | 29 90) 90 | 75 E E Clo. — — 
29 O 72\77 | 61} 29 83 | 29 81 1100 | 76 ESE SE _ — — 
2 30 70 | 76 | 65 | 29 85} 29 81|79|78| ESE SW Fine = pw 
July. 
l 72175156 | 29 80) 29 77 | 83 | 80 Ww WSW _ = me 
71 | 76 | 74 | 29 75 | 29 73 | 96 | 47 Ww Clo _ Clo. 
3 76}79| 72 | 29 76 | 29 77 | 51 | 45 Ww —_ _— Fine 
4 18 r¢ 75176 | 66 | 29 70 | 29 75| 74 | 43 SSW WwW — Rain Clo 
5 72|74|77| 29 72|29 71| 46 | 45 WwW Ww Fine Fine Fine 
6 70 |'70 | GO | 29 73) 29 72) 43 | 46 Ww NW Clo. Clo. Fine 
4 F3KV a 61} 29 74 | 29 70] 55 |} 45 WwW SE _ Fine LS 
8 | 47 76 | 78 | 62 |. 29 60 | 29 78] 66 | 48 ESE SE — Show. | Show. 
9 | 70 77 |68| 63] 29 41 | 29 44] 65 | 65 NW N Rain Fiue Fine 
10 72170} 61 | 29 50 | 29 50] 58 | 50 N Ww — Clo Clo 
ll 68 | 73 | 68 | 29 83} 29 72) 60 | 55. | WNW SE — Rain Rain 
12°| 721} @ 731 65°| 55 | 29: 44 | 29 40} 66 | 51 NW NNW _— Rain Fine 
13 61.| 64155 |29 23|)95 40|50|/49| WNW | NNW te Fine 
la | 20 64 | 67 | 56 | 29 42] 29 40 49 | 47 Ww WNW Fine Rain Rain 
15 61 | 66 | 55 | 29 35 | 29 45) 47 | 48 WwW Ww Clo Clo. Fine 
16 64 72 | 59 | 29 G1 | 29 64) 48 | 49 NNW W ‘lo. Fine — 
17 42 73.|72| 63 | 29 58/29 60] 49 | 50 WSW Ww Rain _— =a 
18 69 | 73 | 61 | 29 50] 29 42] 50} 50 SW WSW Clo. = os 
19 68 |70|58|29 50|29 47] 50|50| WNW Ww pa ee Te 


The Quantity of Rain falien in the Month of June was 3 inches and 49°100ths, 


THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


Neo Series. 


Vou. VI.] SEPTEMBER, 1828. [ No. 33. 


COURT OF CHANCERY: 
No. II. 


Were we to take English equity, under its existing dispensation, as 
the beau idéal of all equity, we should mistrust the proof given by Mon- 
tesquieu of the barbarism of his fabled Troglodites, when he tells us they 
were “si méchans et si féroces qu'il n’y avoil parmi eux aucun principe 
d équité.” It is, however, necessary to discriminate between the principle 
of an equitable jurisdiction, and the processes by which it is administered ; 
and we confess we should consider no system of jurisprudence perfect 
which did not embody some “ principe d’équité.” ‘ The grand reason 
for the interference of a court of equity,” says the author of the Remi- 
niscences, “ is that the imperfection of a legal remedy, in consequence of 
the universality [and to this we may add the inefficiency ] of legislative 
even may be redressed.” Yet these are reasons which will last until 


egislators, instead of having to 


——_——_——- “ grope their dull way on 
By the dim twinkling gleams of ages gone,” 


shall have learned to behold all futurity as in a broad meridian sun- 
shine ; and have thus acquired the means of foreseeing every possible 
application of their own limited rules to an ever varying, ever compli- 
cating state of society. Bacon remarked, that “ the laws of most king~ 
doms and states had been like buildings of many pieces, patched up from 
time to time according to occasions, without frame or model ;’ and wé 
doubt whether patchwork legislation be not to some extent incidental to 
the condition of humanity. Undoubtedly as jurisprudence becomes, in 
the progress of civilization, understood as a science, the laws of a country 
may all be placed on “ the wide and rational foundation” of harmonizing 
principles. But let the foundation be extensive as knowledge can make 
it, we suspect the superstructure would, before long, be found too con- 
M.M. New Series—Vou. V1. No.33. 2G 


226 Court of Chancery. [Szrr. 


fined to furnish all the accommodation which its architects designed. 
Though difficult, we admit it possible, that at any given epoch of a 
nation’s existence, the collected experience of the past might be combined 
into a system sufficiently comprehensive to meet the exigencies of the 
present. Still a time would arise when new aspects of society would call 
for more extended legislation, and it must never be forgotten that the 
maturity of one age is infancy to that which is to succeed it. In the 
hope of conferring eternity on his institutions, the Grecian legislator, 
with a folly quite consistent with their absurdity, imposed an oath upon 
his fellow citizens never to violate them until his return; and then 
_ banished himself from his country for ever. With somewhat more of 
philosophy in his legislation, the ‘great Locke, in founding a constitution 
for Carolina, provided that his laws should be in force but for one cen- 
tury, and then they were to undergo a revision for the purpose of becoming 
adapted to such alterations in its features as the state had intermediately 
sustained. ‘“ Sous le regne d’ Elizabeth,” says the author of the Lettres 
sur la Chancellerie et Jurisprudence Angloise, “Angleterre pouyoit 
déja étre compté parmi les grandes nations. Mais personne ne sera 
d’avis qu'un code formé pour ce temps-la eut convenu aux sujets de 
George IV.” It is only in the development of the human mind under 
fresh modifications, and greater variety of circumstance, that the wants 
of a changeful and civilizing state of society become discovered ; and 
thus, notwithstanding all the nonsense which has been babbled about the 
wisdom of our ancestors, it is plain that, with reference to posterity, the 
institutions of each preceding race of man, must, from the scantiness. of 
the materials on which they are founded, be for ever defective. We 
may legislate up to experience, but we can never go beyond it. 
. That general collection of provisions, however, now moulded into the 
system, which, as contra-distinguished from equity, we term law, has for 
centuries displayed any thing but a legislation up to the experience of 
the passing time. Partly constructed on the maxims of a noxious political 
institution,* the annihilation of which has completely altered the posture 
of society—and altogether founded in a barbarous age, its modern admi- 
nistration presents a constant struggle, either at perverting or evading the 
very principles on which it stands, while those principles are sometimes 
admitted even tothe production of the most egregious absurdities. Thus 
feudal institutions having little other policy than to watch over the 
interests of the tyrants for whose gain they existed, a judicial system 
founded upon them naturally enough treated all that was opposed to the 
interests of the feudal lord as opposite to the spirit of the laws. It 
accordingly became a maxim of law that every thing which interfered 
with these interests was contrary to “‘ common right,” and in conformity 
with this unique doctrine, a party creating in favour of another a rent 
out of his own estate, was. modestly said to be doing an act contrary to 
“ common right,” “ because he was thereby less able to perform the military 
services by which he was bound by his tenure.” It will hardly be sup- 
posed that this absurdity could be carried to a point still more egregious. 
But so it was. It was said that in every attempted discharge of an 
interest thus granted in opposition to “common right,” the act of the owner 
should be interpreted most strongly against himself, and in favour of the 


* The feudal system. 


1828.) Court of Chancery. 227 


interest of the lord. The result was, that if the owner of a rent charge 
issuing out of twenty acres of land, should release its payment out of one 
acre, whatever may have been his intention to the contrary, he thereby 
extinguished the whole ; and because the maxim to which feudal prin- 
ciples had at a remote period given birth still exists, the absurdity in 
question survives to the present hour. No wonder then that under a 
system of law thus constituted a necessity should exist for some judicial 
power in the state, which was capable of adaptation with greater flexi- 
bility, to a state of society to which the unbending rules of the common 
law prevented it from accommodating itself. Such a power has all along 
indeed, been occasionally exercised by the great assembly of the nation. 
But the judicial operations of Parliament are rather confined to making 
provision for particular cases than extended to the establishment of new 
and general heads or principles of law ; and the only operative standing 
power in the state adequate to the achievement of these purposes, may 
accordingly be considered as residing in the Court of Chancery. We 
will put an illustration of each of the functions we have described. A 
party is by fraudulent representations entrapped into incurring the legal 
obligation of a bond, or he executes it under mistaken impressions of his 
liabilities. The law nevertheless cannot choose but enforce the obligation 
against him. As Portia expounded the statutes of Venice, so would be 
the interpretation of the law in England— : 


« For the intent and purpose of the law 
Hath full relation to the penalty, 
Which here appeareth due upon the bond.” 


Confessing the instrument of obligation, a court of law would not allow 
the party to ground his defence upon the extrinsic circumstances in 
which it was given. Equity would, however, upon proof of these cir- 
cumstances, interfere to order its cancellation. Again a tenant for life of 
a family estate takes upon himself to cut down the ornamental trees 
which are scattered about the Park. If law give any remedy at all, it is 
only by way of forcing damages from the offender. But money, though 
it will do a great deal in this kingdom of mammon, will not reinstate 
trees that have been once felled. The remedy at law then may prove 
little better, than the shutting the stable door after the steed is stolen. 
Equity, however, interferes not with the tardy compensation for the 
mischief which alone the law can afford. It brings the remedy which 
experience had dictated to be the only efficient one ; and by its process 
of injunction prevents the mischief, as soon as it has received sufficient 
evidence of its meditated perpetration. The administration, however, of 
this species of redress constitutes only a part of the jurisdiction of equity. 
In our historical sketch of the court which we gave in a former number,* 
we have seen the mass and variety of other subjects which has been con- 
stantly bringing within its jurisdiction. This accumulation there, was 
the proof of the meagreness of the common law—nor could it be expected 
that as the offspring of increasing civilization and increasing wealth, they 
would find provision in a system, which had been moulded before the 

wants which had gave birth to them had existence. 
We are far, however, from conceding that the Court of Chancery 
(setting aside all consideration as to its external forms of procedure) is 
ee 


* Court of Chancery, No. 30. 
2G2 


228 Court of Chancery. [Serr 


either sufficiently imbued with the remedial principle to counteract the 
contracted legislation of the common law ; or that it is altogether the 
appropriate tribunal for the purpose. With respect to the first, it must 
be remembered that although in the earlier periods of its history, the 
subjects and extent of its judicature were very much left to the individual 
who presided on its bench, it has in later times become moulded into a 
formal system. It proceeds on principles as clearly defined, as nicely 
circumscribed as those of the common law ; and, perhaps, the only dif- 
ference between the two, lies in the extent of their range. With some 
little allowance for ‘ friction, the latter is bound by the circumscribed 
knowledge of the age in which it was founded ; the expanse of the former 
is measured by a few more centuries growth of society. We are not 
about to quarrel with this certainty of system—we should be the last to 
trust legislation to the arbitrary caprice of a chancellor ; and, indeed, 
even if “ our fathers had not declared before us, we should have seen in 
our own time” abundant proof of the danger. When we behold a 
tribunal assuming the extraordinary jurisdiction of snatching children 
from the custody of their parent, because the pious horror felt by its 
judge of the Great Lady of Babylon had extended itself to a dread of all 
the naughty women of London—and when we mark the same tribunal, 
pausing in the exercise of its ordinary functions, to hold its preliminary 
censorship upon the press—we have enough to bid us to prefer the dis- 
pensation of justice under some such definite heads as Fraud, Accident, 
Mistake, Trust, Account, to its administration under the more captivating 
title of ‘ Moral Equity.’ It is obvious, however, that unless a specific 
grievance can be brought under some one of its general subjects of juris- 
diction, redress may be sought in vain within the walls of this court ;-and 
we affirm that grievances of this description are of frequent occurrence. 
It is true that the doctrine is often bandied about that where no remedy 
can be obtained at law, relief is, ex necessitate, afforded in equity. This 
will be found correct, however, in those cases alone in which the subject 
matter can be brought within a recognized head of jurisdiction. When 
pressed to interfere in matter without this limit, judges have again and 
again refused relief, because they could be furnished with neither general 
principle or express precedent for their warrant. A former Marquis of 
Lansdowne had suffered one of the settled estates of the family to go into 
_decay—and after his death his successor laid out considerable sums of 
money in repairing the dilapidations of his predecessor. For the recovery 
of these he had no remedy at law ; because the injury was what the law 
terms a personal wrong, and the action for these dies with the offender. 
He accordingly instituted a suit in equity against the representatives of 
the deceased marquis, for repayment out of his assets of the monies 
expended. But the court refused his prayer, alleging that there were 
in its annals no instances of similar applications to be found. In this it 
was mistaken. An analogous case had occurred under the chancellor- 
ship of Lord Cowper ; and he then dismissed the bill, with the broad 
confession that for grievances of this description “ there was no remedy 
either at law or in equity.” This is, however, not a solitary instance ; 
and it is obvious, therefore, that comparatively wide as are the principles 
of equity, they are not yet sufficiently comprehensive for the existing 
wants of society. 
To inquire the best process for securing an adaptation of the laws 


1828. ] Court of Chancery. 229 


of a country to the changes of its political aspect, is to enter upon a wide 
field of speculation. The Court of Chancery has achieved almost all that 
it has accomplished through the exercise of a power in its inception 
almost entirely arbitrary. Against a repetition of a similar mode of 
‘operation, we have already entered our protest. We see nothing then 
left to trust to than either a periodical revision of the whole body of the 
law, or the creation of some permanent responsible body in, the state 
exercising a surveillance over it, and, indeed, with a perpetual power to 
supply its deficiencies.—Among other excellent suggestions for the refor- 
mation of our laws, Mr. Cooper, in his work on this subject,* has recom- 
mended the adoption of a similar plan.—< Nothing,” says he, “ would 
tend more to the improvement of our laws than the appointment of a 
perpetual commission to receive communications from the judges and other 
individuals as to the alterations or additions which they require. ‘The 
shadow of such an institution has existed two centuries in the grand 
committee of courts of justice.’—Our readers may, probably, not be 
aware, that the committee of courts of justice to which Mr. Cooper 
alludes, is a standing committee of Parliament for the improvement of the 
law, which was indebted for its being to the energies of former times— 
-but which now has an existence only in name.—We know not how it 
‘happens, but drowsiness is a complaint which seems to visit all associated 
bodies of men, who are not in constant collision with the public—and, 
therefore, in the formation of such a body, a large proportion of flappers 
would probably be found necessary to keep them awake.—These, how- 
ever, we doubt not, might be provided ; and if we could only secure the 
diligence and efficiency of the functionaries, we know of no office in the 
state which could be rendered more valuable. If it did not divert alto- 
gether from Parliament its judicial legislation, it would necessarily be a 
part of the province of the officers to prepare the several acts submitted 
for enactment ; and our statute book might then groan a little less heavily 
than it does at present, with acts passed in each succeeding session only 
to redress the blunders of the last. : 
Regarding the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery 
however less as a provision for exigencies which have yet to be discovered, 
than as a corrective to an inadequacy of the common law already ascer- 
tained, the consolidation of the two courts of law and equity into one 
tribunal, as in the Supreme Civil Court of Scotland, has been urged, and 
by high authority ; while the philosophical reasoning of the jurists has 
been backed by the contemptible cry of the “ practical men,” who, in 
their utter ignorance of jurisprudence as a science, can find in the prin- 
ciples of equity nothing else than what they call abstract right,t and 
_ewho have, consequently, been extremely puzzled when they have been 
told of a difference existing between two such analogous things as law 
and equity. If we have made ourselves understood, these gentlemen 
might here discover that there is somewhat more in the distinction than 
“ their philosophy had dreamed of.” We cannot here recapitulate, for 
their accommodation, all we have said on the subject ; but we must, how- 
ever, remind those who have followed us through our paper, that while 


__* Parliamentary Proceedings as to the Court of Chancery, the House of Lords, and 
Bankruptey. By C. P. Cooper, Esq. Murray; 1828. 

+ By the by, we believe these gentlemen know as much about the meaning of the 
term abstract right; as Sidrophel knew of the inhabitants of Mercury. 


230 Court of Chancery. [Sepr. 


a part of the duty of the court is to afford relief in cases in which the 
universality of the rules of the common law would otherwise be pro- 
ductive of individual injustice, the provision of remedies, in- emergencies 
altogether unprovided by law, is by far the most comprehensive subject 
of its jurisdiction. Without entering, then, very deeply into this difficult 
subject, we may just observe that: we doubt not, that a considerable im- 
provement might be effected by infusion into each branch of jurisdiction, 
of many of the principles which are now only recognized by the other. 
Thus, for instance, because the ownership derived through the medium 
of trusts was not in existence at the time the doctrine of the law became 
settled into a system, the law to this day persists in refusing to recognize 
their existence in its proceedings. Although the law admits, therefore, 
a legal settlement to be a bar of a widow’s dower, it refuses to acknow- 
ledge that equitable species of jointure which has been created through 
the instrumentality of a trust estate. Equity, however, acting upon a more 
liberal or more modernized policy, pronounces it good. The result is, that 
a widow may come into a court of law to sue for her dower, in the teeth of a 
jointure, which, in equity, would prevent her recovery, and the owner of the 
lands would be compelled to resort to the expense and trouble of a suit in 
equity to restrain her, because one branch of the law had refused to incor- 
porate into its doctrines principles to which their recognition in the other 
court, had proved that the necessities of society had given birth—Not 
that the refusal to notice the jointure is, in the case in question, attended 
with much practical mischief. In point of fact, the fear of being saddled 
with the costs of an injunction in equity, would be a “raison suffisante” to 
deter the dowress from prosecuting her legal remedies. We merely select 
the case as an apt illustration of the principle for which we are contending; 
but there are instances, and those pretty numerous, in which the refusal 
of the courts of common law to avail themselves of the more enlightened 
principles of equity serves only to add to that “ disease of infinite accu- 
mulation” under which the Court of Chancery is already well nigh 
sinking. Thus, in equity, as justice would naturally enough have 
dictated, a mortgagee, who, under a judgment obtained against his 
debtor, had been let into receipt of the rents of his land, would be held 
accountable for all that he had actually received during the time of his 
possession. At law, however, he would be liable to account according 
to the value at which the lands were extended to him. But the extended 
value is generally little more than a third of the real value ; consequently, 
at law, he would be liable only for about one-lhird of what he had 
received. And a mortgager, who did not like to put up with the loss of 
two-thirds of his annual rents, would have no other means of redress 
than by filing a bill in equity for an account. On the other hand, the 
reluctance of the Court of Chancery to deal with subjects more strictly 
of legal cognizance, even when that treatment is almost forced upon 
it in the course of its own operations, tends very largely to the general 
complication of legal proceedings. It often happens, for instance, 
to the court, in the course of a suit, to require a construction to 
be placed upon the language of a will. When the devise is of those 
trust or equitable interests which are the peculiar province of the 
court, it takes upon itself to determine it. Notwithstanding, how- 
ever, the rules of construction in the devises of legal or equitable 
interests, are pretty much the same in both courts, if the devise 
happen to be one of a legal interest, the chancellor constantly resigns its 


1828.] Court of Chancery. 231 


construction to the judges of the common law ; and thus subjects the 
parties to all the expence and protracted litigation of an additional trial, 
in order to get a decision upon that with which he was already conversant, 
and just as capable of resolving as the court of law could possibly have 
been. We doubt not the removal of this mutual coyness in either court 
to avail itself of the practice and principles of the other, would be pro- 
ductive of considerable simplicity in the general administration of 
justice ; and, as far as the common law is concerned, we know nothing 
which would so effectually bring it up to a level with the wants of the 
present time.—Referring to a legislative measure, for the purpose of 
accomplishing this result, in common with another for removing doubts 
upon points which now furnish what he terms a constant harvest of liti- 
gation, Mr. Cooper remarks :—“ A gentleman of the greatest experience 
in the court, thinks, with myself, that, in this way, one-fifth part of the 
chancery business might be annihilated.’”—p. 163. Great, however, as 
would be the advantage of thus altering the present absurd postures of 
the two courts, we do not see that it is necessary, in order to achieve 
this, to consolidate their jurisdictions under one tribunal. Under some 
of the foreign codes, and particularly under the Dutch civil code, to 
which we alluded in our former article on the subject, the common law 
judge is intrusted with the exercise of so much of the equitable functions 
as will enable him to suspend, in particular exigencies, the applica- 
tion of the general rules of his own court. This undoubtedly realizes all 
the gain to be produced by close communication between two jurisdic- 
tions taking cognizance of the same common subject—and this we admit 
to be no small advantage. But then, it must be remembered, that 
although intrusting their administration to the same individual, this still 
perpetuates the respective provinces of law and equity in distinct. exist- 
ence ; and it is well worth considering, whether, as the subjects which 
fall within them accumulate, with the accumulating litigation of a great 
country, these provinces will be even capable of sustaining this blended 
administration. 

The functions of the court of equity are not moreover merely correelive 
of the provisions of the common law. We have seen that a large part of 
the jurisdiction of the court is either to supply remedies to grievances in 
which the law furnishes none, or does not furnish that which is required. 
An individual enters into a contract for the sale of an estate, which the 
other party refuses to perform. The doors of the courts of law and 
equity are alike open to the purchaser for redress. If he seek compen- 
sation, however, in the shape of damages for the refusal, he enters the 
former. But suppose nothing less than the possession of the estate will 
satisfy him he goes into equity, for process compelling the vendor to 
execute a conveyance of it to him. It is true that he is driven there 
from the inadequacy of the common law. This is, however, only saying 
that the law does not afford all the remedies his case demands; and it is 
obvious that, in point of fact, the only difference between the two, lies in 
the difference of the remedy. In addition to this, a large part of the 
business of the court is purely agency. Parties in fiduciary situations, as © 
guardians, executors, trustees, &c., find it a convenient mode of relieving 
themselves of the responsibility of their trust, to impose its direction 
upon the Court of Chancery, and accordingly frequently place property 
within the jurisdiction of the court for the mere purpose of acquiring its 
indemnity. ‘« A great deal of the business of the court,” says Mr. Forster, 


232: Court of Chancery. [Sepr. 


the Solicitor, in his evidence before the Chancery Commissioners, “and 
the chief part done by the present house of my name, chiefly consists of 
proceedings in the Court of Chancery of an amicable nature ; family 
concerns, in which the circumstances I have described (alluding to cer- 
tain chicaneries practised in the court) do not exist. In these cases pro- 
ceedings may be conducted with great expedition by consent, but, I must 
add, with lamentable expense. For great estates and great fortunes, 
there is no security so good, and no trustee so safe, as the Court of 
Chancery, but to little fortunes it is ruin.” But these are all matters so 
distinct in themselves, and constituting such separate heads of jurisdic- 
tion, that even were the cognizance of the whole imposed upon one court 
they would require to be delegated to separate functionaries, and cer- 
tainly as far as the parties interested were concerned, whether all their 
various affairs and remedies were administered under separate branches 
of one court, or under courts originally distinct, would be a matter of no 
more difference, than whether the judge who presided in one had three 
tails to his wig, or in the other had four ; or if, indeed (Heaven forgive 
the blasphemy !) neither judge had any wig at all. It is certain that 
many of the American states, after having tried the effect of a consolida- 
tion of their courts of law and equity, have at length placed them upon 
a separate footing. We are, however, not sufficiently acquainted with 
the principles of their jurisprudence, to know whether this necessity has 
originated from causes common to all courts, or peculiar to their own ; 
and, as we consider experience to consist not in the mere knowledge of 
a fact, but in a concomitant acquaintance with the causes in which it 
originated, we know not whether to draw from thence any general argu- 
ment in behalf of a separation of the tribunals or not. 

It cannot, however, be denied, that the great fault of all our courts is 
a want of sufficient separation in the subjects of their jurisdiction. It is 
obvious that, in proportion as the mass of matter to be got through is 
distributed into numerous departments, will be the rapidity with which 
it is dispatched ; and it is, perhaps, the want of attention to this prin- 
ciple of distribution, which makes the Court of Chancery so utterly 
inefficient to the purposes for which it has existence. There are many 
subjects within its jurisdiction of so incongruous a nature, that they seem 
of themselves almost naturally to point to a division. Thus, for instance, 
what can be more distinct than bankruptcy, lunacy, and the custody of 
infants? Bankruptcy alone occupies about a third of the time of the 
court ; and, perhaps, lunacy about a fourth. Of petitions, in these two 
subjects alone, there were actually set down for hearing, in the three years 
1821, 1822, 1823, of lunacy, 929, and of bankruptcy 1667; and these 
are all constantly pressing upon the personal attention of the chancellor. 
Bankruptcy is certainly not very widely separated from insolvency ; and 
yet, we have a court specially devoted to this. Indeed so it may be 
said we have in bankruptcy, by those who call the meetings of the com- 
missioners in Basinghall-street a court. For ourselves, however, we 
should not be inclined to dignify it with any such title; and it may be 
sufficient to stop our readers from doing so, to inform them that, in 
addition to the fact, that the Chancellor is burthened with the original ° 
issuing of all commissions, the bulk of the bankrupt petitions which come 
into the Court of Chancery, are not in the shape of appeals from the 
decisions of the commissioners, but are original applications to the court. 
“ Out of 253 petitions,” says Mr. Cooper, ‘ that were in the Vice-Chan- 


1828.] Court of Chancery. 233 


cellor’s paper for hearing in July 1826, only 27 were appeals from the 
decisions of the commissioners. In the Lord Chancellor’s paper for the 
same month of July, there were sixty-seven petitions, and of these 
Mr. Montague has stated, he believed there were not more-than eight 
which were appeals from the commissioners.” With respect to infants, 
the administration of their affairs originally was the province of a distinct 
court, called the Court of Wards ; and, indeed, it was only upon its 
abolition that that administration has devolved upon the Court of Chan- 
cery. Independently of this, the history of other countries affords us an 
ample precedent for making this a separate subject of jurisdiction. In 
the appendix to the Chancery Commission, there is an account given of 
certain courts, denominated Orphan Courts, which existed in the United 
States for the protection of the properties of infants, in which it is said, 
that the guardians and others, having the management of such proper- 
ties, were compellable in a summary way by mere summons or order, 
to account for them, and to pay into court all monies, from time to time 
coming to their hands. These accounts were regularly settled, and the 
balances paid at stated periods ; so that, on each infant’s attaining majo- 
rity, or being married, the amount was in readiness to be paid over to 
them : and it is added, “ that the expence was so trifling, that it was no 
burthen on very small properties.” 

In thus advocating, however, the policy of a greater subdivision of the 
jurisdiction of the court, let us not be understood as seeking utterly to 
wrest the whole out of the cognizance of the Chancellor. We propose 
still to leave him invested with the appellate jurisdiction to each ; and 
indeed, we have serious doubts whether his personal jurisdiction, instead 
of being an original one with reference to any of the subjects which are 
administered in his court, ought not to be appellate to the whole. It 
seems an absurdity that the first law officer of the state should be engaged 
on subjects, presenting little or no difficulty in decision, but making 
immense demands on his time. Yet, such is, in point of fact, the charac- 
ter of nine-tenths of the causes which are litigated in the court. The 
unravelling of the facts is generally the only difficulty. This once 
accomplished, the law is plain enough ; and surely matters of this kind 
might well enough be adjudicated by individuals of less dignity than 
the chief officer of the court. Under the jurisprudence of France, the 
elucidation of all matters of fact is confined to inferior tribunals. The 
Court of Cassation, which is the court of special appeal to all, decides 
simply upon the law of the cases submitted to it ; and owing mainly to 
this—to the comparative simplicity of their laws—and to the multipli- 
city of their inferior tribunals, we believe such a thing as arrear of 
business is scarcely known to the courts of France. But not only is 
there no arrear, causes are always urged on with so much dispatch, that 
it is not often their litigation exceeds a twelvemonth, while under the 
blessed administration of our Court of Chancery, the author of the Pro- 
ceedings, a practised advocate of the court, states, that he is taking 
“avery favourable view of even a common chancery suit, for the pay- 
ment of a few wretched creditors and legatees, when he announces they 
will receive their debts “at the end of jive years!” And again, he says, 
speaking of the same description of suit, “a daughter, to whom a testator 
leaves a legacy of 10,000/., charged upon his real estate, must wait e7ght 
years before she can receive interest or principal; and, during more 


M.M. New Series. ~—Vou. VI. No. 33. 2H 


234 Court of Chancery, [Sepr. 


than half this time, the cause remains on the lists of the Vice Chancellor, 
waiting its turn to be heard.”—p. 90, 91. 

With all this, it is manifest there must come an addition of judges in 
the court. The cost of these would not be large—a few additional 
thousands a year at the outside—and we should think the purchase of 
quick and efficient justice, at an increased annual expenditure of some 
six or twelve thousand pounds, would not be thought dear for the 
accomplishment of such a purpose. : 

Nor must the security for efficiency stop with the creation of new judges. 
Let those already in existence become divested of the troublesome 
diversion of cabinet distractions. Let our chancellors be rendered 
judicial officers, and not intriguing diplomatists. On these points we say no 
more at present. We propose, however, to recur to them hereafter, for the 
purpose of examining them more in detail ; but there is so much popular 
ignorance on the general nature of an equitable jurisdiction, that we thought 
it better to preface our future observations with such as might lead not only 
to a better understanding of the subject, generally, but to a clearer appre- 
hension of what we may hereafter venture to adduce. If we have spoken 
somewhat favourably of the principles of equity in general, or even of 
the doctrines of English equity, let this not be construed into a recon- 
ciliation with the outward ceremonials of their administration in its 
court. Until we see these thoroughly altered and reformed—until we 
cease to behold its miserable suitors, year after year, pacing its floor, 
awaiting its decrees, with hearts sickening from hopes, kindled only to 
be deferred, we shall scarcely be enabled to dispossess ourselves of the 
idea, that the Court of Chancery is, in reality, the valley of the shadow 
of death, while we may fancy we hear its weary travellers bemoaning 
in the strain of the poet :— 


*€ Full knowest thou that hast not tried, 
What hell it is in swing long to bide ; 
To lose good days that might be better spent— 
To waste long nights in pensive discontent— 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow: 
To fret thy soul with crosses and with care, 
To eat thy heart through comfortless despair— 
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
To spend, to give, to want, to be uNDONE !” 


1828.] [ 235 J 


MINE HOST’S SEGOND STORY. 


« You have been at Messina, Sir?” said old Carmelo to me, one fine 
summer evening, whilst I was forgetting the effects of a late sirocco in a 
comfortable goblet of dimonata gelata—< You have been at Messina? 
Well, then, you will remember that dark, precipitous hill, that lies just 
at the back of the city, and almost seems to overhang it ; they call it 
the Antenna Mare,—I know not why. ’Tis an admired object, and you 
travellers are fond of getting up to the guard-house for the sake of the 
fine prospect. Aye! itis a glorious and a cheerful sight! Milazzo, 
pushing far out into the sea ;—the curving coast, and its proud succes- 
sion of cities—Catania, Augusta, and Syracuse ;—Castro Giovanni, lifted 
up like a giant in the clouds ;—and above this, and the whole Pelorian 
range, /tna, wreathed in its eternal snows. *Tis a glorious scene! but 
it is years since I have endured to gaze upon it from that point. I 
shudder when I reflect upon the last visit, and the occasion on which I 
made it to that solitary height. If you are disposed, Sir, I will relate 
to you the circumstances as they occurred.” 

Mine host was clearly in one of his most talkative and entertaining 
moods ; and I had too often known the value of his conversation to 
bridle it at present by any unreadiness to become a listener. The old 
man threw up his eyes for a moment, and patted his brow, as one search- 
ing for and reclaiming the scattered recollections of the period ; and little 
need had he for more artful conjuration, as the fidelity of his narrative 
abandantly proved. After this short pause, he proceeded. 

* It was during a very different season to this blessed time of autumn 
that I was summoned to grace the marriage-ceremony of a fair young 
relation in the city of Messina—I think in December of the year 1811. 
The piercing cold that seems almost reflected from the icy tops of the 
neighbouring hills, was at this period particularly felt in that part of the 
island. It was a severe winter, and, as you say, the Sicilian temper is 
if] accommodated to the privations and gloom of such a climate. We are 
naturally as gay in feeling, though not in show, as our transmarine kin- 
dred of Calabria. But though the outward chill strikes as deep into the 
recesses of our spirits, we are yet content with our happy homes, and can 
find a substitute in the warm looks of our kinsmen. Can our Neapolitan 
cousins say as much, master traveller ? 

« Never did I see this truth more completely verified than ever at the 
nuptials of my young niece, Rosalia. She was a pet of the whole family 
—a wicked little thing, with a quick eye, that seemed to fasten itself 
good-humouredly on every thing around her that could by possibility 
give reason for a smile ;—alternately the plague and the comfort of her 
mother, whose steadier age was sometimes unequal to keep pace with the 
merry essays of roguery and playfulness of her little darling, but who 
treasured her through it all, perhaps, with a firmer love for those very 
chasms and breaks, during which she had a clear ground to measure her 
own maternal feelings, and the general attractions of the object that 
excited them. With a full and almost sorrowful heart, she affianced her 
child.—Oh, Sir! that must be an hour the most painful of any that occurs 
in the long and difficult administration of a mother’s duties! Then, when: 
the young creature has just attained its capacity to be a source of com- 
fort and support ;—when its perilous age has passed by, and it becomes in 
F 2H 2 


236 Mine Host’s Second Story. [Szpr. 


some sort able to return the service of life by due offices and affection- 
ate care ;—when it has ceased to be propped, and may now become a 
staff ;— when its childish inferiority has given way to an equal and com- 
panionable faculty ;—the future friend—the sympathizing counsellor— 
the sweet companion—all, all is lost! and what remains is a cold, out~ 
ward figure of a dear idol, with an estranged or divided heart, and an 
allegiance broken entirely off, saving one or two slight bonds of reluc- 
tant and dubious attachment! I speak with fervour, Sir; for I have sate 
in a circle from which one, the gem, the most precious gem had gone ! 
Ihave seen the puppet hurrying with heartless tears from her paternal 
threshold, which she cared not again to recross ;—I have seen the whole 
arrears of gratitude for such deeds of fatherly fondness swept off and 
unremembered in the gratification of a woman’s vanity.—But this is not 
to the purpose. 

« As I said before, Rosalia’s marriage was cheerful as May-time. I 
well remember the very room, and the position of the bridal guests. At 
one end sate the young couple, glancing at each other with smiles no 
longer furtive—each adorned in the country fashion, as their rank 
allowed :—her dark hair drawn and tied back by ribbons and a silver 
spatella ; a rose-coloured satin boddice was half concealed by a loose 
silk handkerchief thrown over her neck and bosom; the outer striped 
silk petticoat festooned up by means of ribbons even as high as the knee, 
to disclose the under and more ornamented one of richly-coloured cloth. 
Her spouse appeared in blue velvet, with a red silk sash, and a famous 
glitter of those worked silver buttons, which you may have observed 
frequently on the waistcoats of our lower orders: they are the hereditary 
wealth of the rustics, and treasured for many generations. In all this 
finery were the two principals of the ceremony attired. Then came the 
bridegroom’s mother, with a basket on her arm, which was soon to be 
filled with no insufficient portion for the young couple. Some of the 
guests presented rings; others, as their fancy or judgment dictated, 
added other little gifts of use or ornament—ribbons, shoes, combs, a 
shawl, and the like. Then the whole measure was transferred by her to 
her children, with much comment and admiration of each article, as one 
by one they were produced. Nor was this all. The good mother pre- 
sently replenished her baskets, as is our custom, partly with toasted ciceri, 
partly with comfits and sugar-plums, which were distributed to the guests. 
What healths and good wishes then followed, as the sturdy attendant 
brought round the great jar, so well stored with the best lachryme ! 
And then how lustily we commenced the tarantulla, and footed it away 
to a merry song—not yet releasing the married pair, who no doubt 
longed for the dissolution of our party! But, alas! that party, so fes- 
tive, so careless, was not to be broken up ina spirit of gaiety! This 
happy scene became embittered by very different events; and many a 
heavy heart vented its emotions in a sigh, where a laugh and a joke had 
served the purpose so recently.—But you shall hear. 

“ T should remind you that, at that period, the island was under the 
protection of your country. Lord William Bentinck, as far as my 
memory will serve, was the commander of your forces, and his vigilance 
in his office is well known. His troops were stationed at different forti- 
fied posts all over the island, and, by constant intermingling with the 
natives, had become tolerably well known even individually to us. On 
this evening, as the gay doings were proceeding, and the male visitors 


1828.] Mine Host’s Second Story. 237 


had nearly all sung their praises of the bride, a quick, hurried step was 
suddenly heard along the pavement. It stopped, and aloud knocking at 
the door abruptly started us in our hymeneal festivities. The door was 
opened, and there stood the figure of an English soldier, whitened with 
the snow, which was then, and had been for two days, falling. No pause 
occurred—no interval of suspense, or ceremonious greeting. He rapidly 
saluted the assembly, and inquired earnestly for my brother. I should 
have told you that Salvo was generally known to the troops as the 
readiest and handiest tradesman, if any of their little luxuries—vegetables, 
or fruit, or tobacco—were required. When not on duty, the soldiers 
were fond of lounging for a minute or two into his trattoria, to sip a glass 
of rosolio, and talk unintelligible Sicilian to his little brunette of a daugh- 
ter; and from him a piece of intelligence was now sought, which this 
familiarity might have put him in possession of, but which neither he nor 
any man on earth could ever adequately supply. 

« « Salvo,’ said the soldier, ‘ I am sent here by my commanding-officer 
to inquire whether you saw any thing of our detachment from the guard- 
house of Antenna Mare, which was sent down yesterday morning for 
provisions ?’ 

« © Aye,—I think they must have been the men who called for tobacco. 
Four, were they not?’ 

«<< Yes,’ answered the soldier ; ‘ four of our people. You know the 
3lst? Well, a fatigue-party was ordered here yesterday, as I said 
before, and we have heard nothing of them since.’ 

« « Not heard of them!’ replied Salvo; ‘ why, they left me all well 
about two o’clock, and talked in high spirits of having found a short cut 
up the mountain. It would have been daylight till past five.’ 

«< And the white snow, father,’ interposed little Rosalia— that 
would have lighted them on their road.’ 

«<The snow, child? Heaven forbid! It could not be that they 
would. Did you attempt to trace their footsteps, friend, down the 
descent, as you came just now ?’ 

«« « Why, that would have been impossible, you know ?’ answered the 
soldier ; ‘ for the snow has covered over the tracks of yesterday long 
since.” 

« « Now the saints have mercy upon them, poor fellows! If they have 
gone out of the beaten road, ’tis hard to say what mischief may not have 
befallen them.’ 

« « Was Mackenzie of the number, father?’ again asked Rosalia, with 
an interest which startled her young husband. But the feeling that 
prompted the question was only a natural desire to know the fate of an 
old acquaintance, who had visited them more often than the rest ; and. it 
was not subdued by the look of half-reproach cast upon her by her 
liege lord. 

« « Yes,’ replied the soldier, ‘ as fine a fellow as ever bore a musket ; 
he and his comrades gone, God knows where !—But I can’t stay ;—if 
there is one amongst you who would like to bear a hand in searching 
for them, we are going out with torches, and it would be a charity to 
assist us.’ 

“ The proposal was not made in vain. Several of the men instantly 
jumped up, and throwing aside the gaudy ribbons and gewgaws that had 
decked them in honour of the ceremony, seized their caps, and binding 
their sashes more firmly round their loins, stood prepared to accompany 


238 Mine Host’s Second Story. (Serr. 


the soldiers in the search. Then in a moment passed away the brilliant 
looks of the visitors; the merriment had died; the jar of lachryme 
stopped in the round ; and those few who were kept back from joining in 
the expedition, shewed in their countenance no promise of being able to 
renew the broken feast. The fair girls, pale and anxious, looked out with 
tearful eyes at the raw, cheerless night. The bride clung closely to the 
bridegroom’s arm, half-fearing that he himself might join the party so ho- 
nourably employed.- But you could scarcely observe what passed beyond 
this ; for the short interval between determination and action was now 
elapsed, and the little troop went from the bridal-chamber. It was a 
cold and wretched night ; and a strong wind separating the larger flakes 
of snow, caused them to drift in a smooth, undulating bank on one side 
of the street. We advanced without many words to where some others 
of the same regiment were collecting to await the answer of their mes- 
senger from Salvo. ' 

«« « What tidings, Bill?’ was the general cry, as we approached. 

«« Neither good nor bad; but yet nearer bad than good,’ answered 
their messmate, who forthwith acquainted them with the issue of his 
embassy. It was no sooner communicated than the one resolution 
spread throughout the whole audience, that no time should be lost in 
surveying the mountain-paths leading to the summit of Antenna Mare. 
This impulse was strengthened by an order from a superior officer ; and. 
we proceeded with torches to the points in question. Our numbers were 
presently increased by many of the peasantry, who, attracted by the 
lights, and moved by the cause, hesitated not to expose themselves to the 
inclement air for the generous service in which we employed them. 
After reaching the base of the hill, we divided off several small detach- 
ments of natives, who were better acquainted with the ground, to pene- 
trate the by-ways and scale the precipitous crags, wherever there seemed 
a probability of the soldiers having strayed. The military themselves, 
from an ignorance of any but the direct route, confined themselves to 
the more beaten tracks, or made only small and occasional deviations from 
them. With two friends I toiled up an unusual ascent, not unaccompanied 
by danger ; for the footing was insecure, and the eddies of snow fre- 
quently deceived us by a shew of level ground, where, in reality, there 
was only a covered chasm. The sleet “struck against our faces with 
unequal violence, as the wind carried jt in gusts down the mountain’s 
side. We became farther and farther removed from our associates ; but 
their lights were visible far and wide, and we kept up a communication 
by hallooing and cheering them, the sounds of our voices being trans- 
mitted clearly and entirely through the sharp atmosphere. We were 
spread at distances almost completely round the bosom of the hill, at’ 
different elevations—sometimes one, sometimes another party, meeting 
with an easier ascent. Hours passed on—but no success. A cheerless 
negative answered us, if ever we approached so nearly to our companions. 
as to put an audible question. But no one was dispirited. On, on we 
laboured, and pushed our way. The air became sharper, and the surface 
of the hill, broken into a thousand irregularities, rendered our path at 
every step more perilous and slow. We had advanced nearly two thou- 
sé.ad feet, perhaps, from the startin g-point, and the dribbling sleet fell léss, 
collectively than before. The masses of grey cloud seemed to be dis-, 
placed and drawn higher into the vault of heaven, and to ‘our longing 
eyes it appeared that now and then a pale star might be discerned in a 


1828.] Mine Host’s Second Story. 239 


little space left for a minute by two disjoined sheets of vapour, which 
instantly afterwards reunited and darkened as before. But it was with 
something like certainty that we observed, slowly and faintly ascending 
from the eastern horizon, a veiled, but cheerful light—a distinguishable 
brightness, that stole on the overspread darkness like a smile. Sweetly 
that point of brilliancy enlarged into size, and became a sheet of light, con- 
tending with the black curtain that withdrew slowly at its approach. The 
shades of night still were hanging on the confused outline of the moun- 
tain, when this forerunner of the morning cheered us on our way. But 
_no rays of the lingering sun aided us as yet ; when one of my companions 
suddenly stopt short in his track, and with rivetted eyes pointed to an 
object just beneath him.—Blessed Virgin! forgive an old man for this 
weakness.” 
A tear stood in his dim eye, and an agueish chill seemed to run through 
his frame. He sank on his chair in a state of temporary convulsion, 
which left him tremulous and pale, scarcely to complete the tale which 
he had voluntarily begun. 
« Sir,” he proceeded, “ your kind wishes to curtail this sorrow- 
ful narrative are unnecessary for my peace. Were I to discontinue it at 
present, I might be haunted for many a day with that image which has 
now so forcibly appalled me. It will be lost sight of in the train of the 
story, which I shall have a sad _ satisfaction in completing—As I said 
before, one of our party abruptly stopped towards the dawn of day, 
and by his manner, not by his words, collected us in an instant at the 
same spot. There—oh! horrible sight !—there reposed, like a statue of 
snow, a figure that we had little difficulty in recognizing as one of the 
lost Englishmen. ‘We could trace the outline of a human form, and, by 
clearing away some of the superficial snow, we distinguished the pos- 
ture and even features of the frozen man. He sate upright on a low 
mound, his arms crossed upon his breast, his head fallen forward, and 
his whole appearance that of a wearied traveller, who, having rested 
himself on his way, was overtaken as he rested by a slumber that proved 
eternal. Stiff and hard, his limbs were not to be released from that his 
last posture on earth ;—a living attitude that sculptors might imitate in 
stone, but which could never again start up with the. energy, and buoy- 
ancy, and strength of vigorous life. _We had not well familiarized our- 
selves with this sad spectacle, when a shout from another detachment 
announced the discovery of two more sufferers, who had fallen into one 
of the numerous ravines, and were imbedded in a shroud of sepulchral 
snow. Whether their death had been more gradual or more speedy 
than that of their comrade, it were vain to inquire. They were found 
close together, the rigid hand of one tightly grasped in the palm of his 
fellow-victim, and apparently the twin partners of the same final misfortune 
—whirled away in one torrent, and buried under the same sheet of snow. 
—But the catalogue of these spectacles was as yet incomplete. The 
increasing light marked out clearly to us the several less-frequented 
routes to the guard-house ; and we determined, before the heat of sun- 
shine had melted any part of the outer ice, to survey, as rapidly and well 
as possible, the intervening space of ground. 
_ “ You may know, Sir, that the point on which this building is placed 
is calculated as being 3,700 feet above the level of the sea. Hence, for 
the winter season it is generally surrounded by an enclosure of snow, 
which extends for a considerable distance down the crest of the moun- 


240 Mine Host’s Second Story. (Serr. 


tain. The fresh layer of ice not yet incorporated with the old crust of 
this region was now partially liquified, and resting ona surface of frozen 
ground that rendered it as slippery as quicksilver. But the rapid con- 
verging of the hill to the point of its summit gave us a smaller scope for 
survey than before ; and, with a sanguine confidence of the speedy end 
to our labours, we recommenced them stoutly and effectively. But the 
sun was already high in the heavens, and our hearts had sunk at the 
delay of our hopes, when, at a little way from the road-side, some one 
discovered an object more hideous than I can fully describe—distorted, 
ghastly—rather a heap of carrion flesh, than a human being. Some birds 
of prey that had settled on it, disturbed by our approach, first gave 
notice of its situation by the heavy flapping of their wings, as, with angry 
cries, they raised themselves, unsated with their repast, from the mangled 
carcass. Slowly wheeling round and round at the height of afew yards 
above us, they watched us, as if eager to recommence their dainty meal 
on the first shew of our departure. They had left the dead man—they 
had spared much ; but a mother could not have known such a son again. 
His features all confused and eaten away—his person rigid and stiffened, 
or gorged upon by the eagles and vultures! Most horrible! most 
awful! Wehad recognized the three former corpses, and there remained 
no doubt as to the identity of this one. It could be no other than the 
relic of that fine and manly youth for whom Rosalia had exhibited so 
generous an interest on the preceding evening. Within sight, within 
hearing of his messmates in the guard-room, Mackenzie had probably 
found it impossible to resist the last impulse of that fatal weariness which 
closes the eyelids of the wayfarer with a sleep as.cold as the ice around 
him. The snow that must so soon have buried him was kept or cleared 
off by the greedy birds that we startled at their feast; and there he lay, 
a spectacle so piteous, so horrid, that the most cruel of hearts must needs 
be softened even by the recollection of it! 

«« This has been a most inhospitable story, Sir; for neither you nor I 
have much merriment at the end of it; and a host’s tele should be 
pregnant with laughter, as an epigram winds up with its point.—Come, 
Sir, let me pour you out another cupful ; and believe me, that when next 
you honour me with so long a hearing, I will find out something for you 
better worth your courtesy—But here comes my little grand-niece, 
Manina—the first-born of that same laughing girl of whom I talked just 
now. She shall make my peace with you, and obliterate all thoughts of 
the Antenna Mare.” 

She did come !—Ah, me!—that the lively prattle of a child 
should leave a deeper sorrow than the miserable record which I have 
here set down! FEV an. 


1828.] [ 241 J 


TRAVELLING PARTICULARITIES : 
No. V. 


A CHEAP JOURNEY. 


Ir cannot be doubted that there are numerous persons in England, 
well qualified to appreciate the advantages of foreign travel, and to 
enjoy its pleasures, who are deterred from even thinking of undertaking 
it themselves, from a feeling that it requires an outlay, both of time and 
money, which is altogether inconsistent with their occupations and 
means. We shall perhaps be performing a useful and acceptable service 
to such persons, if we can make it appear to them, that for the very same 
sum which it would cost them to fool or dawdle away a fortnight of their 
time “comfortably” at some cockney “ watering-place,” they may, 
during the same period of time, travel over five hundred miles of three 
different kingdoms, and visit five or six great foreign towns, and as many 
smaller ones, allowing themselves sufficient time to gain a clear and 
characteristic general notion of each, and of all the varieties of inter- 
mediate country, modes of travelling, external manners and appearance 
of the people, &c.; and all this without stinting themselves in any one 
thing that may conduce to their personal comfort on the journey. 

To most of those who have travelled in foreign countries, and to all who 
have not, this will appear, as a bare proposition, incredible. We shall 
therefore proceed at once to prove its truth. But as this can only be 
done by descending into details, of a kind which do not ordinarily find a 
place in works whose paramount object is amusement, our readers will 
have the goodness to bear in mind, that, for this once, our wish is, not so 
much to present them with ready-made amusement, as to point out to 
them the means by which they may create or gather it for themselves. 

Our object will perhaps best be gained by supposing the case of a 
bachelor (for the time-being, at any rate), who is incumbered with no 
more luggage than will go into one “ leathern convenience,” no more 
nationality than he can lay aside in cases where he would be better 
without it, and no more fastidiousness than just enough to make him 
merely prefer, without positively requiring, the best of all possible ac- 
commodations in the way of inns, vehicles, &c. These qualities sup- 
posed, added to a general desire to be pleased in his mind, and a ten pound 
Bank of England note in his pocket, and we will engage to put him in 
the certain way of passing amore agreeable and instructive fortnight than 
he ever yet did pass, if he has never quitted his native country. 

To avoid the possibility of either doubt or misunderstanding as to our 
proposed method of going to work, we will give “ chapter and verse” 
for every thing, under the form of a journal of the supposed fourteen 
days ; and in order to avoid the dryness which almost necessarily apper- 
tains to the due performance of our main design, we will add a hasty 
glance at “ men and things” as they throng by us in our brief’ passage. 
The journey we shall choose is, from London to Brussels, by the way of 
Calais, and (for variety’s sake) back by the way of Ostend. ‘Time, of 
course the long days of summer. We will start our traveller by the 
London steamer from the Tower stairs, on (say) the first Monday in July. 

Monpay, 5 o'clock p.m.—Those who have never adopted this com- 
paratively new method of reaching France, should be informed that it 

saves half in expense, as much in time, and five-sixths in the little troubles 

M.M. New Serics—Vou. VI. No. 33. 21 


242 Travelling Particularities : [Sepr. 


and disagreeables attendant on the ordinary mode of getting from the 
capital by land to the coast, &c. Not that these are the least worth 
attending to, where time and money are not material objects of con- 
sideration in forming the plan of any given journey in search of amuse- 
ment ; because, if these little (so called) inconveniences—such as the 
changes of coaches, coachmen, &c.—the stoppages at inns—the delay of 
a night at the place of embarkation—the getting on board the packet in 
the morning—and so forth—if these are not the actual pleasures of 
travelling, they are at least the things which lead to and enhance them. 
But to our supposed traveller time and money are material points. He 
will therefore, of course, choose the only sure means of reaching his first 
resting-place in a given time, and for a fixed sum—namely, twelve hours, 
and thirty-three shillings. In naming this price, however, we are 
paying him the somewhat ill compliment of supposing, that, under the 
imaginary circumstances of the case, he will be foppish enough to spend 
eleven shillings extra, for the privilege of passing an imaginary line on 
the deck of the vessel which he is to quit in the afternoon of the day on 
which he enters it. On this point he will of course consult his own 
‘taste. 

The morning half of this little voyage slips away swifty and pleasantly 
enough, in looking at the innumerable objects upon, and on either side 
‘of, the river, as you descend it ; and the afternoon part, if it hangs a 
little as you are looking out in vain (and at length not in vain) for the 
new scene to which you are bound, is at least filled up by thoughts, 
feelings, and fancies, that are not without their after use and value. 

Our traveller will enter the harbour of Calais at about five o’clock— 
having breakfasted on board, but having (if he be wise) reserved his 
dinner appetite till he can gratify it safely on dry land. As the steamer 
ploughs its way into the harbour between the two interminable wooden 
jetties of which the said harbour, in fact consists, his attention will per- 
haps be attracted by the noble appearance of some of the French seamen ; 
and he will not readily divine how such a race of men can have been 
held in utter contempt (and with impunity too) for a long series of years. 
He will, in fact, now for the first time recognise, in a real sailor, that 
beau-idéal of one, which he has hitherto met with only in the person of _ 
Mr. T. P. Cooke, as Long Tom, or Jack Handspike, at the Cobourg or 
Adelphi theatres. 

On the vessel at length laying herself up alongside the pier, these, and 
all other specific reflections, feelings, and ideas whatsoever, will at once 
be put to flight, or confounded inextricably one with another, by the 
utter confusion attendant on a hundred and fifty persons trying to get 
ashore by any means they can, while half as many are trying all means of 
preventing them from:so doing, except under particular regulations and 
restrictions. It is the business of the packet people to see that you do 
not set your foot off the deck till you have a second time proved to them 
(by producing your receipts, &c.) that you have paid your passage. On 
‘getting past them, and mounting the ladder, it is the business of the hotel 
keepers’ agents to prevent you from putting more than one foot on shore 
till you have openly and audibly made your election, as to which among _ 
them you will choose to be fleeced by. When you have escaped from 
nine-tenths of these, by throwing yourself in despair into the hands of 
one or two, it becomes the business of certain ragged little vagabonds, 
calling themselves “ commissioners,” to disburthen you, by main force, of 


1828.] A Cheap Journey. 943. 


anything about you which you do not actually carry on your back, or in 

_ your pocket. An umbrella is a load for two, and it is by chance if two 
more do not divide your travelling cap between them !—Finally, it is the 
business of a host of custom-house officers to see that you and your train 
of helpers do not take a step to the right hand, or to the left, in your 
progress, till you are all fairly housed in the filthy den, which they 
dignify by the style and title of “ Douanes Royales.” 

Among tke numerous hotels of Calais—more in number than in any 
other town of its size in Europe, and upon the whole better adapted 
respectively to the wants and habits of the persons who frequent them— 
we shall, having our traveller entirely at our mercy, give him the choice 
of two only—the snug little Hotel de l’Europe, in the Rue Royale, and 
the Hotel de la Couronne (half a step higher in grade), situated close to 
one of the gates of the port. Calais, though not including a single indi- 
vidual object of particular interest, is well worth a few hours’ general 
examination—especially as the first foreign town at which our traveller 
arrives. But he will do well to defer this till to-morrow—merely 
attending to his personal comforts to-night, by ordering a good dinner 
(which, as he will not get it till seven o’clock, he may, as a first approach 
to foreign habits, call a supper), and then seeing to the comforts of his 
bed-room, toilet, &c. If he is not a long sitter after dinner, he cannot- 
do better than finish the evening by passing an hour or so of it at 
the theatre—not, however, without having first sipped his cup of café 
noir immediately after his fruit—which he will find one of the most 

_ agreeable, as well as healthful, of French dinner-table habits. 

Turspay.—Having taken his place in one of the afternoon diligences 
for Dunkerque, our traveller will spend the rest of the day in walking 
through the various streets of Calais; visiting the port and pier ; getting a 
sight (if he can) of the tribe of “ fine animals” (as Mr. O’Connel would 
call them) who get their pittance of black bread and dried cod-fish, by 
catching shrimps on the sands; making the tour of the ramparts ; 
entering the church; examining the shops; taking a glance at the 
various hotels ; looking in at one or two of the best appointed cafés ; 
and, if his dinner and time of departure permit, wandering here and 
_ there outside some of the gates, to get an unintelligible notion of the 
fortifications which shut in this lively and pleasant little town. At either 
three or five o’clock he will quit Calais by the Basse-Ville, having pre- 
viously paid, for his various accommodations since his arrival yesterday 
afternoon, the sum of twelve shillings, English money. This is, without 
exception, the dearest bill he will have to pay during his journey, in 
erate to the accommodations he will receive in return; for Calais 
is the dearest provincial town in all France, and its hotels especially ; 
and moreover, its authorities, in consequence of the unrivalled advantages 
of its situation, are enabled to exact dues for luggage, passport, &c., 
which are not demanded elsewhere. 

Quitting Calais at 5, p.m., our traveller will reach Dunkerque at about 

-past ten, passing through Gravelines in his route—a town remark- 

able for nothing but its dead and desolate appearance, and for the open 

effrontery (as it will seem to an English traveller) with which its in- 

habitants pursue their almost exclusive occupation of smuggling. He 

will probably observe, in passing through the principal street, piles of 

spirit kegs, with each a large paving-stone attached to it by a cord, 

ready to be shipped off to the coast of England the first favourable night, 
212 


244 Travelling Particularities : [Sepr. 


and dropped into the water at a point where the ebbing tide will leave 
them dry, to be picked up by accomplices on the other side. They, no 
doubt, think this kind of “ free trade” all very just and honourable ; and 
it would be hard to prove that they are very wrong in so thinking, since 
they risk, and are prepared to take the consequences, of being caught in 
the pursuing of it. The somewhat ungracious truth perhaps is, that the 
only difference against smuggling, as compared with most other modes 
of “ getting an honest livelihood,” is, that the former engenders habits of 
reckless courage which sometimes lead to the most fatal crimes. In 
passing into and out of Gravelines, our traveller will remark the singular 
effect of the triple line of fortifications, by which it is defended on all 
sides but that of the sea. It is by far the strongest town he will pass 
through during his journey. On reaching Dunkerque he will get to bed 
as soon as may be, at the Hotel du Chapeau Rouge. 

WepneEspay.—As we cannot well allow our traveller more than one 
whole day at Dunkerque, we must engage him to “ be stirring with the 
lark ;” for the town is not ouly well worth a general examination, but it: 
includes several individual objects, each of which will repay a particular 
visit of an hour or so. As Dunkerque is built on a singularly regular 
plan for so old a town (the principal streets all branching off from the 
four corners of the Grande Place, and being intersected at right angles by 
the secondary ones, &c.), half of it may well enough be run over in the 
couple of hours preceding breakfast—that is to say, if our traveller is 
blessed with alimentary organs that admit of this liberty being taken with 
them. The rest of the day, till a late dinner, will be filled up by separate 
visits, during the course of which, the rest of the town will necessarily be 
seen. The port (which isa singularly fine and extensive one) and its 
dependencies, form the chief points of attraction. In particular, the 
great basin, with its sluices, which have lately been completed, and the 
object of which is gradually to wash away the bar which at present 
impedes the entrance of vessels of very heavy burthen into the harbour, 
is a noble work, finely imagined, and admirably executed If our 
traveller is lucky enough to have hit upon a day on which the sluices 
are put into action (which is, however, not more than about once a-week), 
he may witness one of the finest sights, of its kind, that can be seen, and 
one, the grandeur of which can scarcely be imagined beforehand, as 
connected with a work of mere art. The body of water, first retamed 
within the basin by the sluice gates, and afterwards (at low water) let 
out by them in a tremendous torrent durmg more than two hours, acts 
visibly upon the whole body of water at the mouth of the harbour, at not 
less than two miles distant from the shore; and so violent is the effect 
within the harbour, that a signal flag is hung out at various points, for 
several hours before the intended opening of the sluices, to warn the 
vessels of the necessity of putting on additional moorings. The objects 
next in point of interest are, the fine old square belfry tower, standing 
detached near one corner of the Grande Place ; and the noble facade of 
the principal church, close to the same spot. The view from the top of 
the first of these is well worth the trouble of mounting to see ; and the 
interior of the latter will of course be visited with some minuteness. 
Not that it contains anything in the way of pictures or decorations that 
‘calls for very particular attention: but there can be no such thing met 
with in a Catholic country, as a church that will not, on some account or 
other, repay a passing visit from the inhabitant of a Protestant country. 
The minor points of interest at Dunkerque are, the two other churches ; 


1828.) A Cheap Journey. 245 


the excellent arrangements of the locks, drawbridges, &c., connected with 
the various canals that intersect the whole surrounding. country, and 
meet here, as at a centre; the little Park, and the Plain, as they are 
called—open spaces of cheerful green, which are seldom to be met with 
in close towns on the continent ; the Caserne, the Salle de Spectacle, &c. 
The evening of to-day can scarcely be better filled up than by a walk to 
Rosendal, a very pretty village closely adjoining to one of the gates, and 
consisting entirely of gardens and summer-houses, including three or 
four public ones, to which the whole population of the place flock on the 
afternoon of every fine Sunday of spring and summer. The day’s ex- 
penses (including the fare of yesterday’s diligence from Calais) will be 
within ten shillings. 

Tuurspay.—aAt six o'clock to-day’ our traveller will start by the 
barque on his way to Bruges. For the first ten miles or so, his journey 
will be insipid enough, on account of the absolute flatness of the country 
through which the canal is cut. But in fine weather there must always 
be something pleasant in gliding along in the open air through meadows 
and cornfields, or between scattered villages : to say nothing of everything 
being pleasant that is new. At about nine o'clock the boat is changed, 
at a little hut on the frontier between France and the Netherlands. There 
is no delay, but the second boat immediately proceeds to Furnes, which 
it reaches about eleven. Furnes is a little insignificant town, of which 
enough is seen in passing through it on foot to reach the third boat, 
which starts for Nieuport immediately on the arrival of that from the 
frontier. In about two hours more you reach Nieuport, through the 
same absolutely flat and uninteresting country. At Nieuport the charac- 
ter of the conveyance improves, and with it the country through which 
you pass. You are fairly in the Netherlands, where the cottages, and 
every thing else, have an air of more ease, as well as neatness, than 
heretofore. In short, after Nieuport, every thing has a Flemish look, 
which is a great step in advance towards an English one, in point of 
comfort and completeness. This last boat does not reach Bruges till 
between seven and eight ; so that the journey (of about thirty miles) 
occupies nearly ten hours.—It costs four shillings and sixpence, including 
the gratuities expected by the boatmen. It must not be supposed that 
we would recommend this mode of reaching the interior of the Nether- 
lands from France, as possessing a balance of advantages over the other 
public mode by diligence ; for assuredly its cheapness does not make up 
for its tediousness, even where (as in our journey) economy is a main 
consideration. We have chosen it simply because it is by far the less 
beaten track, and because there is no other means of becoming acquainted 
with the kind of scenery, &c., that here presents itself. 

If our traveller should have hitherto found himself somewhat ennuyé 
by to-day’s journey, the conclusion of it will at once revive and recom- 
pense him. Bruges is a noble relic of the olden days. For an air of 
green and flourishing old age, there are few continental towns that can 
compare with it, and none in England that bear it the slightest re- 
semblance. A sufficing notion of its great extent will be gained, by the 
distance that must be walked, from the spot where the boat arrives, to 
the centre of the town—where the hotel which we shall choose is 
situated—the Hotel d’Angleterre, Rue des Pierres. Our traveller will 
reach his resting-place just in time to put himself a little to rights before 
the Table d’Héte supper is announced ; which he will of course partake 
of; for the ludicrous indifference of the Flemings to their worldly 


246 Travelling Particularities: [Sxupr. 


interests is such, that the arrangement and correspondence of the various 
boats in which the day’s journey has been performed, has not allowed 
him a single quarter of an hour for refreshment, &c. 

Fripay.—As the particular nature of our plan does not admit of 
more than one day being allowed to that which might well enough 
occupy five or six—(as ia the case of Bruges, for example)—our travel- 
ler will, of course, make the most of the little time he has. He does not 
travel (this time at least) to “take his ease at his inn,’ but to cast fur 
tive glances at a vast variety of objects, and not permit his attention, if 
it be ever so disposed, to dwell and repose upon any. Whatever, there~ 
fore, his habits may be at home, here he must contrive to be up and 
_ abroad not long after the sun ; especially as he can, without any preju~ 

dice to his views, gain at night what he loses in tie morning. 

Before breakfast, to day, he cannot do better than wander about at 
random, from the central point where his hotel is situated, and let things 
in general produce their own impressions upon him. But after break- 
fast, he had better take some one with him, to conduct him, by the 
shortest road, \to the most noticeable objects and points of observation: 
He will find plenty of “ guides” at his inn door, and the worst of them 
will prove quite as useful and instructive as the best he can purchase at 
the booksellers’ shops. 

In a Flemish town the churches are always the chief points of interest, 
and not one should be passed by without a visit. Among the other 
public edifices of this fe and most characteristic old town, there are 
two of peculiar interest—the spire of the Town Hall, in the Grande 
Place, and the belfry tower, in the Great Market. 

In the matter of meals, our traveller will of course have the good 
sense to follow the customs of the country he is in—which, in Flanders, 
will conveniently divide his day into three parts, and thus allow three 
agreeable intervals of rest from his pleasant labours. He will return to 
his inn to an early breakfast ; dine at the Table d’Hote at between one 
and two; and sup in the same manner at between eight and nine: for 
every thing of this kind goes on like clockwork among the sober- 
thoughted Flemings. 

Before retiring to rest to-night, he will make his arrangements for 
starting by the boat to Ghent, at nine to-morrow—an hour which allows 
him time to take another wander through some of the two hundred and 
fifty fine old streets of which Bruges consists. His bill, on quitting 
his hotel after breakfast to-morrow, will be twelve shillings, includmg 
the proper gratuities to servants, and also wine, and such like wn-ne- 
cessaries—which, however, he is not expected to take, unless it suits 
his views and habits to do so. Twelve shillings for two nights’ lodg- 
ing, two breakfasts, and three dinners !—for the suppers may be looked 
upon as late dinners, and are served as profusely as if they were so— 
soup only excepted. It is in fact a “ vulgar prejudice” to suppose that 
travelling is not singularly cheap on the continent, and a still more 
vulgar practice to make it otherwise (as most of our countrymen do), 
by not falling in with the hours, habits, and tastes of those whom. they 
come among. An hotel keeper in Flanders had rather you would dine 
for a florin (about one shilling and eight-pence) at his Table d’Hote, 
and partake of ten different dishes, than pay him treble that sum for 
preparing you two or three at an unseasonable hour. i 

Sarurpay.—Having taken his ramble, and then- his breakfast, our 
traveller will, at-nine o’clock, step: on-board the Ghent boat, and com~ 


1828. ] A Cheap Journey. 247 


mence one of the pleasantest days that can’ be imagined, if he happens 
to be fortunate in his weather, his temper, and his fellow travellers. 
These boats are always filled with company ; so that he will feel no lack 
of food for observation in that particular. The accommodations, and 
the rate of going are, by contrast with those of the two previous days’ 
journeys, every thing that can be desired. And, above all, the scenery 
through which the journey lies is perfectly and uniformly agreeable 
throughout. In fact, though the track of the canal from Bruges to 
Ghent does not present a single striking point of view, it would be very 
difficult to name one of the same length in any country, which is more 
caleulated at once to please and satisfy the spectator ;—unless, indeed, he 
is one who travels in search of the picturesque. In this latter case, he 
has no business in the Netherlands at all; for there, on the one hand, 
nothing is suffered to run to waste or fall into decay ; and, on the other 
hand, cultivation is carried to the very utmost point of perfection that is 
consistent with profit and utility, but not a step farther ; and thus two 
grand sources of the “ picturesque” are utterly cut off. The agreeableness 
(for we must not call it beauty) of all that our traveller will meet with 
to-day in the way of external scenery, will be found, on examination, to 
result from its perfect appropriateness and adaptation to the purposes 
sought to be derived from it; and that it never rises into beauty may 
perhaps be attributed to the fact, that utility is the obvious and para- 
mount object of it all ; and though all that is beautiful is, for that reason 
alone, useful, that which is merely useful is seldom or never beautiful. 
Hitherto, since he quitted France, our traveller (if an English one) 
must have been struck with the grievous contrast between the external 
scenery which he has come among, and that which he left behind him. 
To-day, all such feelings will be put an end to the moment he com-~ 
mences his journey. Instead of interminable districts of open marshes, 
partly drained by the wet ditches which intersect them every here and 
there, he will see bright meadows, or rich corn fields, or neat gardens, 
all divided from each other by high black thorn or other hedge-rows. . 
Instead of here and there a scraggy ash rising out of endless lines of 
grey pollard willows, he will find a profusion of wood everywhere, and 
of every variety, and all flourishing as if it loved the spot where it is 
placed. Finally, instead of sad, sorrowful looking houses, large enough 
and wretched enough for a barrack, or little ruined sheds, scarcely big 
enough for a dog-kennel, he will see either handsome chateaux, where an 
air of orderly propriety reigns over every part, or lines of neat cottages, 
all different, but all painted like pictures, and their bright window 
panes seeming to beam forth the air of quiet comfort that dwells within. 
In short, instead of that dreary monotony which bespeaks, if not actual 
misery, at least that general indifference to comfort, which is almost as 
bad, he will meet with that pleasant monotony which bespeaks the gene- 
ral and almost equable diffusion of the fruits of an easy and flourishing 
prosperity. 

From Bruges to Ghent, the canal winds about like an English cross 
‘road; it is green with turf to its very waters; and its sides are orna- 
mented, almost without intermission, by lines of fine young forest trees. 
During the first half or so of the journey these consist chiefly of ashes, 
oaks, Lombardy poplars, and a few willows—only just enough of the 
latter to give a soft appearance to the scenery, without giving it a cold 
and grey one. During the latter half, the banks rise abruptly into a 
sort of high causeway of turf, on either side, on the top of which is a 


249 Travelling Particularities : [Serr. 


narrow road for the small vehicles of the peasantry, shaded by a double 
row of beautiful young beeches. This continues almost unbroken till 
within a very short distance of Ghent. About four or five miles on this 
side of Ghent, the canal divides into two a most pretty village, consisting 
half of handsome country houses, half of bright-coloured cottages ; and 
immediately on passing this, the noble old city of Ghent rises dimly in the 
distance, out of the dense mass of trees which intervenes. This view is 
a fine exception to the general absence of any thing striking in the 
scenery of the day’s journey. 

On reaching, at about half past four o’clock, the quay of the canal, at 
the entrance of Ghent, our traveller will be besieged by numerous por- 
ters, lacqueys, and guides, from the whole of whom he will do well at 
once to escape, by putting himself and his portmanteau into the Brussels’ 
diligence, which he will see standing in an open space on the opposite 
side of the basin :—leaving Ghent to be visited on his return. This dili- 
gence is connected with the boat, and starts immediately on the arrival 
of the latter. The journey is performed at least as quickly and com- 
modiously as those by our ordinary stages, and is concluded about eleven 
at night. The expenses of the whole day, including an excellent dinner 
in the boat (the very best that will be met with on the journey) will 
amount to less than ten shillings. It should here be observed that, 
though in the journey from London to Calais, we have, by implication, 
advised our traveller to choose the inferior part of the vessel, on account 
of the great difference in expense, as compared with the merely ima- 
ginary difference in accommodation, we have ever since placed him, as 
a matter of course, in the best places out of three—because here it was 
not in the least degree worth while to dispense with the positive com- 
forts that the difference would afford him, especially in the case of bad 
weather. But it is right to mention, that in almost every case he might 
have made the journey, in the same vehicle, for considerably less than 
the price we have named. On reaching Brussels, he will desire to be 
conducted to the Hétel de Suede, Rue de l’ Evéque. 

Sunpay —Onur traveller has now reached a very lively, stirring, well- 
conducted, and agreeable city ; but one which is as much overrated in 
some respects as it is underrated in others. He will, however, not be 
so unreasonable as to expect, that the two or three days which his plans 
permit him to devote to Brussels, will enable him to do more than gain 
a general and superficial notion of it. It is to this end alone, therefore, 
that our desultory hints will be directed. 

The first random sally forth of our traveller from the central point, at 
which we have placed him, will give him the idea of a busy, flourishing, 
and populous provincial city, consisting of many poor, some tolerable, 
and afew good, but not one fine or striking street, or public place what- 
ever ; and, with a single exception, this impression will only be the 
more confirmed the more he sees. Further (still with one exception), 
he will meet with no fine public edifices finely placed—no richness in 
the private residences—no splendour in the shops—and no striking 
general effect in the ensemble of any particular spot, or collection of 
buildings, public or private. In short (still with the one general excep- 
tion that we have already made), he would, not knowing to the con- 
trary, never suppose himself in the capital of a kingdom, and the resi- 
dence of a court, but, on the contrary (as we have hinted above), in a 
crowded, bustling, and wealthy, but ill-constructed and_ ill-arranged 
provincial town. His first morning’s ramble will probably leave this 


1828. ] A Cheap Journey. 249 


kind of impression ; for it is not likely that he will have found his way 
already to the fine exception which is presently to offer itself to all that 
we have said. Not to keep him long in suspense, he had best devote 
the middle and after-part of his first day to getting rid of this impres- 
sion: which he will find a very unpleasant one, if any thing has led him 
to look for one of an exactly opposite nature. To this end he has only 
to inquire his way to the Place Royale, which he will reach by a long, 
winding, mounting, and irregular street—the best in Brussels, and if 
not much worse, certainly not much better, than the best in Bristol. 
Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the spot he has 
now reached, and those which he has passed through to reach it. Let 
him now at once place himself in the centre of this fine, though not very 
spacious, square of noble houses, and he will see before him one of the 
finest coups-d’ceil in Europe, of its kind. That from the centre of the 
Place de Louis XV. in Paris, is inferior to it in one or two particulars, 
and is not much superior to it in any, except its vast extent and variety. 
In London we have nothing that can compare with it. In order, how- 
ever, to take in the whole extent of the coup-d’ail, it must be viewed 
from a little farther on, where the Place Royale opens out into the great 
square, formed by the buildings surrounding the Park. From this 
point of view the eye takes in three palaces—(those of the King, the 
Prince of Orange, and the States General)—several ranges of private 
houses, the noble taste of which gives them the air of palaces, and the 
principal sides of the Place Royale itself, the effect of which is scarcely 
inferior to any of the other parts of the view. The centre of the vast 
oblong square formed by all these, is occupied by what is called the 
Park—a spot which, though little answerable to the English meaning of 
the name, is a most delightful promenade, blending the regularity of the 
French mode of arranging grounds with the luxuriance of the English 
mode, in a very novel and effective manner. 

Having placed our traveller in view of this really fine and delightful 
part of Brussels, we shall leave him to pursue his own course, that being 
almost always the most agreeable, and, consequently, the most likely to 
produce permanently agreeable impressions and recollections. This 
desultory ramble of to-day will probably have shewn him all the fine, 
that is to say all the modern portion of Brussels—consisting of the streets 
adjacent to the great square, the delightful new Boulevards, the new 
Porte Guillaume, the buildings that are in progress as part of the new 
Botanic Garden, and, finally, the noble Allée Vere, a magnificent quad. 
ruple line of old elms and linden trees mixed, forming one of the most 
striking and perfect promenades of the kind in Europe, and running 
unbroken along the right bank of the Antwerp Canal for two miles. 
By the by, this noble avenue is one striking exception to our position, 
that no part of Brussels is at all fine, or conveys the idea of a great 
capital, but those portions which are modern. 

aving indulged our traveller with one whole day’s desultory ramble, 
we would counsel him to conclude it at one of the two theatres, looking 
in at the Café des Milles Colonnes in his way: and then make his 
arrangements for to-morrow, by procuring (through the waiter at his 
inn) a decent guide to the rest of the sights at Brussels; for utterly as 
we would discountenance this mode of sight-seeing under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, it is, in the present case, a necessary nuisance that cannot be 
dispensed with. 

M.M. New Series.~—Vou. VI. No. 33. 9K 


250 Travelling Particularities : [Serr 


Monvay.—To-day, our traveller had better devote his time fo visiting 
all those objects which possess an external interest only ; such as the 
public squares, the portes, the market places, the fountains, the quays, 
&c.; during the course of which examination he will over-run every 
part of the town that he need desire to see. The only very remarkable 
of the squares, after those alluded to above, is that called the Grande 
Place, in the centre of the town, where are situated the Hotel de Ville, 
‘a building of great interest for its antiquity. The Place de la Monnaie 
is the next in interest. It contains the new theatre—a building as much 
vaunted for its beauty as it deserves to be condemned for its absolute 
ugliness. In fact, it is as ugly outside as it is inside: which is the 
utmost that can be said in the way of depreciation. It has, however, 
the merit of being entirely detached. Among the fountains, perhaps the 
most remarkable is one in the Place du Grand Sablon, built, in 1768, 
by an English nobleman (Lord Bruce), to commemorate and repay the 
pleasure he enjoyed during a lengthened residence in this city. 

It is probable that an early breakfast will enable our traveller to see 
all that is needful in the above department of sights before dinner ; in 
which case he will devote the after-part of the day to the interior of 
some of the churches—all of which should, if possible, be looked into, 
and some dwelt upon with particular attention. He cannot do better 
than conclude his day at the cafés and theatres, as before; there he is 
sure of amusement, and (in the former in particular) can never lack food 
for observation. 

Turspay.—Again the churches,—which, as they are only eleven or 
twelve in number, a long day may finish. That which merits most 
attention is St. Gudule. Its exterior has that fine advantage, in point of 
effect, of being entered (at its principal door at least) by a flight of 
steps, about forty in number. Its interior is embellished, among other 
antiquities, by one of those carved oak pulpits, of which so many are 
to be seen in the continental churches; and particularly the Flemish ones. 
‘This is perhaps the finest of them all. It is, in fact, executed with infi= 
nite force, spirit, and truth. The subject of it (including the supports, 
&c.) is Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, the figures being the size 
of life-—Again finish by the cafés and theatres ; for of these a passing 
visitor of a foreign country cannot have too much. 

Wepnespay:-—To-day will be principally occupied by a visit to the 
Museum of Pictures, the Public Library, the Cabinet of Natural His- 
tory, and the Botanic Garden—all of which are united at the Palace of 
the Old Court, as it is called. None of these collections are very distin- 
guished in their several classes ; but all will repay a brief visit. After 
he has dispatched them, our traveller may, if he pleases, make an effort. 
to see the interior of the royal palaces. Whether he succeed or not in 
gaining admittance, will depend on the circumstances of the moment. 
That of Schoonenberg, situated at a village two miles from the town, is 
well worth a visit, dnd may, with proper management, be made to come 
within the limits of our circumscribed plan; to which end the other 
palaces may, if necessary; be well enough passed over. 

» We must to-night venture to mulct our traveller of his due portion of 
rest, in order to gain for him a whole day at Ghent. He will make 
_ his arrangements to leave Brussels by the diligence, which starts at — 
about midnight, and reaches Ghent by about six in the morning. | His 
bill at the hotel will amount to thirteen shillings, which will include a 


1828.) A Cheap Journey. 251 


pint of good wine at each dinner, and the gratuities to servants. The 
items of his bill will consist of three nights’ ledgings, three breakfasts, 
and three dinners—all excellent in their way. We have not reckoned 
upon his taking any thing at his holel after dinner, having allowed him 
carte blanche at the café. We shall reckon these latter, together with 
theatres, gratuities to guide, servants at public institutions, &c., at seven 
shillings more—making his whole expences at this chief place amount to 
one pound sterling. 

Tuurspay.—Ghent. Hotel de Vienne, Marché aux Grains.—Our tra- 
veller, if not a singularly well seasoned one, will not be much disposed 
towards arandom ramble, after rumbling over pavé all night. And it is 
not much matter ; for he might wander all day long in this great but by 
no means agreeable city, without meeting with any thing worth his par- 

. ticular attention. His plan, therefore, will be to take an early break- 
fast, and then immediately provide himself with the means of arriving 
by the shortest road at all that zs worth seeing here. As at Brussels and 
Bruges, the churches will be the chief points of attraction; and he will 
find more good pictures in one or two of them than in all those of Brus- 
sels united. Besides the churches, the chief objects of interest are, the 
Botanical Garden ; the University, with its Museum of Natural History, 
&e.; the Academy of Painting, &c.; and the celebrated prison, called 
the Maison de Force. The time of our traveller, after having visited all 
the churches, will not allow him to see the whole of tlie institutions just 
named ; therefore he will choose between them, as his taste may direct. 

-Let him bear in mind, however, that museums of natural history, bota- 
nical gardens, and libraries of books can be seen every where, and are 
every where pretty much alike; but a fine picture is a thing individual 
to itself, and like no other thing in existence: consequently, that to miss 
the sight of one that might have been seen is to sustain a loss that 
nothing else can repair. There is in this city a very fine private collec- 
tion of pictures, belonging to a Mr. Skamp, to which access may be 
gained without much difficulty. If, therefore, our traveller can contrive 
to see these, at the expense of abandoning all the above-named lions of 
Ghent, he will be wise to do so. At night he will visit the cafés of the 
Place d’Armes, and then retire to an early bed—having previously 
arranged to start for Bruges by the barque to-morrow at about nine, and 
from thence to proceed onward immediately by another to Ostend. His 

_ expenses at this place will amount to fourteen shillings, including four 
and sixpence for his diligence from Brussels last night. : 

Frray.—Our traveller will do well, instead of breakfasting at his 
inn, and then getting into the barque from the quay, to rise early enough 
to allow him time to walk on to a little village with some unspeakable 
Flemish name, about five miles from Ghent, on the banks of the canal. 
Here he will breakfast at one of the little delicately nice cabarets, and 
will perchance grow romantic in his admiration of the quiet happiness 
that seems to reign every where around. There will be no great harm 
done if he forms certain indefinite plans of, “ some day or other,” coming 
back to live here, in a charming little house that shall cost him some 
eight or ten pounds sterling per annum, and surrounded by all sorts of 
agrémens, except that greatest of all in the eyes of some folks—the 
facility of Same money! If he should form such a plan, we will 
answer for his being able to put it in practice—always provided he does 
not insist on spending more than about a hundred and fifty pounds a year 

2K 2 


252 Travelling Particularities : [Sepr. 


upon a family of six or seven persons. The barque will take him in at 
this village, about ten o'clock, and will convey him to Bruges by three 
—through the uniformly agreeable tract of scenery which we have before 
glanced at. On his arrival at Bruges, another barque will be waiting to 
receive him at the opposite extremity of the city. This he mustreach by 
a somewhat tiresome walk of not much less than three miles, over round- 
headed paving stones ; unless, indeed, he prefers paying the price of his 
whole journey to Ostend for being conveyed thither in one of the coaches 
that will in all probability be waiting for this purpose. The Ostend 
barque will start immediately all the passengers have had time to get on 
board. 

Immediately on setting his foot in the barque that is to convey him to 
Ostend, our traveller will observe a striking difference, to the disadvan- 
tage of the scenery, on either side him, as compared with that adjoin- 
ing to the opposite extremity of the city ; and every mile he proceeds it 
will become poorer and poorer ; till, at length, he will wish himself at 
his journey’s end before he gets there—which we cannot think was the 
case in the previous part of the day. However, his journey is but a 
short one. He will reach Ostend in time for a late dinner, or an early . 
supper—whichever name he is minded to call it by—and will have to 
pay five shillings for his whole day’s travelling, &c., including his break- 
fast. He will choose for his inn the Lion d’Or. 

Sarurpay.—A place may be very agreeable to look about oneself in, 
even for a whole day, without having any thing worth describing, or 
even remembering: and such a place is Ostend. Like Dunkerque, it is 
built for the most part on a regular plan; its streets intersecting each 
other at right angles. But it wants that air of mingled liveliness and 
comfort which makes Dunkerque the most agreeable looking town in all 
this part of the Continent. There are some spacious open squares in 
Ostend: that in which the Lion d’Or is situated is the chief. There is 
also a good elevated walk looking on the sea. But, upon the whole, 
Ostend is somewhat triste, and by no means attractive to any but those 
who love quiet and their own company more than all other things. 
Above all, there is one fault about Ostend, which cannot be forgiven to 
any town, even though it were E] Dorado itself, namely, the grass grows 
between the stones of some of its streets. Au reste, it is one of the 
cheapest dwelling-places that can any where be pitched upon; and its 
position gives it many advantages in this respect. But our traveller 
will find little to admire in it, after what he has seen elsewhere ; and he 
will probably not be sorry to take leave of it at day-break to-morrow by 
the London steamer, and thus conclude a journey which, we venture to 
persuade ourselves, he will set down as at once the cheapest, pleasantest, 
and most instructive that he has ever performed, supposing, as we have 
done all along, that it is the first he has made out of his own country. 
His bill at Ostend (including all expenses of embarkation, &c.) will 
amount to about twelve shillings ; and his passage to London (in the 
best cabin) thirty-five, including the necessary refreshments. 

Finally, our traveller will please to bear in mind, that we pledge our- 
selves to the correctness of every particular that we have here put 
down ; and if he will take the trouble to reckon up the amount of his 
alleged expenses, he will find we were considerably within bounds in 
stating, that the whole cost will not be more than that of spending an 
idle fortnight at Brighton or Cheltenham. é 


1828.) [ 253 J 


METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS. 


As our palaces and public buildings, and all the various improvements 
of the metropolis are so rapidly approaching to completion, it is time for 
every lover of the arts to look about him, and to see and judge of the 
manner in which so much public money is expended ; for although those 
who pay for all this mass of masonry that is rising around us, have no 
control over it, yet they are not debarred the comfort of criticising. 
The liberty of praise and blame is left to the public ;_and the journalists, 
as well as our contemporary periodicals, have certainly not been sparing 
of their criticisms. So generally, indeed, has the public opinion been 
expressed upon the merits—or rather the demerits of one building, which 
proves the principal feature of these improvements, that, for a wonder, 
it attracted the notice of a high personage, who either out of deference 
to the public, or actuated by his own good taste, gave immediate direc- 
tions that the defect complained of should be remedied by an additional 
expenditure of 25,000/. on each of the wings of the palace: for such 
is the amount which this alteration is to cost according to Mr. Nash’s 
evidence before a select committee of the House of Commons. The 
palace is by this means rendered a much more sightly building, but still 
it wants to be relieved of the square towers and preposterously small 
dome—which Mr. Nash himself acknowledges he did not think would 
be so conspicuous from the park. In criticising any building, erected as 
this is, under the immediate control of a personage whom nobody may 
contradict, we can find much apology for an architect which he may not, 
and does not make for himself. In every-day life how many of the con- 
structions of the architect are spoiled by the ignorant interference of his 
employer, who dictates a room here, or a portico there, which the judg- 
ment of the architect knows to be misplaced, but to which dictation he is 
obliged to bow-—There are, however, a great many beauties in this 
palace, and while the public have so generally condemned the front 
towards the park, the really elegant western, or garden facade, seems 
has been entirely overlooked and unmentioned. Had the palace, how- 
ever, been an assemblage of beauties, we should still have reiterated our 
former opinion of its being misplaced. ' 

Either of the spots pointed out by Mr. Soane, or by Colonel Trench, 
would have been far superior in any point of view. 

Mr. Soane’s plan was to have placed it at the top of Constitution-hill, 
with an entrance from a triumphal arch at the Piccadilly end ; and to have 
formed a road through the park and Downing-street to the House of 
Lords ; so that the King, in his progress to open or prorogue Parliament, 
should pass through one continued line of public buildings, consisting of 
Buckingham-house, St. James’s-palace, the Horse-guards, triumphal 
arches to the memories of the Battle of Trafalgar and Waterloo, all the 
seman offices, and finally, Westminster-hall and the courts of 

w. 

This was a grand conception, and was, we believe, once so well thought 
of in high quarters, that a portion of the general design was commenced ; 
but change of men or of measures—a sudden and unusual fit of eeonomy— 
the fear of Mr. Hume, or some other paralyser of the progress of art, 
prevented its accomplishment. 

Colonel Trench, in the improvements recommended by him, proposed 
two situations for thepalace ; one in the centre of Hyde Park, by which 


254 Metropolitan Improvements. [Szpr. 


means the beautiful gardens of Kensington might have been made 
available ; and the other in the Green Park, somewhere in the neighbour- 
hood of the present basin. Any of these situations, from being more ele- 
vated, would have been far preferable to the hollow in which Buckingham 
Palace is placed—and there would have been no necessity for the excava- 
tion of artificial lakes, the only apology for which is the necessity for an 
artificial mound or mountain to shut out unpleasant neighbours. 

The choice of situation did not, however, depend upon the architect, 
and therefore no blame should rest with him upon this score. He has an 
opportunity now of redeeming the credit of his palace, and we shall leave 
all further criticism on its merits till its completion. 

It was our intention, in this paper, to have taken up the improvements 
proposed by Colonel Trench in the year 1826, and to have compared 
them with those which are actually taking place under the direction 
of Mr. Nash, and those which have been proposed by other projectors— 
but we find this comparison would so far exceed our present limits, that 
we must postpone it for some future number, when Mr. Soane’s and 
Colonel Trench’s books, together with the new improvements, shall have 
our full consideration. 

At present we must confine ourselves to things as they are, and not 
diverge into things as they might have been. 

Carlton House, that scene of royal revelry, whose saloons have so often 
echoed to the wit of Sheridan, Fox, Windham, and Tierney—to the 
follies and coxcombry of Brummell—and to others that we must not— 
or at least, shall not speak of, has disappeared. This looks as though 
Mr. Barber Beaumont, with his great staring front at the County Fire 
Office, had literally looked his sovereign out of countenance. For there 
stands the fire office, the production of Mr. Barber Beaumont and his 
engineers, while poor Carlton House is levelled with the ground. 

The principal beauty of this building, consisted in its portico, which 
was most injudiciously hid from the public admiration by the screen 
which we all remember in Pall Mall. A great dispute has arisen as to 
the appropriation of these columns. Mr. Nash’s plan is to add eight - 
more to them, and to construct a fountain temple—that is, a temple with 
a fountain in the centre of it—in the opening between the houses which 
are now erecting to form Carlton House-terrace. The Select Committee 
of the House of Commons appointed to investigate the office of works 
and public buildings, and, if possible, to sift the jobs to the bottom, however 
object to this temple ; first on account of the cost of 1000/. per annum, 
which they think too much to pay for water—and we most cordially 
agree with them—and secondly, because they wish patriotically that this 
great opening should terminate by a grand flight of steps, for the use of 
the public, leading into St. James’s Park. We, for our own parts, hope 
that the recommendation of the Select Committee on this point will be 
carried into effect ; for we would not have this opening obstructed, and 
the park shut out from our view by the most beautiful temple that the 
elegant fancy of Mr. Nash could design; a spot of green in the midst of — 
a metropolis is delicious ; and we would not change its freshness for all 
the beauties which bricks and mortar—or even Parian marble might 
assume under the hands of the most tasteful artist in the world. 

Carlton House-terrace is rapidly growing into shape—immense quan- 
ties of rubbish and earth are hourly casting into this space to give it its 
intended elevation, which is, why or wherefore we could never under- 


1828.] Metropolitan Improvements. 955 


stand, to be ten or a dozen feet above the level of Pall.Mall. The right 
wing of the terrace is all in carcase, and undergoing the disgraceful 
process of cement—we say disgraceful, because buildings of this calibre 
—and improvements of this magnitude, in such a metropolis as that of 
England, ought not to be executed in such a perishable and gingerbread 
commodity. 

In the left wing Mr. Nash, or rather the government, has been treated 
very shabbily by certain noble applicants for the ground: When the 
plan was first proposed for building dwellings on the site of Carlton 
House gardens, the applications for the ground was so numerous, that 
Mr. Nash had the greatest difficulty not to offend, in selecting the highest 
of the aristocratic applicants, who wished to place their domiciles on the 
ci-devant seat of royalty. 

Either the lack of amoney, change of disposition, or some other cause, 

has however prevented many of these selected applicants from confirming 
their agreements, and a great portion of the ground has, therefore, been left 
uponhand. This ground might easily be disposed of to building specula- 
tion, but such a disposal of it would risk the derangement of the original plan 
of keeping this ‘ quarter’ a kind of reserve for the élite of the high people 
ef London. To prevent, however, the plan from remaining incomplete, 
and the place thus becoming for some years a detriment and nuisance to 
its nighbourhood rather than an ornament to the park and the metropolis, 
Mr. Nash, has with a spirit worthy of his projected improvements, under- 
taken the whole of the remaining buildings on his own account, and 
the foundations are now actually laying at his expense. 
_ The New United Service Club erecting under the superintendence of 
Mr. Nash, and the Atheneum building under the direction of Mr. 
Decimus Burton are also rapidly proceeding. These buildings form the 
entrance to the new square opposite Waterloo-place, and are most inju- 
diciously made dissimilar—a circumstance which is in some measure 
explained by Mr. Burton in his evidence before the Committee of the 
House of Commons. 

In the United Service Club are two rooms of one hundred feet by fifty 
the floors are constructed of cast iron girders, which Mr. Nash has com- 
yelled most of the lessees in this part of his plan to use in their new 
duildings.— At the back of each of these Club Houses and of the houses 
in Pall Mall, is a large ornamental garden which will indeed, be a most 
desirable addition to the improvements; and, when Carlton House shall 
still have its opening to Charing Cross through the end of Warwick and 
Cockspur Streets, this will certainly be one of the finest parts of the 
metropolis, and be an equal credit to the projector, with the general plan 
of the New Street. Would we could say as much for the detail both of 
the public and private buildings which are comprised in these improve- 
ments, as we can of the general plan of them. 

But, while the monopoly of the Board of Works, which has in the 
late evidence given before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, 
been proved to confine all the public works to three architects only, all 
competition of taste and talent is prevented, and these three have more 
to do than twenty superior men could do sufficient justice to.—It is this 
that crowds our streets with the heavy composition of pilaster and 
columns, to which Mr. Smirke lends his name—though he really ought 
to be ashamed to permit them to come out of his office, looking like the 
cruder productions of a mere schoolboy in the art. In Mr. Soane, and 


256 Metropolitan Improvements. [Szpr. 


Mr. Nash, at least, there is invention and variety—some mark of ori- 
ginality and of thought, but in those of the third gentleman there is to 
be traced nothing but literal copies of the remains of Greek architecture, 
crowded into heavy masses like that of the Union Club House and the 
College of Physicians, which we are sorry to find is to be repeated on 
the other side of the great square that is to be formed in front of the 
Old Mews. Uniformity is certainly one admirable quality in architec- 
ture, but heaven defend us from it, when it is only to be obtained 
by one deformity being imitated by another. 
While we are on this subject, we cannot sufficiently reprobate the 
uncouth and heavy columns with which Mr. Nash is basing his terrace 
towards the park—only a few of them are yet up, and we trust that he 
will himself become sensible of their very bad effect, in time to alter this 
part of his design. 
Every Londoner owes so much to the exertion and genius of Mr. 
Nash that we wish to have no fault to find with him ; and he has with 
such bon-hommie and honesty acknowledged his faults in the New 
Palace, before the Committee of the House of Commons, that we wish 
him to have no more to acknowledge himself, or for us to find out. 
When we first saw that this Select Committee was formed, we were in 
hope that the monopoly in architecture would have been thrown open, 
but in spite of the evident maladministration as well as malconstruction 
of the office of works from which all improvements proceed, and by 
which they are also executed, they have merely recommended such a 
partial alteration as can do no effectual good. 
While there are so many young architects educated in our first 
offices, as well as students in the schools of Greece and Rome, who are 
waiting only for that opportunity to display their taste and talent, which 
is precluded them by this monopoly, it is a shame that this office is not 
constructed upon a more liberal and extended scale, and that our numer- 
ous public buildings are not laid open to the competition of talent, 
instead of being confined merely to three architects, who, during the last 
ten years, have shared upwards of 100,000/. of the public money. 


1828:] [ 267 J 
THE DURRENSTEIN. 


Tue valley of the Wachau, or rather the whole tract of the Danube, 
from Rosenburg to where the river falls into the plain of Vienna, is 
proverbially one of the most fantastic and beautiful of the south of 
Europe. A succession of all that makes the romance of landscape, 
perpetually varies before the eye; stupendous crags, deep and sunless 
defiles, solemn woods, that look as old as the days of Arminius, and 
whose paths had often heard the trampling and the shouts of the tribes 
on their march to shake the empires of the world; wailing whirlpools, 
and the central mighty stream, the father Danube himself, that unites 
the cross with the crescent, and pours the waters of the German hills 
to wash the foot of the seraglio. 

But this striking country is not yet plagued with the more than 
Egyptian plague, of being a regular haunt of summer tourists. The 
honest citizens of Vienna, almost within sight of the valley, are luckily 
bern without the organ of tourism, and have substituted for it the organ 
of cooking, fiddling, and the patrician love of a Sunday’s drive over the 
pavement of the Leopoldstat, or the plebeian love of a Sunday’s walk in 
the Prater. 

The Italian never travels, but for purposes which have more of 
philosophy than of the passion for sight seeing. He travels for the 
general good of mankind, for without him, half the dwellings of conti- 
nental Europe would be buried by the soot of their own chimnies, the 
fabric of wooden spoons and plaster images would be lost to mankind ; 
and there would be a mortality among dancing dogs, and fantoccini, from 
Paris to Petersburg. The Frenchman never travels at all, and will 
never travel while he can find all the charms of coffee, ecarté, quadrilling, 
and courtship, within the walls of one city. 

Even the English have scarcely found their way to this fine tract. 
No circulating library has yet shown its front, placarded with new novels 
from top to toe. No newspaper establishment contributes scandal to the 
great, and perplexes the little with politics on the most puzzling scale. 
No steaim-boat throws up its blackening column to distain the blue of 
the native sky for many a league behind, and no spruce bugler on the 
top of the brilliantly varnished and high-flying stage coach, shoots along 
before the startled eye, at the rate of twenty miles an hour “ stoppages 
included,” making the precipices ring to the echoes of “I’ve been 
roaming.” 

All is solitude, loftiness, and sacred silence, broken but bya gush of 
the waters foaming round some rock, or the cry of the kites and falcons 
as they sweep over the summits of the wilderness of oaks and pines. 

Yet the traveller sometimes makes his way into this scene of state- 
liness ; and twenty years ago, 1 ranged the region during a whole 
summer, until the doubt with the peasantry lay between my being a 

ician, a madman, or an agent of Napoleon, fraught with a portfolio 

of defiles, bridges, waters, and passes, which were were to bring La 
Grande Armée headlong upon their cottages in the next war. But, 
luckily, the native love of tranquillity prevailed ; and as I paid for my 
provisions with English punctuality, and without Austrian remonstrance 
at the little tax which they added to their price, as a cure for conscience 
in thus assisting the enemies of their country; as I made love to no 
man’s female establishment, and shot no great lord’s game, I was suf- 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 33. 21L 


258 The Durrenstein. [Serr, 


fered, at pleasure, to ramble, draw, eat, and pay. Like the great globe 
itself, I was kept in my position by the “ vis inertiz.” 

. But one evening my solitude was pleasantly varied by the sight of 
some berlines straggling along the road below the Castle of Durrenstein. 
‘The German postilions had of course lost their way, or pretended that 
they had lost it, as is the custom, when they know that a tolerable inn 
lies within half a mile of them, and feel more disposed to enjoy them- 
selves there than “be borrowers of the night” for ten miles further. 

I hailed the travellers, and found that they were a party of attachés to 
the foreign ministers at Vienna, who, finding the world at peace, the 
capital hot as an oven, and the dinner and dancing season at an end, 
had come to kill the month of indolence among the wonders of the 
Danube. My services were accepted, first as a guide to their berlines, 
and next, as a cicerone to themselves. I showed them the famous “ rose- 
garden” of Schreckenwold, a name whose very sound is descriptive of 
its ruthless hearer, to any who can pronounce it and live. I pointed 
out the precise locale of the iron door, where this mountain chief thrust 
his unlucky victims over the precipice, and where those who had not 
their necks broken at once, were sure to die of famine. And, after 
startling my makers of manifestos with the atrocity of a rebber “who 
destroyed mankind by one at a time, I relieved their humanity by shew- 
ing the hole, at the foot of the rock, by which the knight had escaped 
from this living grave, who was to neh the power of the robber, 
and hurl Schreckenwold among the roses of his own garden. 

With equal applause I showed them the hollow in the river side, 
where Rudiger, the merchant, entrapped the formidable brothers Had- 
mar the Kuenringer, and Heinrich van Weitra, both surnamed by the 
terrified peasantry, “the Hounds.” << There,” said I, in the words of 
the legend, “ under that weeping willow steered the bold merchant from 
Regensburg, with his decks covered with temptation. There, on the 
corner of the frowning precipice above, stood Hadmar and Heinrich, 
pike in hand, and waiting only the striking of the good ship on 
yonder fatal sandbank, to give a general order to their pikemen and 
‘archers, clustered under those mulberry bushes, to jump on board, and 
possess themselves of fur caps, woollen cloaks, and Moravian cheeses, 
enough to clothe the household and stock the castle for ten years to 
come. 

« On that awful height, where now moulders the renowned castle of 
Aggstein, every casement was then glistening with eyes, as the stately 
‘ship breasted the treacherous stream, and every chamber of it echoed 
with shouts of delight, as under the walls the stately vessel came_to a full 
stop. All was now exultation, the robber chieftains commanded the 
merchant to surrender. He cried out for mercy in vain. Kneeling on 
the deck, he implored them to spare his cargo ; they announced to him 
that it was against their principles. He then bade them take: his life in 
‘compensation. They answered that they would take both. The unfor- 
tunate trader next tried an appeal to their feelings, and prayed them by 
the beards of their father and mother, by the beauty of their wives, and 
the hopes of their children, to spare his last fragment of property under 
the stars. 

“ Their reply. was brief— That as they intended to give him only the 
alternative of being hanged or drowned, the property could be of no 
moment to him.’ The merchant, in obvious despair, then retired to the 


1828.] The Durrenstein. 259 


helm, to die as -he had lived, with the emblem of management in his 
hand. The chieftains made but one bound from the precipice to the 
deck, and were followed by a knot of their most agile plunderers. They 
opened chest after chest, never had so much Saxon broad cloth, Bavarian 
earthen ware, and Styrian peach brandy, fallen into the hands of any of 
the family for three generations of spoil. At length they came to one 
cabin which defied their pike handles. The merchant was commanded 
to open the door. He warned them against the crime of seizing ‘the 
last, and, he would allow, the most valuable property that he had on 
board.’ They insisted. The scene of supplication was again gone 
through, but more at length, and more violently. In the mean time the 
wind freshened, and the vessel had heeled a little off the shore. <‘ Vil- 
lain,’ said Hadmar, drawing his knife, ‘ we shall be kept here all night, 
by coming on board without our sledge-hammers and_picklocks.’ 
‘ Villain, said Heinrich, flourishing his sabre over the unhappy mer- 
chant, ‘ we will not stay here five minutes longer for the souls and 
bodies of all the burghers of Vienna.. So open this infernal door 
instantly. If I have not cut off your head already, it is because I only 
waited till you had turned the key in this great beast of a lock. But as 
you persist in your rebellion against the lawful lords of every thing that 
sails upon the river, and runs upon the bank, you die without the law’s 
delay.’ 
oo The sabre swept round, but Hadmar interposed, observing, that 
though the merchant’s life was worth no more than that of any other 
merchant, and that no more than of any other animal of burthen, the 
opening of the door would not be advanced by the’ abscision of the 
delinquent’s head. A sudden roll of the vessel at once showed that it 
Was now in the centre of the stream, and threw the whole crew, chief- 
tains and all, over each other. The merchant opened the door, ‘a pile of 
chests fell out, and after them jumped forth fifty of the imperial soldiery, 
every man in full armour, and sword in hand. Their enemy was rolling 
on the floor. Their battle was already fought by the billows; and 
before the illustrious Hadmar could recover his legs, or the heroic 
Heinrich grasp his pike, both were in stout hands, that paid no respeet 
to their thirty-two quarterings, but put their patrician limbs in irons. 
Their followers were put to the rout with equal expedition. The shouts 
of joy from the castle turrets had been turned into roars of rage, they 
were now turned into howlings of despair. Their friends, one by one, 
after many a pike thrust on both sides, were tumbled into the stream. 
To pull them out was the only hope, as no power short of wings could 
reach the vessel, which continually enlarged the distance from the shore, 
‘and was rapidly rolling down to the dungeons of the Emperor Frederic 
in Vienna. 
“There the merchant took his leave of the brother chieftains, consign= 
ing them to the imperial gaoler, and warning them, on all future occasions, 
‘to take the master of the cargo’s advice as to what portion of the freight 
would be good for their purposes. The historian loves to investigate 
the final career of fallen greatness, and he has told us that after a dozen 
years of fetters, bread and water, and working in the ditch of these rams 
parts, which, afterwards, in the niemorable siege of 1683, kept off the 
Ottomans until Sobieski came to cut off their beards, and unturban 
their three-tailed pachas, the chieftains of Aggstein petitioned to change 
their condition. The: merchant, Rudiger, was by this time opulent, 
A 


‘ 


260 The Durrenstein. (Serr. 


from being employed to bring 2 succession of similar potentates to their 
senses by similar means; with native singleness of soul, he had always 
employed the same bait, which the German chieftainry always swallowed 
with the same appetite. But he was old, and thought of retiring from 
his profession, though a gold mine to him since he had discovered the 
art of helping himself, in the first instance, to the spoils. Both his 
wealth and his age gave him influence with the minister, who set himself 
down for the merchant’s heir, and that, too, at no remote date. The 
brothers laid their sorrows before him, and he recollecting that they 
had made his fortune, laid them before the minister. The petition 
was instantly attended to, the irons struck off, the spade resigned, the 
rations of rye-bread and ditch water exchanged for less heathenish pro- 
visions ; and, finally after six months’ attendance on sermons preached 
by the most “searching divines” of Vienna, a torture to which, they 
protested, the irons were infinitely preferable, they were let loose, with a 
vast deal of good advice, and permission to beg their bread, only saving 
this interdict, that they should not be found begging it in Vienna, on 
pain of five hundred lashes a piece for the first offence, and the wheel 
for the second. 

« The brothers now set forth on the grand experiment of living on the 

world’s compassion. But it failed them in a week. They had not the art of 
touching the feelings, and they were on the point of starving in company, 
just as the spires of Vienna rose once more to their view. The same 
thought started to both their tongues—‘ Shall that rascal Rudiger fatten 
‘on our robbery?’ They determined to be masters of his wealth. Hadmar, 
a daring fellow, who knew no more of the world than that it was more 
easily frightened than reasoned into doing its duty, went to the sword- 
cutler’s, bought a trusty weapon, and forced an entrance into the mer- 
chant’s immense mansion at midnight.. He found Rudiger wasted to a 
skeleton by age and avarice, and calculating how many farthings he 
‘would lose by the difference of paper and specie. Hadmar demanded 
his money. The old miser screamed out. A whole army of relations, 
‘who slept in the house to have the first grasp of his ducats, thinking 
that he was giving up the ghost, started up from their beds, and came 
running, half naked, to attend the dying hour of their ‘excellent and 
much-lamented relative. Hadmar was overpowered by numbers, 
‘seized, pinioned, tried upon the spot, and as the cousins, aunts, and 
uncles of the miser conceived that there were claimants enough already, 
they treated the new interloper as they would have been delighted to 
treat each other ; they threw out a cord from the balcony, and the rising 
sun saw Hadmar hanging from its finely-flourished bars. 

« Heinrich had, by some accident, gained a surer knowledge of the 
way to wealth, and, instead of going to the sword-cutler’s, he had gone 
to the gates of a convent. He there wept, prayed the loudest in the 
chapel, ate the least in the refectory, and his saintship was promulged 
‘through all the city, before the quarter was out. The saint next pre- 
sented himself to Rudiger as the only saint who could wash his con- 
science clear of ail peccability. It was exactly such a man that the 
-‘merchant’s crazy conscience wanted. The confessor entered. The 
relations soon received a hint to withdraw. They were slow in under- 
standing it, and, finally, one evening, the whole blood of the Rudiger 
dineage was turned into the street. But the effort was formidable at the 
merchant's age } and as the last echo of their cries, he uttered one which 


1628.] The Durrenstein. 261 _ 


he never repeated. His will was produced. The lawyers would perish 
if the style became popular. Nothing could be less wordy or more 
distinct. It contained but these expressive sentences—* My relations 
are rogues. I shall show them that they can be made fools of besides. 
‘Heinrich is my heir.’ 

« The relations were astonished. But the lawyers saw good ground 
for making a handsome suit out of the occasion, and they commenced. 
proceedings before the judges. Heinrich declared himself the most 
injured man in the world, and offered to give up every thing in his 
possession on receiving just half what the suit would have cost. The 
proposal was relished by every one but the lawyers. The money was 
subscribed, and Heinrich, setting the seals of the parties on the doors, 
received the money at the bank of Vienna. 

* The house was opened. They found all as empty as a royal chapel 
when it gets wind at court that the king is not to be there. The rela- 
tives were indefatigable; bags, boxes, wainscots, every thing were tried, 
‘turned inside out, torn down, cut up, unsewed, broken, yet nothing 
transpired. The confessor was gone ; and it was presumed, that, as the 
business of a confessor is to secure human weakness from evil, Heinrich 
had thought himself authorized to remove the root of all evil—gold. 

“ Before the spring shed her violets and primroses on the fields of the 
. Milanese, the confessor was a gallant captain of Condottieri, in the ser- 
vice of Milan, and ready for the service of any and every Italian poten- 
tate according to pay and plunder. He lived long, happy, and rich, 
died in his bed, and had a monument, half as high as the Duomo, 
declaring, ‘that as every virtue lived, so the world’s delight died, with 
the most renowned, heroic, and holy Count Enrico di Castello di bona 
Fortuna.’ ” 

My hearers politely professed themselves charmed with the poetic 
justice of the story ; and I should have probably proceeded to reap 
additional applause, and vindicate the dexterity of imperial robber 
catchers on a larger scale, but for one of the customary incidents of 
mountain excursions—the settling of a mass of heavy clouds on the pin- 
nacles above our heads. The sun sank sullenly under this purple veil. 
Murmurings were heard through the forest, with which mortals had 
nothing to do. Fires were seen glittering behind the solid shade of 
precipices, where never gipsy ventured to light them. The horses 
gave sensible signs of an inclination to find their way to the first stable ; 
and the yawning postilions swore in twenty forms of imprecation against 
the crime of suffering themselves and their beasts to stay out sight-seeing, 
when all that could be got in exchange for supper and shelter was as 
thorough a wetting as ever drenched ambassadorial livery. We took 
their advice, seconded as it was by the gusty howlings of the forest, and 
the deeper volumes of vapour that now began to stoop from the pin- 
nacles to the ravine. A dash of rain, the avant-coureur of a deluge, put 
us all in motion ; and I had the honour of being appointed guide to the 
little Wirthhaus,* where I had pitched my tent for the last week, and 
which its portly and pence-loving landlord, Herr Michael Squeezegelt, 
would have felt it as an affront of the blackest dye to hear called by a 
less title than Gasthaus.t 

I invited my new visitors to make merry, ordered the best supper that 


* Alchouse. + Hotel. 


262 Lhe Durrenstein. [Serr. 


our bustling and overwhelmed cook could give us on so brief a notice ; 
produced some capital claret, a travelling companion, whose society I 
had often found indispensable to console me for the désagrémens of all 
other ; and by the help of a large stowage of faggots on the hearth, and 
a bundle of wax tapers, which I fear had been consecrated at the shrine 
of “ Maria Tapferl,’”’ the most famous sanctuary of this part of Austria, 
but now, in defiance of piety and pilgrimage, lighted for our profane 
supper-table, I contrived to make up a party as much disposed to be 
happy as if they were sitting round the gold plate, and under the silver 
chandeliers of his Serenity the Prince Lichtenstein. 

The postilions had been perfectly in the right. The storm'came on 
in full force before we had sent round the -first bottle. Thunderclaps, 
bursts of rain, roarings of wind, and sheets of lightning, that made us 
all look blue, first followed each other with the rapidity of musket 
firing, then came all together, and at last, as they say of the compass in 
storms at sea, the land storm fairly stopped the rotation of the bottle. 
We left the feast upon the table, and crowded to the little casements 
to see the peformance of the angry elements on so suitable a stage. 
Nothing could be finer or fiercer. The grim features of the mountains, 
under the changes of the light and the vapours, took the hue and aspect 
of every thing marvellous, and would have made the fortune of a new 
Goéthe, or a new Retcsh. All the witcheries of the playmate hags of 
the Hartz, were peaceable and legitimate occupations to the furious 
fantasies that nature here disported before our wondering eyes. The 
hills seemed nervously alive: the torrents danced and sprang about in 
the most direct contradiction to the laws of gravity; the forest tossed, 
groaned, and flamed, as if the days of old necromancy were come again, 
and every tree contained its tortured spirit. All was fire, hail, water, 
and uproar. 

But the rock of Durrenstein, with its ruined fortress on its summit, a 
fitting crown for this monarch of the realm of ravines, still held its 
superiority over the less renowned victims of the storm. It stood in the 
centre of the conflict, and, alternately lost and seen as the sea of cloud 
rolled by, looked like some mighty ship of a hundred thousand tons, 
some huge leviathan of war, plunging and rising, battling’ with and 
‘baffling an ocean of mad billows. With the shifting of the clouds came 
perpetual changes, and every gazer had his favourite comparison. But 
at last all agreed in one; and every voice almost at the same moment 
cried out “the sorcerer.” The tempest had lulled for a moment, and 
suffered the vapours to gather in a heavy white fleece round the summit 
of the hill; below this rolling turban the rocks were bare, and broken 
into the most striking resemblance of the withered and darkened visage 
that, from time immemorial, we attribute to the dealers in forbidden 
arts. While we looked, the costume was completed by a gush of waters 
which had forced its way through a hollow of the rock, and covered the 
magician’s chin and front with a most venerable and sweeping beard of 
foam a hundred and fifty feet long. 

_ The sight was curious enough to be worth some record. I had 
seated myself at the table, and taken out my crayon to sketch the out- 
line, when a general cry from the window brought me back. I saw, tomy 
astonishment, standing in the orifice, which we had established as the 
sorcerer’s mouth, a figure which visibly moved—but whether man, bear, 
or fiend, none couldascertain. It lingered for awhile on this tremendous 


. 


1828. ] The Durrenstein. 263 


spot, apparently quite at its ease, in a tumult, which would have startled 
Zolus himself. The night was falling fast, and we began to fear that 
we should lose sight of the phenomenon before we had determined its 
species. But, as if it heard our wishes, it came forward, and stood 
gazing from the edge of the precipice at the play of the torrent, as it 
tumbled down the magician’s black bosom. The spot would have 
turned the head of a chamois ; yet there stood this imperturbable being 
like a piece of the rock itself. The adventurer now occupied us all ; 
and to ascertain what he was, became the grand business of life for the 
next half hour. A German, once atiaché to the Austrian embassy in 
London, offered to settle the point d-la-mode Anglaise, by a bet of six to 
four, that it was any thing that any body else thought it was not, and 
vice versd. An old Italian envoy offered to make the discovery, by 
cutting the cards in the infallible way by which the Neapolitan ladies 
settle their affairs with destiny for the day, and are secure, from sunrise 
to sunset, against earthquakes, losses at play, the sickness of lapdogs, and 
the faithlessness of cavalicre serventi. A French colonel, who wore the 
croix of St. Louis, and the legion of honour, in amicable conjunction, at 
his button-hole, proposed to settle the doubt by along shot from his 
Tyrolese rifle; arguing, that “as it was utterly impossible that any 
man but a lunatic could venture to such a spot, no harm could be done 
by bringing him down, whom, if he escaped, it was so much gained, 
and if an end was put to him, it was but one madman the less in a world © 
~ where there were so many besides. If it was a bear, we should have a 
couple of capital hams to add to our stock, in a place where another 
day’s confinement would see us starved, unless we should eat the fat 
landlord. And if a demon, our firing at it might be a merit in another 
place, and wipe out a thousand years of purgatory.” 

The brilliant Frenchman had heated himself into so strong a convic- 
tion of the reasonableness of his proposal, that in scorn of our doubts, 
whether firing even at a ghost might not be punishable by law ina 
country so strict in the preservation of its game as Austria, he was 
hammering his flint for action, when the figure made a sudden bound 
from the edge of the gulph, disappeared, was seen again standing on a 
lower shelf of the precipice, again darted down the torrent, re-appeared 
from the side of the ravine, and, rushing across the road, knocked 
furiously at our door, dripping like a water-god. 

_ A little altercation heard without between him and the landlord, who 
probably thought .that he was not likely to benefit much by such an 
arrival, or that his house already contained unmanageable guests enough, 
induced my interference in favour of the laws of hospitality. I went to 
the door, and with many an ominous frown of Herr Michael, invited 
‘the stranger to take shelter for the hour. He was all polite reluctance, 
but the storm allowed of no medium, and he, at last, followed me into 
the presence of my fellow naturalists. As he entered, bowing on all 
sides, and with the language of a man of the world, I saw the French 
sharpshooter blush, at least as much as a Frenchman ever does, quietly 
deposit the rifle in a corner, and give that curiously-expressive glance 
round the circle, which tells how close one has run to the edge of some 
blunder of the first magnitude. ; 

But we kept his secret with honour ; and a fresh bottle, a new bundle 
of faggots, and the loan of my surtout, soon made the circle and its new 
addition the gayest of the gay. -We found this‘scaler of mountains and 


264 The Durrenstein. [Sepr, 


swimmer of torrents altogether a very striking personage, speaking the 
several languages of our miscellaneous company with native ease; evidently 
familiar with Europe and with a considerable extent of Asia, and giving 
now and then a piquant anecdote of the great, which made our diplo- 
matists raise their eyebrows in wonder at discoveries which they had 
treasured in their own bosoms as the “immediate jewels of their souls.” 

The hour flew, and the stranger was the first to remark that the storm 
had subsided. But to suffer him to take his leave for the night was out 
of the question. He at length consented, though with considerable 
difficulty, to remain. The Frenchman, who probably thought himself 
bound to make atonement for the favour which he had intended him, 
insisted on surrendering his bed, his wardrobe, or his bodily existence, 
for the benefit of his “bosom friend.” While we were enjoying our 
cups, and enchanted into a round of pleasantries, which brought out 
every man, and promised to keep us from our beds till daybreak, I 
heard a heavy foot occasionally pass the door. Whatever might be our 
dialogue, there was no necessity for its being overheard ; and I at length 
went out to put an end to the investigation. I found the landlord alone, 
in his nighteap and slippers, and seldom looked the Herr Michael less 
in good humour with the world. “Twelve o’clock, Sir,” he grumbled ; 
« full time for all honest men to be in their beds.” : 

I told him that there was nothing to prevent his honesty from its full 
indulgence in slumber, and that I would be responsible for the security 
of every iron spoon and wooden trencher under his roof. f 

The Herr’s urbanity was not his most conspicuous virtue at any time. 
But I believe that he had due reliance on one who had so long resisted 
the temptations of his table equipage ; and with some rough attempt at 
a bow, he set me at my ease on the point of honour, and said, that his only 
objection to our sitting up for the next twelve hours, or years, was the 
presumptuous nature of the thing. “This is an awful night, Sir,” said 
he; “such storms seldom come for good. This is the 29th of Sep- 
tember: St. Michael’s night, my patron saint; and, heaven preserve 
us! the night of the Red Woman of Durrenstein.’” 

A burst of thunder, that tore the ear and shook the strong building 
round us, gave such authentic evidence to the Herr’s opinions, that I 
could extract nothing more from him on the sacred subject; but, shrink- 
ing and startled, he left me, as he said, to examine what new damage 
had been done by the witch’s annual visit, and implored me once more 
to get my noisy companions to bed as soon as possible. 

But the landlord’s beer-loving soul had never known the courage of 
Chateau Margot; and on my communicating his fears, my only answer 
was a general burst of laughter, and a pledge to see the adventure out, 
to defy St. Michael and his storms, and to receive the witch-queen of 
the mountain with bumpers, if she should honour us with a visit. 

I had heard of her before, and the conversation turning upon the 
extraordinary propensity of the peasantry in all countries to add to the 
natural troubles of their station by imaginary evils, I gave such details 
as occurred to me. of the “ Red Woman of Durrenstein.” The stranger 
followed, but if his knowledge on other topics was striking, here it was 
unbounded. He poured out a ready heap of curious anecdote and 
incident of the mountain superstitions; some nearly monstrous of 
course, but some picturesque, and which would have been a treasure to 
the painter ; and even some so like what we deem a power above nature, 


1828.) The Durrenstein. 265 


yet within reality, a so subtle entwining of things that perplexed belief 
with facts easily comprehensible, and of no unusual occurrence, that 
we all listened with an interest which we probably should not have been 
ashamed to acknowledge in our most composed hours. But now, with 
the thunder rattling over the roof, St. Michael’s night, the “bell then 
beating one,” and the very palace of the she-sorcerer showing from our 
windows its wild battlements edged with perpetual lightnings, and, it must 
not be forgotten, with a dozen of excellent claret already discussed, we 
gave the homage of our ears to the man of legend, as if he were Simon 
Magus himself. 

“ Yet, after all,” said he, with a smile round the listening circle, as 
he closed a story whose strange mixture of oddity and horror had fixed 
us in silent attention ; “ what is this passion for being vexed and made 
hypochondriac by fancy, but an additional proof of the original foolery 
of man? the only fool, by the by, that creation exhibits. Every other 
animal has the due quantum of understanding. The bustard that betrays 
itself by its booming, the ostrich that leaves its eggs in the sand; all 
that we are in the habit of charging with want of brains, have a sufficient 
object in their contrivances: even the ass is libelled. He knows what he 
is about infinitely better than hundreds of his riders, and if his natural 
taste be for thistles, and his back be made for blows and burthens, he 
has a much better claim to respect than many a showy personage, who 
for the glories of a ribbon or a place, is content to swallow the thistle and 
bear the blow and the burthen, without the excuse of nature.” 

This was plain speaking among so many chevaliers, with so many 
stars and crosses. But boldness, when it is seconded by truth, goes 
far ; and we were too much in good-humour with ourselves to think of 
examining the point for the present. ‘“ But do you actually believe in 
those preternatural influences?” said the Frenchman, turning to some 
remark of mine. 

“I feel like Plato,” was my reply; “ the more I think on such sub- 
jects, the less I am able to come to a decision.” 

« For my part,” said the German, palpably a student of the Helvetius 
school, “ what I cannot see, I cannot believe.” 

“ Strange,” interrupted the Italian. ‘“ How then can you answer the 
innumerable evidences of interposition among us; you, who have seen 
the winkings of the Madonna’s eyes, the tears running down St. Cathe- 
rine’s cheeks, and the moving of the Magdalen’s bosom ?” 

“ Those affairs make an exception to my maxim,” replied the German, 
« for those I have seen, and cannot believe.” 

“ But now for your opinion,” said I to the stranger. ; 

« Why, then, if you will have it out, I side with the gentleman who 
has made the eye the judge. We have not got those faculties for the 
purpose of being led into absurdity by them. I do not believe that 
there is a word of truth in any legend of witchery, red, blue, or green, 
from Bohemia to Lapland.—But, ha! look there.’”— 
+ A broad blue stripe of flame darted through the crevice of the shutter, 
and rested on the opposite wall, throwing our candles into eclipse by its 
strong brilliancy, and what struck us as more singular still, giving a 
kind of motion to the figures of the fair dames and gallant knights that 
had, hitherto, lurked in the general dinginess of the court of the Empe- 
ror Charlemagne, on black paper, apparently as old as its theme.’ 

The stranger was delighted with the sight, which he protested was 

M.M. New Serics.—Vou. VI. No. 33. 2M 


266 The Durrenstein. [Serr 


worth living even in a German Wirthhaus for‘a twelvemonth to see. 
And, certainly, when the first surprise allowed us to look en philosophe, 
at the phenomenon, nothing could be more attractive. It seemed a 
phantasmagoria of the most vivid kind, not the puzzled and misty light 
that makes our magic-lantern figures as hard to be traced as a hierogly- 
phic, and deserving of the lynx eyes of M. Champollion alone; but an 
intense and steady splendour, that actually rekindled the faded gilding 
and perished purple velvet of monarchs, plumed chevaliers, and dames 
of pride, beauty, and distended petticoats, glowing from hip to heel with 
every flower of the parterre, an embroidered paradise. at 

I glanced into the open air to ascertain from what meteor, or accidental 
firing of the woods, the light was produced. But, except an occasional 
flash of the exhausted and thinning cloud, darkness had resumed her 
“ leaden sceptre o’er the drowsy world.” The storm had been fairly 
tired out, and the grim coronal of Durrenstein was distinguishable only 
by the phosphoric glimmer of the torrent still tumbling down the front 
of the mountain. 

I was suddenly recalled from my view by a general exclamation. 
Across the ceiling, which had hitherto looked as black as its pitch-pine 
rafters could have made it, the procession of knights and dames was 
again glittering, and in the rear of the procession moved a shape that we 
all with one voice pronounced to be the Red Woman of Durrenstein 
herself, or something worse, if our gallantry would allow us to conceive 
it invested in the female garb. The shape was covered from head to 
foot with a cloak of the most powerfully sanguine colour ; but under the 
hood looked out a face, which, whether it was fact, or the heated fancy 
of gentlemen loving their wine “ not wisely but too well,’ contained all 
the ingredients of hazard to hearts and heads. It was excessively lovely, 
but with a pair of wild and deep eyes, that gleamed like the very seats 
of unhappy mystery. She came glittering in prismatic beauty from the 
darkness, like the kings and magicians of Rembrandt, and grew upon us 
until the eye absolutely shrunk from her concentrated lustre. 

The German exclaimed, that “‘ Frauenhoffer himself would be puzzled 
to make such a magic lantern: he would lay ten to one on the point with 
any man.” 

The Italian said, that he “ had seen nothing so bright since the last 
eruption of Vesuvius, nor so beautiful since the last illumination of 
St. Peter’s.” 

The Frenchman was unnationally silent, and sat, with his eyes alter- 
nately turned on the vision and the stranger, who had leaned his head on 
the table, and who, but for a broken word now and then, I should have 
supposed to be asleep, in quiet contempt of our phantom. 

But be it what it might, I found that it had made us all grave, and I 
proposed calling in the landlord, if he should be still out of bed, to tell us 
what he knew of the matter. The little hall was dark as the night itself, 
and while I was feeling my way, awkwardly enough, along the walls, m 
foot struck against a heavy human incumbrance towards the end of the 
passage, which a groan and a few exclamations of alarm told me was 
the valorous Herr Michael. I raised him up, and convincing him, with 
some difficulty, that I was not among the spectral visitors of his sins of 
innkeeping, I rather carried than led him in to our festal room, which, 
however, had now become as silent as any sepulchre in the Abbey of 
Molk. The Herr was a most reluctant witness, and nothing but the 


1828.] The Durrenstein. 267 


most persevering cross examination could extort an idea from his intense 
solidity of skull. 

He was evidently afraid of the disastrous reputation of keeping a 
ghostly house, which would have prohibited for ever the sale of the 
very considerable quantity of damaged Bavarian beer, that, mixed with 
Vienna brandy, made his staple. Not a peasant would have been guilty 
of the immorality of getting drunk under the roof of a landlord who had 
dealings with ghosts ; and the result to the Herr Michael would, as he 
pathetically observed, “ be worse than purgatory, inasmuch as masses, 
though they may take a man out of future fire, were never yet able to 
take him out of jail.” At length he acknowledged that sights of the 
kind which had perplexed us, had made his life miserable every year 
since he taken this cursed “ gasthaus ;” that an anniversary storm, 
enough to tear the skies down, had attended certain sounds and appear- 
ances, of which he dreaded to speak, and of which, indeed, he knew 
“ little more than that they generally made him incapable of examining 
at the time, or wishing to examine them at any time after, as long as he 
lived.” 

The spectre upon the ceiling had vanished into a faint gleam that 
barely shewed the outline. But no persuasion could induce the shud- 
dering landlord to presume so much as to survey even this diminished 

‘majesty of terror. He stood leaning his huge bulk on his hands, his 
hands on the table, and his eyes invincibly shut. Farther inquiry was 
useless with a boor half dead with fright ; and we unanimously voted 
his dismissal, which he accepted with great gratitude, imploring, in the 
humblest terms, that the subject of the night “ should never be men- 
tioned, as it could be mentioned only to his undoing.” 

As he was blindly turning away, piloting himself by his hands, he 
rather abrubtly touched the stranger, who started on his feet with an 
angry interjection, and gazed round for the offender. But whatever 
might be his surprise, it could not have been superior to ours. Never 
did I see such a change in the human countenance in so short a period. 
‘Ten minutes before, when he laid his head on the table, he was one of the 
handsomest men that I had seen in Germany; in the vigour of life, with 
a peculiarly bright eye, a high-coloured cheek, every feature full of 
health ; the whole physiognomy like that of a gallant and animated sol- 
dier, bronzed by campaigning. Yet, but for his sitting in the same seat, 
I could not possibly have known the man who now sent his ghastly glare 
upon us. His fine Italian eyes were hollow and dim ; his colour was 
leaden ; his cheek hollow and wrinkled; and when, in answer to the 
general inquiry, “ whether he was ill?” which might have naturally 
occurred from his drenching in the torrent, he attempted to make some 
acknowledgment, the tremor and almost idiotic difficulty of his utter- 
ance were painful to the ear. Fifty years had passed over him in these 
fifteen minutes. 

He tried to laugh off his embarrassment ; but it would not do. His 
laugh was even more painful than his speech ; and, after an effort equally 
violent and abortive to recover his ground, he sank back on his seat, and 
burst into tears. We now altogether decided on what must have been 
the cause of his illness, and entreated him to go to rest, or at least lie 

down on our cloaks before the fire. But he resisted our nursing with 
almost passionate obstinacy, contended that he never was better in his 
life, sang a popular chanson to prove his undiminished gaiety, and, after 
2M 


“ 


268 The Durrenstein. [Sepr. 


this display, in a voice quivering and dissonant with weakness, he began 
to tell his stories of the court with laborious vivacity. But the charm was 
at an end; and though I, as the entertainer, kept my seat, my guests 
gave palpable symptoms of a wish to consult their pillows. ; 

_ But the German, who led the way in those natural though ungracious 
signs of weariness, which have cut short the periods of many an orator, 
had scarcely accomplished his profoundest yawn, when our inyalid, 
starting from his chair, begged that he might be permitted to caution 
“that gentleman, or any of us, who should be imprudent enough to 
think of sleeping before day, against the hazards of that night of ‘all 
nights in the year.’ ” 

Here was something for our curiosity, and we waited for the disclo- 
sure with undissembled impatience. 

« You saw me, Sir, I believe,” addressing himself to me, as the host, 
‘ under rather singular circumstances this evening, of which you pro- 
bably can give a much better account than I can, for the whole passed 
before me rather like a dream than any thing else. I am in the military 
service of the King of Bavaria ; and, during the summer furlough of my 
regiment, of which I am colonel, finding the heat of the lower country 
oppressive, I have been a great deal in the habit of shooting among the 
mountains. Last year, a little later in the season, I happened to be in 
this neighbourhood, which I found in great confusion, in consequence of 
some strange appearances, on this 29th of September, which were fol- 
lowed by not less strange results upon a hunting party of nobles, who 
had treated the popular belief on the subject with a too ostentatious con- 
tempt. Insanity was, in some instances, the unquestionable results. In 
others, a succession of eccentric notions of having lost valuable property, 
of having seen extraordinary displays of juggling, of having drank some 
medicated liquors, which long bewildered them—and so forth. In short, 
the peasantry were, as usual, full of histories of the preternatural ven- 
geance taken on the scorners, and fuller than ever of the marvellous 
power of the Red Woman of Durrenstein. 

«« Hating superstition of all kinds, I was wise enough to attempt bring- 
ing the peasantry to reason; but as argument was soon hopeless, I 
pledged myself to be upon the spot of enchantment, the very centre of 
the witch’s kingdom, on the next 29th day of September, and there in 
person to shew the absurdity of the whole story. 

« T have now been in the mountains a week ; the peasantry had gene- 
ral notice of my determination to outface the Lady of the Rock. Many 
an entreaty was made to me to relinquish the unhallowed hazard, and 
many a prayer followed me, when, in the sight of the population of a 
dozen villages, I set out this morning. The true time to reach the Dur- 
renstein is midnight ; but the storm drove me out of my covert to find 
shelter where best I could. Turning the base of the hill, I saw this wirth- 
haus ; but the difficulties between rendered all hope of reaching it totally 
idle. I sat down under a projection of the rock, to linger until the storm 
should be past. While I was amusing the time by sketching the veins 
in a remarkably fine slab of coloured marble, out of the solid rock moved 
a figure. I know how severe a tax this must lay on belief; but I can 
only tell what I saw. There stood before me, as clearly and fully defined 
—in fact, as substantial as the figure of any gentleman round this table 
—that personage which, whether from heaven above, or from earth 
below, was the one that I had promised to meet and hold at defiance. 


1828.) The Durrenstein. 269 


How I felt at the moment, I have no power to explain. I hope that, on 
all suitable occasions, I should not want nerve; but the sensation was 
less like any thing that I could call alarm, than a feeling of complete 
helplessness. In the perfect possession of my senses and my understand- 
ing, I yet found that the physical powers were extinguished—perfectly 
paralyzed ; as if flesh and blood were not made to abide the presence of 
such a being. I sat gazing on her as she advanced. I could not have 
spoken, nor moved a muscle, for the crown of Austria. Her words were 
brief, and in a tone of singular mildness, yet which penetrated me like 
a cold weapon. She reproved me ‘ for the haughly presumption which 
had doubted of her power, and declared, as a sign of her displeasure, 
that, when next I saw her, I should know that she was come for ven- 
geance.’ 

« She vanished even while my eyes were fixed on her—the solid wall of 
rock received her, and she was gone. What was scarcely less surprising to 
me, was the sudden recovery of my limbs. Their past feebleness seemed 
to be made up for by supernatural strength: at all events, whether in 
the strength of frenzy or terror, I darted from the cavern, sprang the 
precipice, and swam the torrent—to any one of which no bribe of earth 
could have tempted me half an hour before. I here found the hospi- 
tality to which I acknowledge myself so deeply indebted ; and I began 
to hope that the vision had been merely one of those fantasies that play 
on the mind, exhausted by the considerable fatigue that I had undergone 
since morning, and shaping the absurdities of superstition into reality. 

«« But the glare upon the wall of this chamber, seconded by a certain 
indescribable sensation as if danger were near—such a sensation as a 
blind man may experience who knows that he is treading on the edge of 
a gulph, without knowing on which side of him it lies—told me that the 
time of the visitation was come. ‘The figure that passed over the ceiling 
decided the question. It was, in every feature, the one that I had seen 
come forth from the solid block of marble, which opened and closed, as 
if it had been a curtain shaken by the wind.” He paused, and his 
wandering eye seemed involuntarily searching for the phenomenon. 
Then, with an effort to smile, he resumed :— 

« If I have exhibited any perturbation, I trust that it was not unmanly, 
nor beyond the natural embarrassment of finding one’s-self in so peculiar 
a position. You will forgive me, I know, for my talking no more on this 
painful subject. I perhaps have already said more than I ought, when 
the very presence of this extraordinary being may be visible the next 
moment.” 

His voice sank, and he sat in an attitude of the deepest dejection ; his 
countenance grew yet more depressed than when it first shocked us, 
and I insisted on his trying to rest. We actually feared for the life of 
this interesting and unfortunate man, whether the victim of his own 
heated fancy, of fever, or of fact, still alike unfortunate and in danger. 

As I assisted him to the door, he turned, and said, almost in a tone of 
despair, “ If you should find me by to-morrow, gentlemen, under the 
circumstances to which I have alluded, deprived of my faculties, or even 
beyond all the sufferings that can depress the human heart, do me the 
justice to believe that I deeply thank you for your forbearance with my 
strange malady ; and do me the farther justice to believe that I fell a 
victim to a desire of doing public service.—To you, Sir,” said he to me, 
“I leave the painful but friendly task of acquainting my relatives in 


270 The Durrenstein. [Sepr. 


Bavaria with the event, though I wish that as few particulars of this 
unhappy night may be given as possible. Would that I had died as a 
soldier, in the service of my good and gallant king, and of my loved and 
honoured country !” 

We all listened with profound deference, and promised. 

At the door, a sudden thought flashed across him, and he stopped again. 
— Gentlemen,” said he, “ there is one thing that, in my confusion, I 
had forgot. I heard among the peasantry, that the only hope of escaping 
the wrath of this fatal being was remaining sleepless, at least until day- 
break. I leave you now only because I feel myself unfit for society ; 
but I shall try to resist sleep, unless that too be a part of the infliction. 
May I make it a solemn request, perhaps a dying one, that you will 
remain together till morning, or, if you should go to your chambers, that 
you will not suffer yourselves to be overtaken by sleep.” 

He waved his hand with a graceful and sad farewell, and, led by me, 
tottered to the lowly recess, which was all the receptacle that the wirth- 
haus afforded on occasions of superfluous tenantry. Grave discussion of 
the whole story was occupying my guests when I returned. In the spirit 
of master of the board, I proposed a round of toasts to the better health 
of the Bavarian: the proposal was honoured, but we were not the mer- 
rier. At last the German, with a yawn deep as the North Sea, declared 
that he must go to bed, though fifty witches were waiting to carry him 
on their broomsticks over every hill in the empire. I combated the 
motion; but sleep was in my eyes, contradicting my eloquence ; and 
my resistance only inspirited the Italian to let out a little of his secret 
soul, and scorn alike the wonders of earth, air, and friars. The French- 
man was asleep during the last half-hour, but, on being roused by the 
bitter sneer of the Italian, declared that the witch had very handsome 
eyes, the better in his estimation for being wn peu malins ; and that 
a visit would be quite an adventure after his own heart. The hint of 
danger, in fact, made it an obligation on us to take our chance. The 
question was put and carried by a general yawn ; our last laugh was given 
to the nonsense of being kept out of our beds by the whims of an unlucky 
devil of a Bavarian, shaking in mind and body with the ague; the 
simple sight of our beds was a resistless spell; and, to judge by the 
universal snore that echoed from cell to cell in the first five minutes, my 
whole company were of the most ghost-defying description. 

But the snore began to sound more distant in my ears. I was anxious 
to keep awake, if for no other reason than to assist the invalid during 
the night. But nature said otherwise. I tossed and turned—walked 
about my chamber—broke my shins against bed-posts, chairs, and the 
crazy table—sat down to think what I should do next to rub the poppies 
from my sensorium—and, in the act of discovering an infallible con- 
trivance for keeping awake for ever, dropped back on my pillow, and 
was, as the bards of the almanacks say, instantly lulled in the feathery 
arms of Morpheus. r 

My sleep was, like that of every man who finishes his day in the jovial 
style of mine, crowded with dreams, and every dream was, of course, 
a new version of the tale of the day. The Red Woman was flying about 
me, over me, with me, frowning, howling, fixing her flame-coloured 
fangs in my throat, and drying up my circulation with her intense eyes. 
At last the struggle broke my sleep. The Red Woman herself was 
standing before me!—I never remember to have been so thoroughly 


1828. ] The Durrenstein. 271 


overpowered.—I could not breathe——My pulses were dead; my limbs 
were stiffened into stone. The sight had paralyzed me as it had the un- 
fortunate colonel. The phantom stalked slowly through the chamber. 
I saw her lay her hand on the table, which returned a pale gleam. She 
approached the pillow, and leaned over me. I was looking full at her. 
She started back ; waved her hand in solemn adjuration ; and with a 
low and ominous moan walked through the stone wall. 

Whether I continued awake after this, or fell into a doze, I cannot tell 
to this day. But I still could not have stirred, from the singular dizzi- 
ness of my brain, and the feebleness of my limbs. At length a confused 
sound, and a broad burst of light completely roused me. I thought that 
the catastrophe was come, whether it was to be insanity or extinction ; 
and bracing up my lost fortitude, determined, if I must perish, to leave 
behind no ground for suspicion that I had perished like a craven. On 
throwing open my shutters, I was rejoiced to find that the glare was from 
the sun, then not far from his “ meridian tour.” The sounds were still 
to be accounted for, and they grew more unaccountable every instant, a _ 
chaos of exclamations, rage, imprecations, and laughter.—I heard tables 
rolled about, chairs dashed against the wall, the old windows crashing in 
all quarters. I was beginning to doubt whether the witch’s vengeance 
had not already fallen on the sleepers, or whether the frenzy was my 
own. I at length opened my door—the passage was full of broken fur- 
niture, in the midst of which stood the Italian in violent fits of laughter. 
The German was forcing his heavy frame across a bar that held one- 
half of his door fast, the other half he had contrived to tear down. 
The Frenchman was still barred in his dungeon, which he was belabour- 
ing on all sides with a poker; and venting his fury in screams, roars, 
and imprecations, on the hand that had thus encroached on his natural 
liberty. 

The Italian’s laughter was contagious, and I joined him by the strength 
of sympathy, to the increased displeasure, as I was sorry to see, of the 
honest German, who grumbled something about “a couple of fools.” 
But as I appeared to pay more attention to the remark than under the 
circumstances it perhaps deserved, my bulky friend recovered his temper, 
and with the face of a Diogenes, in jest, asked me “ What o'clock it was?” 
I felt for my repeater—It was gone.“ I must have left it in my 
chamber.”—It was not there. My repeater was not the only absentee.— 
My purse, my pistols, my valise, my boots, my whole wardrobe, were 
gone along with it. 

Every man of the party was in the same condition. The accident 
of sleeping in our clothes alone prevented us from being stark naked. I 
roared for the landlord. He was “ deaf or dead,” no answer came. I 
darted down stairs, every door was bolted and barred as firmly as if it 
were midnight. I thought of my invalid—he too was “ deaf or dead” 
when I knocked. On second thoughts I kicked the door open.—The 
bird was flown.—The Red Woman had robbed us all.—There was not a 
florin, a brooch, a ring, a snuff-box, or a second shirt in our whole coterie. 
—The spoliation had been managed with matchless dexterity—We might 
be thankful that it had pleased the Red Woman to let us keep our skins. 

To make the dénouement more palatable, the story spread over the 
neighbourhood with a rapidity worthy of the Red Woman herself, and 
while we were considering how we should exist for the day, crowds came 
pouring about the house, and honouring each of us that appeared at the 


272 The Durrenstein. [Serr. 


window with roars of merriment. As the tale spread, the neighbouring 
nobles came in to enjoy their share of the amusement, and in our dis- 
mantled condition we were thus compelled to run the gauntlet of 
laughing condolence and burlesque compliment on our sagacity, from 
fair ladies and magnificent lords, who had seen us flourishing away 
among the circles of Vienna. 

A year after, as I was on a mission to inspect the fortresses along our 
Rhenish boundary, I was struck with a familiar face among the prisoners 
working at Ehrenbreitstein. _The fellow turned away ; but I had marked 
my man, and on the bell’s tolling for the close of their work, I accosted 
my old acquaintance, the Herr Michael Squeezegelt. 

He had one surviving virtue, candour in great abundance, and when I 
had satisfied him that his story should not diminish his rations nor 
increase his chains, he was willing to let me have every secret of his 
soul. I, however, confined my curiosity to the “ Red Woman,” and her 
victim. 

« That fellow,” said the Herr, “ was the cause of my ruin. He and 
I became acquainted in the course of the war, in which he had deserted 
from the Archduke’s army the night before he was to be hanged as a 
French spy, and deserted from Napoleon’s army the night before he was 
to be hanged as an Austrain one. He was a clever knave, however, and 
as trade was low at the Gasthaus, I found him now -and then useful to 
bring it up by a little smuggling, a little gambling, and, I am afraid, by a 
little tax-gathering among the gentlemen who came to see the beauties of 
the country.” 

« But the Red Woman, the lights, the procession on the walls and 
ceiling—what were these? juggling?” 

«My comrade had been twenty things after his escape from the 
gallows, for it is hard, in these times, for a man with but one trade to 
live. Among his talents was firework-making, and he could do what he 
pleased with figures and lights of all kinds. His equal never sent up a 
rocket from the Prater. I had overheard you, some days before, asking 
questions about the Durrenstein and the odd lights that every ploughman 
in Lower Austria is ready to swear to. I had laid a little plan to raise a 
trifle on you myself out of the story. But the coming of the whole 
party in the storm, made me give up my own idea for Signior Ignatio 
Trombone, which was to take in the entire company. His appearances 
and disappearances on the mountain, his sudden illness, for which he 
painted his face as it was lying on the table, and a couple of bottles of 
my best prepared claret put in the place of yours, when the palate could 
not have distinguished brandy from beer, put you all in the proper state. 
His recommendation that no one who was afraid should go to bed, 
would, he knew, only make gentlemen, particularly when heated by 
wine, the surer to defy the consequences ; and, at all events, he knew 
that his opium would do its business. The signior played the Red 
Woman in person, and startled as he was by finding you broad awake, 
he contrived to go through the affair in a tolerably complete style.” 

The fellow could not help laughing at the feat, and I own that L 
could not help joining him. 

« But you ran away and left your trade to shift for itself?” said I. 

«It had done that long before,” was the answer. “I was on the 
point of running away the week you came to the house, but you paid 
handsomely, and I waited for something to turn up worth making a 


1828.) The Durrenstein. 273 


grand exit. The plunder of the company on St. Michael’s night, was a 
grand prize in the lottery, and with it the signior and I took our leave of 
the Durrenstein.” 

«« But where is the signior now ?” 

« He robbed me as we were passing the frontier. I swore I would 
give him up to justice. He knew that I was a man to make my words 
good, and, accordingly, he lost no time, but brought a pair of police 
officers to my bed-side ; I saw him receive the reward for my caption, 
and walk off free as air, while I was sent to dig in these ditches. The 
last I heard of the signior was, that he had set up a rouge et noir table, a 
coach, and an opera box in Paris; though which of us will be hanged 
_ before the other, not even the Red Woman would be able to tell. But 
here comes the guard—and now for clean straw, horse-bean soup, and 
duck-weed water.” 


THE FORSAKEN HEARTH. 


© And still the green is bright with flowers ; 

And dancing through the sunny hours, 

Like blossoms from enchanted bowers ? 
On a sudden waited by, 

Obedient to the changeful air, 

And proudly feeling they are fair, 
Glide bird and butterfly : 

But where is the tiny hunter-rout, 

That revelled on with dance and shout, 
Against their airy prey?” ——WILsoN. 


Tur Hearth, the Hearth is desolate—the fire is quenched and gone, 
That into happy children’s eyes once brightly laughing shone ; 

The place where mirth and music met is hushed through day and night ; 
Oh! for one kind, one sunny face, of all that here made light ! 


But scattered are those pleasant smiles afar by mount and shore, 
Like gleaming waters from one spring dispersed to meet no more ; 
Those kindred eyes reflect not now each other’s grief or mirth, 
Unbound is that sweet wreath of home—alas! the lonely Hearth! 


The voices that have mingled here now speak another tongue, 

Or breathe, perchance, to alien ears the songs their mother sung ; 

Sad, strangely sad, in stranger lands, must sound each household tone— 
The Hearth, the Hearth is desolate—the bright fire quenched and gone! 


But are they speaking, singing yet, as in their days of glee ? 

Those voices, are they lovely still? still sweet on land or sea? 

Oh! some are hushed, and some are changed—and never shall one strain 
Blend their fraternal cadences triumphantly again! 


And of the hearts that here were linked by long-remembered years, 
Alas! the brother knows not now where fall the sister’s tears ! 

One haply revels at the feast, while one may droop alone ; 

For broken is the household chain—the bright fire quenched and gone! 


Not so !—'tis not a broken chain—thy memory binds them still, 

Thou holy Hearth of other days, though silent now and chill! 

The smiles, the tears, the rites beheld by thine attesting stone, 

Have yet a living power to mark thy children for thine own. 

The father’s voice—the mother’s prayer—though called from earth away— 
With music rising from the dead, their spirits yet shall sway ; 

And by the past, and by the grave, the parted yet are one, 

Though the loved Hearth be desolate, the bright fire quenched and gone. 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. V. No. 33. 2N ee 


arrays”. Ff [Sepr. 


NOTES FOR THE MONTH. 


Tue prorogation (at last) of both Houses of Parliament, on the 28th 
of July, has left the landowners at liberty to look to the getting-in of 
their harvest, and the lawyers to attend their no less profitable “ duties” 
on the autumn circuit. The event, too, has been a grateful one to the 
editors of the newspapers ; who, towards the end of every session, begin 
to be ‘a weary’ of the dense dark column, and to cry with Macbeth, 
« Bring me no more reports—let them fly all!” And to the Parlia- 
mentary reporters it is deliverance from the land of Egypt !—who, even 
from the Ist of May, regularly curse Mr. Hume a hundred and fifty 
times a night, and threaten physical force upon the uprisings of Dr. 
Lushington, or Sir James Mackintosh.* 

The session, although lengthy, has been more marked in the deyvisial 
of business than the disposal of it. One of the measures to which the 
country looked with the most anxiety—Lord Wharncliffe’s Game Bill— 
was lost. The Currency question does not appear to be yet finally settled, 
and a report exists that Mr. Peel will resign his office upon it—a report 
which, it is hardly necessary to say, we trust is without foundation ; 
since the loss of Mr. Peel’s services at the present moment would be a 
matter of infinite disadvantage to the country. And the deliberations 
of the Finance Committee, of Mr. Brougham’s Commission on the 
State of the Law, and the Committee of Police, will not be in a shape 
for consideration (at the earliest) before next year. 

In the mean time, the address from the throne, which accompanied the 
prorogation, though satisfactory as far as it goes, contains little intelli- 
gence that is conclusive or material. In fact, upon foreign affairs, it was 
scarcely possible that any information could be communicated of a defi- 
nite character. The clouds that arose six months since in our political 
horizon, have not burst; nor, on the other hand, are they dissipated. 
Nothing has occurred materially to increase the chance of a continental 
war ; nor any thing to diminish the hazard or possibility of it. Russia, 
in spite of some sharp fighting, and a threat of the plague, on the part 
of the Turks, is advancing, steadily, and not very slowly, in the direction 
of Constantinople. The King of England’s speech formally recognizes 
these hostilities, as “ undertaken by Russia, on her own account, and on 
grounds unconnected with the Treaty of July, 1827.” In a few weeks 
more, the Porte, which already seems inclining to a belief that insolence 
is not strength, will be contented, by abandoning all her claims on 
Greece, to purchase the aid or the mediation of the European powers. 
And, whether, when this interference appears, the Russian monarch 
will be content to retire from his conquest, upon such indemnity as 
France, and Austria, and England may think it safe to award him, is 
the point upon which the question of peace or war must turn :—which 


* There are particular speakers in the House of Commons who are always unpopular in 
“ the gallery ;”” and among these, especially, are Sir James Mackintosh and Dr. Lushing- 
ton. Mr. Hume is an awful bugbear towards the close of an evening ; but there is a prac- 
tical purpose in what he says, and he is not “ classical’’—he does not declaim! But the 
right hon. ex-judge, and the learned civilian, when they rise, “‘ leave hope behind.” For, 
from the first, youmay make sure ofa “ set speech,” no matter what the occasion is, or what 
the subject. And the last, though irregular enough in his style, has only to be entrusted 
with a coal tax petition, and out there inevitably rushes a gurgling torrent at the length of 
twenty minutes, about every topie, and upon every question, but that before the House. - 


1828.] Notes for the Month. 275 


point is just as far from being concluded as it was before the first Cos- 
sack crossed the Turkish frontier. 

_ Apart from the unsettled aspect of the East, there seems little else in 
the state of foreign politics that should disturb us. The Portuguese 
contest, for instance, notwithstanding the interest which a peculiar party 
is endeavouring to give to it, we must be deprived of reason to think of 
taking any part in. The real motive, and the only competent justifica- 
tion, of our undertaking the cost of sending troops two years ago to 
Portugal, was the threatened interference of Spain in Portuguese interests 
and affairs, while Spain herself was governed by the armies of our rival, 
France. That cause of interposition has now ceased. Civil dissensions 
will at present, under any government, continue to agitate Portugal ; 
and, at some period or other, a revolution—sweeping away not this or 
the other particular monarch, but the whole existing political and reli- 
gious system of the country—will terminate the contest: but that era, 
we are afraid, is still distant ; and certain it is that any British minister 
would merit to be impeached who should propose to lay out one shilling 
in hastening its progress. For the present, at least, the constitutional 
question is over. Don Pedro may endeavour to make an effort to enforce 
what he calls his “ title”—that is, to regain possession of Portugal—and 
to continue to rule it by a regency from Brazil ;—but he has no means 
(of his own power) of bringing half a regiment into the field for such a 
purpose ; and, if he had, the question is one with which we have nothing 
at allto do. There is no public principle, nor any political considera- 
tion, which should prevent us from recognizing Don Miguel (if it suits 
our purpose to do so) to-morrow. If it was possible for the South 
American colonies to declare themselves independent of the old states 
of Europe, surely, @ fortiori, it is competent to those states to hold them- 
selves independent of their heretofore colonies? The course, however, 
of England in the affair is easy and plain. We have no title whatever, 
nor any interest, to interfere in the contest. We should continue our 
communications with the de facto government of Portugal—whatever 
it may be—as far as they are necessary for our convenience, as long as 
the struggle exists, and feel no scruple in “ acknowledging” the vic- 
torious party at its conclusion. 

From foreign policy, turning to domestic affairs, the first subject, of 
course, that presents itself for discussion, is—“ The state of Treland.” 
There is plenty of choice in the topic: turn which way we will, some 
variety of it occurs: “ Irish distresses,” and “ Irish rights,” and Irish 
cant, and Irish bluster ; with, pretty nearly on all sides, Irish disposition 
to do mischief, whenever the opportunity may present itself of attempting 
it with success. 
_ We are not disposed to exhaust the patience of our readers upon a 
subject, on which, in spite of themselves, they have already been forced 
to hear too much; especially as the suggestion of any safe or useful 

licy with reference to it, seems to become every day more impractica- 
ble. Our personal support has been given, firmly and uniformly, to the 
policy of Concession: but there are concessions which it is impossible to 
grant, and a tone of demand which no government, that means to be a 
government, can dare to listen to. The direct avowal of the Catholic 
body, through the medium of their “ Association,” is now—not that the 
Catholics must have “ Emancipation,” but “that the terms which have 
been asked for under the title of Emancipation wil! not do.” “ The 

2N2 


276 Notes for the Month. [Serr 


people,” we are told, * are organized ; the weakness of England is their 
sure ally ; and nothing short of full equal rights and powers with Pro- 
testants, a change of the Irish Church establishment, a repeal of the 
Act of Union, and a separate Legislature, shall content them!’ Now, 
passing over the question—and our own answer to it, we avow, would 
be in the negative—Whether these are concessions which England ought 
to make? it is perfectly certain that there is no one of them, which, 
without a physical struggle, she ever will make. And the point then 
arises, which the opponents of Catholic claims generally (we are com~ 
pelled to do them this justice) have constantly desired to stand upon :—- 
“If we must have a contest in the end, is it not idiocy to be giving 
additional powers to the party that we shall have to contend with?” 
Now there may be doubts as to the conclusiveness of this proposition, 
but there can be none as to its very considerable truth and force ; and, 
unfortunately, almost every fresh act done by the Catholics is a matter 
of triumph to the party by which it is maintained. The language of the 
Catholics now, is precisely that which their antagonists have uniformly 
declared it would be: that which we have done for them is held up—and 
vauntingly and insolently held up—as a cause why we should be com- 
pelled to do still more. We are told, and in words of menace and con- 
tempt, by the very people who now pay a voluntary tax to forward the 
objects of riot and sedition, and who not five years since were asking for 
charity to preserve them from starvation at our door, that “ we sland com- 
mitted by what we have yielded already, and have lost the power now 
of refusing whatever they may demand.” That we should have kept the 
Catholics of Ireland poor and degraded when we had them so : that our 
error has been in allowing them to acquire wealth and reputation: that 
we ought to have upheld the penal statutes, which kept them in exile, and 
moral and physical prostration: in short, that, unless we meant to make 
them our equals (or our masters), we should have kept them in the 
position of our slaves. 
The policy then properly applicable to every question, must change 
with any change of aspect which that question may assume ; and there 
ean be little doubt that the events of the last six months have weakened 
the hopes of the supporters of Catholic conciliation very considerably. . 
The demand of “ equality,’ as a matter of necessary right, in any 
case, istrash: the servant might assert it against his master ; the very dog 
against the hand that feeds him: a little more brawl and babble about 
* equality,” and the Catholic cause, for the next quarter of a century, is 
irrecoverably gone. As the cause stands, it has suffered mischief, and 
material mischief. The Irish members in the House of Commons may 
still vote for it; some from love—the greater part, from fear. The 
ultra Whigs may give it their support, because they fancy their political 
characters pledged to it; and they will judge no great mischief can 
ensue from the vote, if it is not likely to be carried. But the inde- 
pendent members, whose opinions were favourable to catholic concilia- 
tion, because they believed that Ireland would be satisfied with those 
concessions which England could afford to grant; these friends need 
but a little more to fall from the cause rapidly ; and out of Parliament, 
they are already, we are much afraid, falling off in all directions. Under 
such circumstances, the duty of a government must necessarily be diffi- 
cult ; but the intentions of the present ministry—as far as it is possible 
to form an opinion of them—seem to be pretty nearly these :—-They will 


1828.) : Notes for the Month. 277° 


concede (unless on good securities) nothing : irritate as little as possible : 
look to the gradual progress of civilization and education for improve- 
ment in the dispositions of the Irish people: and, in the event of an 
insurrection bursting out—be prepared to dispose of it. 

The Thames Tunnel.—An evening paper contains the following para- 
graph. It appears that this highly-ingenious and perfectly-useless under- 
taking is at last (as we always predicted it must be) abandoned :-— 


“The Thames Tunnel is now entirely at a stand. A brick wall has been 
completed at the farther extremity of the excavation, which, being made 
water-tight, prevents any water oozing in in that part, and also does away 
with the fear entertained, that, if left in its unfinished state, another break-in 
of the river might be the consequence. The water the Tunnel makes (if we 
may use the expression) at present is very trifling, and the whole of the inte- 
rior is as firm as before any accident happened. The workmen, with the 
exception of a very few hands who are employed in thoroughly removing every 
appearance of the late disaster, have been discharged; and even the few now 
at work will in another week no longer be needed. Public curiosity appears 
to have slackened in a great measure, as the number of visitors to inspect this 
wonderful attempt of art is now very limited; and, from the slowness with 
which money is collected for its completion, the undertaking would appear to 
have completely slipped the recollection of the public. Notwithstanding the 
appeals made, and the time that has elapsed since the new plan was first pro- 
posed and adopted, little more than a tenth part of the sum required to finish 
the work has been got together. We understand that it has been proposed, in 
the event of the sum of 100,000/. being raised, to commence working from the 
other side of the Thames as far as they can go; and, in case of the water 
breaking in, as they approach the dangerous part, which is the centre of the 
river, building up a similar wall to that now placed at the end of the present 
works, and afterwards completing the centre by means of the coffer-dam.” 


The Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Police, &c., has found 
its way, by fragments, into circulation, and various opinions are put 
forth, as to its importance or utility. We are not ourselves disposed 
to consider a subject of so much moment upon partial or uncertain 
information ; but, if the fact be, as we find it stated in some respectable 
quarters, that the Committee has bestowed great labour upon taking 
evidence as to the “ detail and machinery” of crime, its researches on 
that head, we suspect, are likely to prove more curious than practically 
beneficial. The origin of crime, in London and its vicinity (we speak 
here of crimes against property) needs very little witchcraft in the way 
of discovery. It is not distress ; for the lower classes are well paid, and 
the thieves are never distressed people: it is the desire of a certain 
number of individuals always to consume more of beef steak and brandy 
than they have the means legitimately of earning ; and, instead of being 
idle one or two days in the seven, to pass the week in leisure and 
dissipation altogether. 

Weare afraid that this disposition, to be dealt with effectually, must 
be met by a change in the system of our criminal punishment, rather 
than in that of our police. Preventive measures will never do a great 

in a country constituted as ours is: the thieves will always out- 
number and outwatch the thief takers, and, for the question of force, 
our police has physical strength enough to do all that the law will at 
present allow it to do (and more). “The desideratum is some means by 
which we can render thieving a less prosperous trade, and thus deter a 
larger portion of the community from engaging in it; and, still more, 
by which we can clear the country of our rogues, after we have suffered 


278 Notes for the Month. [Sepr. 


by, taken, and convicted them. A very few words will be sufficient 
here to explain our meaning. As the law and the punishment system 
stand, what between the difficulty of finding a thief after he has com- 
mitted a robbery ; the dislike of parties to undertake the expense and 
trouble of prosecuting ; the uncertainty, where prosecution occurs, of 
making a case out in evidence; and the legal quibbles which seem 
left in our law purposely, to enable the culprit, when all other chances 
are against him, to get off: taking into consideration all these hindrances, 
we speak certainly within very guarded limits, when we say not one offence 
in six ever becomes the subject of discovery, trial, and conviction. But 
this is not the worst—the greatest evil is, that, of every ten men convicted 
in England, nine are speedily turned out to prey upon society again. 
Full one-half of the criminals tried at every sessions and assizes, con- 
sist of men who have been tried, and convicted (very often only in the 
preceding session) of offences before! The slightest attention to those 
cases in which offenders suffer the last punishment of the law (when the 
details of their lives generally come out) will shew that this estimate 
is not overrated.* We sentence one man—a confirmed and notorious 
pickpocket —to twelve months’ imprisonment in Bridewell. A shop 
lifter is sent to the hulks—from which he is probably liberated at the 
end of a couple of years. A horse stealer is sentenced to transportation 
for life, but escapes probably with a limited term of confinement. A 
case hardly occurs—except in the instance of forgery—of a man being 
hanged, who has not been capitally convicted four or five times. 


* A case immediately before us described in the West Briton (Cornish paper) may serve 
to illustrate this fact. 

« ExEcuTion.—On Thursday morning Thomas Pring, who was convicted of three 
burglaries at the last assizes, was executed at Bodmin, pursuant to his sentence. From 
the time of his conviction the unfortunate young man behaved in a manner becoming his 
situation, and met his unhappy fate with resignation and fortitude. At an early hour of the 
morning he was visited by the chaplain of the gaol, and attended divine service and 
received the sacrament in the chapel, with much apparent devotion. About half-past ten 
o’clock he ascended the platform with firmness ; and after remaining a short time in prayer 
with the clergyman the drop fell, and his sufferings terminated after a few struggles. 
According to a statement made by him to the chaplain of the prison, he was about twenty- 
one years of age at the time of his execution. When he was about five years of age, his 
father, who lived at Stokeclimsland, was found guilty of stealing cattle, and was sentenced 
to be transported. His mother died when he was seven years of age, and he was bound 
apprentice, by the parish officers, to a farmer. He eloped frequently, and was, in his 
youth, more than once an inmate of Bodmin prison, for leaving his master, robbing orchards, 
gardens, &c. During one of his rambles, he robbed Mr. Mill’s dairy of some butter, for 
which he was convicted and sentenced to be transported for seven years; but being sent to 
the Penitentiary at Milbank, he conducted himself so well there, that he was discharged in 
February last. In passing from Devonport, where he had been sent from the Penitentiary, 
he broke into a house, and stole a few shillings. In the early part of March, he went 
towards Truro, to seek for work, and on his way broke into a house near the Indian Queens, 
from which he stole six teaspoons and other articles. He lived with Mr. Peters, of St. 
Clements, for a few weeks, when he left, and afterwards returned and broke into the 
house. For this offence he was committed to Bodmin gaol, where he robbed a fellow 
prisoner, and was, in consequence, confined in a solitary cell, out of which he broke. He 
tried to catch a horse in a field near the prison, but not being able to do so, he broke into a 
stable, stole a horse, on which he rode to the Jamaica Inn, and broke into it in order to get 
some clothes to conceal his prison dress. He then rode to another public-house, which he 
also broke into, and drank liquor until nearly intoxicated. He then rode to the house of 
his old prosecutor, Mr. Mill, which he entered and carried off a variety of articles, with a 
bottle of spirits. He then entered an orchard, drank until he became intoxicated, and fell 
asleep. He slept several hours, and was awakened by the constable and three other 
persons, who took him into custody, and conveyed him back to the gaol from which he had 
escaped a short time before.” : 


1826.] Jotes for the Month. 279 


Now the root of this mischief lies in the expensiveness to the country 
of the punishment of transportation beyond seas. We let the rat loose 
after we have caught him, because we don’t care to put him to death, 
and it is too much trouble the carrying him toa distance. And, if there 
‘were no other resource than that of incurring this heavy charge, or of 
substituting capital punishment freely for transportion, we must let things 
remain as they are ; but a scheme has been proposed by which convicts 
transported might be made to pay their own expenses, and, without 
assuming to decide in this place upon its practicability, we are certain 
that it is a question which ought to be inquired into. It is matter of 
notoriety, that the demand for convict labour, both in Australia and 
Van Diemen’s Land, is intense. The heaviest misfortune that could 
befal the residents in these colonies, would be that the people of Great 
Britain should all become honest. The very caterpillers that prey upon 
society in this country, become, by their mere change of place, active 
and valuable subjects on the other side the hemisphere ; applications 
are made to the authorities for their services, long before they reach 
their new country; and the general demand for them is not only con- 
‘stant, but far greater than it is possible to satisfy. Under such cir- 
cumstances is it difficult to doubt, looking to the high wages obtained 
by free workmen, in these countries, and the demand already described 
for the services of transports, that a vast deal, if not the whole, of that 
valuable labour which is now given gratuitously by government, might 
be sold? and notwithstanding some alleged difficulties in the details, we 
have yet heard no perfectly satisfactory reason alleged why it should not 
be so. The same parties who now contend so actively for the posses- 
sion of convict labourers—and with reason, for to such men the meat, 
drink, and clothes that they furnish, does not amount to one-third of the 
wages that they must pay to a free labourer—such employers would 
gladly pay to government a moderate premium for the services of each 
individual ; and a tax of only two shillings per week received on the 
hire of each convict, would, in four years, more than pay all the charge 
of his transportation. 

We know that one objection taken to this plan has been, that it would 
lead to abuse. That culprits transported from this country for robbery, 
and carrying with them (as it frequently happens) a considerable booty, 
would be taken on hire by some previously liberated associate, and live 
in a condition of ease and idleness, instead of suffering punishment. 
But besides the difficulty which might be thrown in the way of these 
arrangements by the practice of disposing of the labourers by lot, the 
fact is, that already the man who carries about him a stock of money, 
will live at his ease in Botany Bay—as he would every where else! 
The settler, to whom such a person may be allotted, wants nothing of 
him but his labour ; and as long as he will pay that settler the hire of a 
free servant, he may enjoy his leisure, and his liberty, and welcome, 
for the free workman is of course more valuable than himself. This 
objection, therefore, which, at first sight, appears considerable, dwindles 
almost to nothing in importance upon closer consideration, and we con- 
fess we have not heard any other which is capable in the slightest 
degree of being maintained. 

At any rate, we think it is much to be desired that the attention of a 
Committee of the House of Commons were addressed to this particular 
subject. No system can be devised that will be wholly free from objec- 


280 Noies for the Month. (Serr. 


tion ; but we strongly believe that the more free use of the punishment 
of transportation would be beneficial to the parties immediately con- 
cerned as well as to the public. We say this in perfect seriousness. 
Judges are not—nor are lawgivers—much gulled by the doctrine of 
“reformation.” They know that there is no reformation for a thief 
after the second offence ; scarcely ever after the first. Such a man cannot 
reform—he cannot recover his character, and with it his only means of live- 
lihood—in this country, if he would; and, with his old associates about 
him (tempted on by the mere fact of his escape), he would not if he 
could. The only true cause of the comparative disuse of the punish- 
ment of transportation is its expensiveness; and that difficulty, the 
system which we have recommended, if found practicable, would remove. 
For the notion which has got abroad that thieves are mightily pleased 
with such a sentence—we would venture for once to give them the benefit 
of their liking: but, in plain terms, we doubt the fact. We believe 
that the fondness for a sentence of transportation occurs chiefly when it 
comes (as it commonly now does) in the shape of a reprieve from the 
sentence of death ; but, if it be so peculiarly agreeable as is assumed, 
our argument is strengthened—it is rather hard that only the most des~ 
perate culprits should be selected to enjoy the advantages of it.” 

The Examiner of last Sunday says—“ A person who has taken the 
pains to ascertain the fact, states that, of the persons who entered a cele- 
brated gin-shop in Westminster within a given time, the women were 
in the proportion of nineteen to one man,”—Lackington, the bookseller, 
observes, in his Autobiography, on the authority of Wesley the preacher, 
“that more women are converted to methodism than men.” 

The following paragraph from the Bucks’ Gazetle, has been making 
the round of the London papers :— 


** Windsor Castle-—It is now ascertained that it will be impossible to get 
the Castle in a sufficient state of forwardness to enable his Majesty to dine 
there with any thing like comfort on the 12th. It is expected, therefore, that 
his Majesty will entertam a splendid dinner party at Virginia Water on his 
birth-day.—The brass guns, which have hitherto stood in front of Cumber- 
land-lodge, will be forthwith removed to the battery lately erected at the Bel- 
vedere, opposite the Chinese-house.—Within a few days a new opening to the 
terrace has been made, contiguous to the Store Tower, and, judging from the 
spirit with which it has been commenced, many more days will not be required 
for its completion. The new gate, which is to be of open iron work, will in 
future, therefore present from the Castle-yard a splendid view of some portion 
of that delightful scenery, which, heretofore, could only be seen one day in the week 
From the Terrace—IM addition to raising the Round Tower, which is being 
commenced, we hear that it is in contemplation to form a magnificent collec- 
tion of pictures, to be called the Waterloo Gallery, and as there is not any 
accommodation for such a collection, it is presumed that a new gallery will be 
forthwith erected for that purpose. Should it be found practicable to carry 
this desirable object into effect, it is, we understand, his Majesty’s intention 
to throw the new gallery open to the public. In furtherance of this plan, 
purchases have been already made to the amount of between 30,000/. and 
40,000/.—In order to prevent interruption to the workmen employed in the 
improvements at the Castle, the public are still rigidly excluded ; no one 
being admitted except the members of the Royal Family and the visitors at 
the Royal Lodge.—It is but justice to state, and we do it with the sincerest 
pleasure, that Mr. Wyatville has very kindly interceded and used his best exer- 
tions to obtain for the public admission to the New Grand Terrace ; objections 
on this head, however, aré supposed to be still entertained in a high quarter.” 


1828.] ‘Notes for the Month. 281 


We have always resisted, as a mistake, as well as rather a cockney 
piece of insolence, the claim, as a right, on the part of the public, of 
access to the palaces or mansions of the crown. Such a doctrine has 
always seemed tous to involve a good deal of mean feeling, as well as of 
obtrusive impudence. The Sovereign has the same right to the privacy of 
his palace that a simple tradesman has to that of his dwelling-house. The 
paltry fact of its being built with what is called “the public money,” 
makes no difference in the case. The seats of many of the noblest families 
in the country have been built or purchased with the ‘“ public money ;” 
that is, with money most fitly and politicly granted to them for services 
that they have performed ; but the “ public” has never yet been held 
to possess any “ right of entry” to such edifices ; and a good many of 
the owners, we suspect, would be inclined to restore them to the public, 
if any such right could be made out. But, on the other hand, there is 
something horribly offensive in the contents of this Windsor paragraph ; 
something very humble, and yet very craving; very disgraceful to all 
real English heart and feeling, and likely to be a tit-bit for the columns 
of an American newspaper. The deep admiration of the writer at the 
“ spirit” with which a hole has been broken through the store-house 
wall, to make an additional opening to the terrace! And the joyous 
anticipation of seeing, through “ the new gate,” which is to be built of 
* open iron-work,” some portion of that “ delightful scenery” all the 
week, which he has hitherto only been allowed to contemplate on a 
Sunday! This is all base, and mean, and hungering ; and, what is 
basest of all, hungering after luxury: an honést man would go without 
* scenery” for ever, rather than purchase it on such terms. The sug- 
gested purchases’ “to the amount of 30,000/. or 40,000/.” for the 
« Waterloo Gallery” of pictures, we rather hope exist only in the writer’s 
heated imagination, or, at least, that such an outlay is not to be made at 
the national expense ; because his Majesty, we believe, already possesses 
as many pictures as he can well dispose of for his private entertainment ; 
and an expenditure of 40,000/. to fit up a new picture gallery at 
Windsor Castle would sound almost like extravagance, when we are 
dismissing twenty inferior clerks to save 2000/. a year. The last four 
lines of the nonsense, however, contain the crowning morsel! The 
protecting “ exertions’”—we are really overpowered with the thought! 
—the kind “ mediation” of the excellent architect !—the “ intercessions” 
of “ Mr. Wyatville,” the builder, on behalf of the British nation! It 
is impossible not to be moved by the beneficent interference of this 
excellent gentleman, in favour of the whole of the inhabitants of England, 
Scotland, and Ireland—not to speak of the natives of Berwick-upon- 
Tweed, and the people that drop in occasionally from India and the 

colonies! to obtain “admission” for them to the “ New Grand Terrace,” 
and to remove the “ objections entertained in a high quarter” to their 
enjoyment of so much indulgence! But the thing really passes a joke, 
and rises into the pathetic. The British public indulged at the “ inter- 
cession” of Mr. Wyatville! What an intellect must the man have who 
could imagine that even a suggestion offered on such a subject and from 
such a quarter could be listened to, and what a heart, if he could con- 
sent—were an advantage offered to him so obtained—to accept it! We 
owe the justice to Mr. Wyatville to believe that he has in no way 
authorized this monstrous hanging-up of his own name to ridicule. It 

is as impossible that he should have desired to have it supposed that 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No.33. 20 


282 Notes for the Month. [Serr. 


he was mad enough to offer his mediation upon’ a question of public 
arrangement to the King of England, as that his Majesty personally 
should have failed to expire with laughter, had any such “ kind inter- 
cession” been proposed. But country news-papers are read by a large 
class of persons whose means of information are limited; and, to suffer 
a paragraph like this to pass without notice, might lead to a belief that 
it was possible for persons of decent feeling to read it without contempt. 

The Hackney-coach proprietors of the metropolis, who have, for some 
time past, found their trade, more than their vehicles, upon the “ go,” 
have held a meeting at the sign of the “ Hercules’ Pillars,” in Great 
Queen Street, to receive the report of a petition laid before the Lords of 
the Treasury, against their opponents, the “ cabriolet” drivers, and to 
consider of farther measures for obtaining what they call “ fare” play- 
The owner of the coach “ No. 1’ of all England was called to the chair ; 
and, mixed up with a good deal of erroneous philosophy, the parties 
seemed most of them to have some glimmerings as to the real causes of 
their ill condition. 

The petition presented to the Lords of the Treasury, prayed, that, for 
the relief of the suffermg hackney-coach proprietors, an act might be 
passed, as nearly as we can collect, to the following effect :—Ist. That 
the fares of the hackney-coaches should be reduced by the sum of two- 
pence per mile.—2d. That all drivers should be compelled to have 
licences.—3d. That stage-coaches should be prevented from taking up 
or setting down passengers in the streets ; and that all “ branch coaches” 
(coaches which the stage proprietors send round town to collect pas- 
sengers from their different booking-offices) should be stopped.—And, 
4th. that “ plates” should be made transferrable, from coaches to cab- 
riolets, and vice versd, at the pleasure of the holder. 

Now the petition of the hackney-coachman, even although we can only 
agree in the propriety of a portion of it, deserved a better reception than 
the reply from the Lords of the Treasury, that, “ after due considera- 
tion, they did not deem it expedient that its suggestions should be 
adopted.” The third and fourth clauses—those curtailing the privileges 
of the stage-coaches—are wholly inadmissible. It is true that a change 
is wanted in the arrangement ; but itis a change the other way ; and the 
increased and increasing extent of London on every side, renders it dis- 
graceful to the controllers of our police that the restrictions upon “ short. 
stages,” as they are called, have not long since been removed altogether. 
Upon what principle is it that an individual, whose business happens to 
call him from Oxford-street to Blackfriars, or from Charing Cross to the 
Bank, when a conveyance as good as he desires for the distance can 
be supplied to him for nine-pence, should be compelled to use one 
which costs half-a-crown or three shillings? Why must such a person 
be compelled to walk on foot, through the heat of July, or the rain and 
mud of February and December, merely because he cannot afford to pay 
three shillings for a ride, which a hundred traders (but for the prohibi- 
tion of the law) would be glad to furnish him for one? Here is no duty 
paid to the state ; no supply carried to the public revenue ; which aman 
may be consoled for having contributed even in an objectionable shape ; 
because, if he had not paid it in that form, he must have paid it in 
some other. The tax is merely imposed for the benefit of our friends, 
the “« hackney-coachmen,” who have no earthly title to inflict any such 
penalty upon the public ; and, whom in fact, it does nol serve when all 


1828. ] Notes for the Month. 283 


is done—for the law does not enable a man to pay three shillings, when 
it forbids him to purchase at one shilling ; and the consequence is that 
he pays neither—he goes without the convenience. 

The second request—the stoppage of the “ branch coaches’—though 
a point of less importance, stands upon the same principle. In this case, 
no objection would arise on the part of the “ proprietary.” The stage- 
coach masters, who charge nothing for this collection of their customers, 
have adopted it only to meet competition in their own trade, and would 
be sufficiently contented with a law which should prohibit the practice 
generally. But then there is no reason why a traveller, who is about to 
pay—thanks to an open trade, and the most profitable disposition of 
capital and power—only thirty shillings for his conveyance from Lon- 
don to Liverpool, should be compelled to pay five shillings for his con- 
veyance, a fiftieth part of the distance, from Marylebone to the “ Swan 
with Two Necks,” or ‘the “Bull and Mouth ;” more especially when 
the “ Bull and Mouth” coachmaster is ready to take the trouble of 
carrying him that journey without any charge at all. The restrictive 
system, therefore, must be given up. In fact, the best thing the “ hack- 
ney” gentlemen could do would be at once to abandon it, and try to turn 
their property to account by the establishment of the very “ street stages” 
which they now reprehend. But all that part of their plan which goes 
to the amelioration of their own commodity, is well judged, and 
merited aid and consideration. The reduction of “ fare” we do not 
think would exactly have the effect that they propose. The same abate- 


ment of profit would be better laid out in the improvement of their 


vehicles, which are, in general, in but a ricketty condition ; and even 
at the ten-pence per mile—the price that they offer to come down to— 
they are mistaken if they suppose they will ever compete with the 
“« eabriolets.” 

The cabriolet—especially the description of vehicle last produced 
—is a better thing for the purposes for which people want hackney- 
coaches, than either the coach or the chariot. It can be better got up— 
built, horsed, and appointed—at eight-pence a mile, than the coach or 
chariot can at one shilling ; and, from the superior neatness of its equip- 
ment, the rapid rate at which it is worked, and the peculiar facility with 
which it is directed in driving from place to place about town, even if 
the rates of fare were equal, it would always get the preference, in fine 
weather and with single individuals. In fact, many of the cabriolets 
are now built and horsed in a manner which can hardly be surpassed by 
any private equipage. We suspect, therefore, that the hackney-coach 
owners had better improve their carriages than reduce their (lawful) 
fares ; but their good intentions, fortunately, need not consume for want 
of exercise on this point—the distinction between the fare payable to a 
hackney-coachman, and the fare paid, as times go, is a very material 
one ; and this discrepancy, with a very great many other nuisances and 
mischiefs, would be got rid of by the course proposed of “ licensing” the 

_ drivers. " 
It is only justice to the individuals who make a profession of driving of 
n Br onches, to declare, that they contain within their guild, or body, 
a sprinkling of the most eminent rascals about town. In burglaries, their 
accessoryship is known to be considerable. They do a good deal in the 
way of picking pockets, on wet nights, at the opera or the theatres ; and 
are invaluable eoadjutors to the receivers of stolen property and the 


202 


264 Notes for the Month. [Serr 


“ resurrection-men.” And, for the matter of charge,.as the practice 
stands, extortion is part of the purchase. Every man who hires a 
hackney-coach expects, as a necessary corollary to the act, either to have 
a squabble, or to pay fifty per cent. over the amount of his fare: which 
is practically so much added to the hiring rate of the conveyance. Now 
we cannot expect to make these conductors scrupulous people; but 
there is still room for amendment ; and we see no course by which that 
amendment is likely to be attained, so readily, as by subjecting them 
all to the control of a licence. At present, the means of redress, where 
evil has been done, are (practically) slight. A man feels indisposed to 
wait several hours in “ summoning” a rogue by. whom he has been 
cheated of eighteen-pence; and, besides, he feels the inutility of the 
proceeding. He takes another coach, and, within fifteen minutes, is 
cheated again. There is obviously no good effected, unless the whole 
1,200 dignitaries of the box had but one person, so that he could take 
them all to “ Essex Street’’ at the same time., A few examples of degra- 
dation, or eyen temporary suspension from the seat of power, such as_ it 
would be in the power of the magistrates (if the system of “ licensing” 
were adopted) to inflict, would probably make these artists feel the con~ 
venience of conducting themselves more guardedly. 

There remains but one more point, then, in the carriers of men’s peti- 
tion—the desire that they may be at liberty to apply their “ plates” to 
covered vehicles or cabriolets, as they think fit ; and this is a request, 
we think, so reasonable that some plain and sufficient objection ought to 
be assigned if it is not to be granted to them. If the trade is to be in 
any degree an open one, then the holders of the cabriolets can have no 
right to a monopoly of the employment of that carriage; they have 
enjoyed the advantage already for a considerable period of its prior intro- 
duction. And, if the Commissioners are to use their authority for 
the purpose of determining what quantity and what description of 
accommodation the convenience of the town demands, then their deci- 
sion at present is a most absurd or a most unjust one; because the 
cabriolets are too few for the public demand, and the coaches and 
chariots (as the long ranks that stand for hours in the. streets suffi- 
ciently testify) very greatly too many. Certainly, with a view to 
general convenience, the power of transferring the “ plates” or licences 
here demanded would be desirable: as the mere change of season 
makes a difference in the description of carriage likely to be in request : 
and its refusal to the coach-owners challenges the closer examination, 
because there are persons likely to possess influence—Mr. Bradshaw, the 
banker, for instance,.and “the Hon. Mr. Ponsonby Staples”—among. 
their opponents, the holders of the cabriolets. 

Cobbett, who is always mad four times a year upon some new conun- 
drum, is now rampant on the subject of producing Indian corn in 
England. The following is an account of an experiment made by 
himself in its cultivation. 


“T should think that eight acres had bestowed upon them about twenty 
large cart-loads of tolerably good manure, taking one part with the other, and 
no more. The corn has had two complete and good hand hoeings, and the 
ground is now as clean as a parterre ought to be. The field, as I said before,’ 
is the handsomest Indian corn-field that I ever saw, and I have seen millions 
of acres. Every body knows what sort of a. summer we have had; that we have 
had full six weeks of wet and shady weather, beginning about the sth of 


1828. } Notes for the Month. 285 


July, and ending on the 18th of August, just the very part of the summer 
when we might have hoped for that heat which is so favourable for plants of 
this description. I was afraid to look at the corn: I skulked away for a whole 
month ; but, Sr. Swrrmin appearing, on Monday last, to have brought the 
dispensation of his favours to a termination, I mustered up courage to come 
and take a survey of his ravages upon my Indian corn. I haye now 
examined it well; and I can see no reason for believing that it will not ripen § 
and, if it do ripen, I have not the smallest doubt that it will produce a hun- 
dred Winchester bushels to the acre. If it ripen this summer, there never 
will be a summer in which it will not ripen, if sowed in proper time. In 
about a month from this time we shall cut. off the tassels and the dong leaves, 
which give a prodigious quantity of fodder to the acre, and which fodder, 
weight for weight, sells much dearer than the best hay in America. The ears 
then remain on the stalks until the latter end of October, by which time the 
grain is hard, and then the ears are plucked off, and put away for preservation. 
The great stalks are then cut off or pulled up ; and, if given to hogs, they will 
gnaw them to pieces, and live upon them for a good while: at the least, they 
will serve to bed up yards and styes. In America, where the weather is hot 
enough to dry these stalks through, they serve as fodder for cows throughout 
the winter, and cows will do much better upon them than upon hay of the 
very best quality. The truth is, every part of the plant abounds with -sac- 
charine matter. My field is of the dwarf kind.of corn, such as I have never 
seen in America ; it does not grow to much more than half the height, but is 
more productive, acre for acre. 


An inveterate Thief—A French paper gives an account of the escape 
of a prisoner, who was being conveyed before the Juge d’In- 
struction at the Palais de Justice in Paris, by tripping up his two 
guards, and running along the roof of the palace, in sight of the police 
agents. It seems that he has been recaptured, but he had not lost any 
time : he had cut off his whiskers, and taken a place in the Havre coach, 
at the Messageries Royales, under the name of Henri. He was taken just 
as he was getting into the coach. On being taken, he said, “I shall 
escape again ; and the next time, I will take the jailor with me.’ He is 
charged with several flagrant robberies, but belongs to a wealthy and 
respectable family at Macon. 

The petition from the county of Clare, claiming the effective majority 
in the election for Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, gives a curious history of the 
impositions and mummeries by which Mr.O’Connell’s return was obtained. 
Among other frauds upon the lamentable ignorance of the multitude, it is 
stated that “an empty coffin was carried in procession, amidst an immense 
concourse of people, through the town of Ennis, on the fourth day of the 
election, by the contrivance and with the connivance of Mr. O’Connell, 
his committee, agents, friends, and supporters—particularly of the 
priests, who gave out that the coffin contained the body of a freeholder, 
who had died suddenly, in consequence of having voted against Mr. 
O’Connell ! !”"—This sort of trash can only serve to convince the people 
of England, that the Irish Catholics have more “ political rights” 
already than they are competent properly to manage. 

Paris correspondent of the Globe, commenting upon the state of 
criminal law in France, declares that, “on one point, all parties are 
agreed ; wiz. the uselessness of executions, even in cases of murder.” 
And this opinion is supported by the testimony of several considerable 
lawyers at the Parisian bar. ‘The writer continues :— 

** Any person who has had an opportunity of witnessing an execution in 
Paris, will bear testimony to the heartless levity and indifference which pre- 


286 Notes for the Month. [Szerr. 


vail upon such melancholy occasions. The number of females, and those of 
the most respectable appearance, usually greatly exceeds that of the men, and 
one would rather imagine the ceremony to be intended to celebrate some joy- 
ful circumstance, than for the purpose of witnessing the last sad struggle of a 
wretched criminal. All the wine shops in the neighbourhood are crowded 
with labourers, who usually leave their work to carouse upon such occasions. 
Cakes, lemonade, and refreshments of various kinds, are hawked about the 
crowd, who amuse themselves with every species of badinage without one 
single reflection upon the suffering about to be inflicted upon a fellow-crea- 
ture. 

At an execution which took place a year or two ago, a hearty laugh broke 
from the assembled crowd at the moment the axe fell upon the neck of the 
criminal, which was caused by the shrill cry of a woman, who vociferated 
© Gateaux de Nanterre!’ just at the fatal period, without paying the least 
attention to what was going forward, and solely intent upon selling her hot 
cakes.” 


The error of this theory lies in the supposing, that, because people 
are indifferent about seeing their neighbours hanged, they are, therefore, 
at all the less disposed to avoid being hanged themselves. It is in the 
very necessary course of things, that the spectacle of a public execution 
should be looked at (unless under very rare and peculiar circumstances) 
with little other than feelings of vulgar curiosity. Mankind in general 
—we may choose to overlook the fact, but we cannot alter it—feel 
almost solely for themselves. Any portion of danger or suffering, that 
we see pressing upon a third party, affects, or fails to affect us, almost 
entirely, as there seems a possibility that the same malady may arise, 
immediately or remotely, to ourselves. We shrink from the narrative 
of a “fire,” or of the overturning of a mail-coach, or the foundering of 
a steam boat, because these are casualties to which we may to-morrow 
be personally subject: but we feel very little sympathy at seeing a man 
hanged, because hanging is out of our way; it is not a risk that we 
believe we shall ever be called upon to encounter. As far as the reason- 
ing faculties are concerned therefore, men can hardly be expected to 
take any deep interest in the execution of a criminal; and, for all 
beyond this, the spectacle is not of a character to produce any very 
active impression upon the senses. To excite the feelings strongly, there 
must be a display of actual, unequivocal suffering ; few men ever witness 
a military punishment, though for the fiftieth time, without sensations of 
acute pain. Here the suffering stands forward, and is made clearly apparent 
tous. We hear the lashes fall, and witness the writhings or supplica- 
tions of the offender: and, moreover, we are sensible, probably, that the 
fault for which, the punishment is inflicted is but slight. But we feel 
little compassion (on reflection) for a culprit condemned to the scaffold, 
who we know has amply deserved his sentence, or he never would have 
received it; and the forms ofan execution, both in France and England, 
are purposely so arranged, as to give as little offence to the feelings of ~ 
decorum or humanity as possible. Were the thing otherwise, however, it is 
nonsense to contend, that the apathy which we exhibit for the fate of 
ethers, has any thing to do with the regardlessness of similar infliction 
upon ourselves; it would be just as reasonable to assume, that 
because men see funerals pass them every day, without comment, or 
even notice, they are, therefore, less careful to avoid all that seems likely 
to produce death in their own persons.. “ Mister Corder,” the gentle- 
man who has just been hanged in Suffolk ; who murdered the woman 


p> 


1828.] Notes for the Month. 287 


with whom he cohabited, and who had borne him children ; kept articles 
of her property, after the murder, about him in the way of remem- 
brance ; made equivoques, when questioned as to what had become of 
her ; and altogether exhibited the most philosophical sang froid in her 
death ; the moment his own appears to be on the approach, becomes 
the most concerned and anxious person imaginable. The real truth is— 
and, in despite of theories, the feelings of every man approve it—that 
the penalty of death is the severest, and, in the way of example, acts as 
the severest that can be inflicted. Crimes are committed, not in despite 
of the gallows, but in the hope of escape from it. The story about the 
Gateaux de Nanterre proves nothing more than that people are generally 
seized upon by any thing that is violently unexpected or incongruous. 
In the deepest scene of a tragedy, the chance pop of a soda water bottle 
sets a whole audience laughing. For the vender of cakes herself, she 
merely acted as all the world acts: with the same object and feeling, 
though under less ordinary circumstances. She came to the execution, 
because there would be a crowd there, who would be likely to buy her 
pastry. And she cried, “ Gateaux de Nanterre!” not because she 
underrated the inconvenience of hanging, but because her affair was to 
be heard, in the seeking of her livelihood. 

That ghosts do not return from the grave is certain, or we should 
sometimes hear of the tearing to pieces of a biographer. In addition to 
the hundred and one volumes of twaddle already printed about Dr. 
Parr, Mr. Barker, of Thetford, has put forth a hundred and second 
thick octavo, of “ Parriana;’’ and threatens to deliver himself even of 
another. This first infliction of Mr. Barker’s consists principally of 
trivialities at second hand, digested or reprinted, from the histories of 
earlier writers. We afford a few extracts to exemplify how the follies 
of a really learned, though very tedious, man, may be raked up to 
disparage and throw ridicule upon his memory. The first reminiscences 


are from the pen of the Rev. John Stewart, curate of Sporle, in Nor- 
folk :— 


“JT think I never saw a genuine, fame-loving whist-player except Parr. 
Victory was his sole aim. The spoils of it he left to others. One rubber 
always amused him—he seldom played a second—he paid always, when he 
lost—he never accepted payment when he won, in so far as I have seen him. 
It so happened that, upon the night in question, Parr’s partner ruinously 
finessed, and Parr remonstrated. The former, who had hoped to ‘ shadow 
himself with laurels, felt compelled, on the contrary, to ‘ pass under the 
yoke.’ To extenuate his own disgrace, he flew at a noble quarry, and made 
a sharp and offensive retort. As he waxed warmer, Parr became cooler, until 
the latter had finally reasoned down his temper to the most enviable repose. 
For some time he remained silent ; but it was an eloquent silence, felt as welt 
as seen; and when at last he did speak, in place of the terrible chastisement 
fairly earned, and by me anticipated, Parr coolly reviewed and pointedly cen- 
sured his faults, both of play and temper, demonstrated, triumphantly, his 
egregious blunders in each, and made him the slave of his pity rather than 

8 anger.” 


Now what fourteen out of fifteen of these eloquent lines mean, we 
ot ourselves at a loss to understand. But we give another story 
rom the same “ sweet remembrancer.” The prostration of all these 
narrators before their great Apollo, is the most curious part of the affair. 


“TI prithee put thy foot upon my neck!” seems to breathe out in every 
sentence that they utter. 


288 Notes for the Month. (Serr. 


“One morning I hastily entered his library, and found him calmly occupied 
in dictating to two amanuenses at the same moment. He appeared the very 
personification of the ‘clarum et venerabile nomen ;’ enjoying ‘ otium cum 
dignitate. Seated in his easy chair, and crowned with his bonnet rouge, with 
paper-matches, a lighted candle, and ammunition-saucer of prime Nicotiana, 
upon a very small table to his right, there he held his long pipe witha graceful 
nonchalance ; awaiting in a half-recumbent posture of tranquillity and _ self- 
possession, the transcription of his thoughts. His whole expression of face 
seemed an expansion of intellect, and his ideas to be concentrated in even 
more than an usual profundity of reflection. I was ashamed to have broken 
in upon him ; but he did not manifest the slightest displeasure ; silently bowed 
me into a chair opposite, and left me to the undisturbed observation of what 
was passing. I noticed that according as each amanuensis finished copying 
the portion repeated, Parr proceeded directly, without pause or embarrass- 
ment, to dictate farther to whichever of the two might require it first. I 
remarked, with admiration, that the intervention of the one or the other had 
no effect to snap or even entangle the respective threads of his communica- 
tions. The same distinctness, and acuteness, and energy, were exercised in 
speaking toeach. No matter whether the first he dictated to, was the first to 
have done, or, vice vers ; it was quite the same to Parr. At last, there was, 
of necessity, a stop. The sage’s tube had to be cleared by a couple of smart 
taps on the small table, before he could enter upon the process of replenishing ; 
and while the interlude lasted, he thus accosted me :—‘ My friend, mind !— 
Voltaire could occupy three secretaries at the same time. I am able to cut 
out work for two!’ The pipe was already renewed ; its active fragrance was 
felt; and Parr’s eye bent on me, and his finger at the same instant pressed 
upon his lips, significantly enjoined silence. I readily obeyed the warning, 
while business progressed rapidly, regularly, and without an apparent effort.” 


This idolatrous adoration of mediocrity, is the vice, we are afraid, 
of gentlemen generally who live very much in the country ; but the good 
Doctor’s own view of his havings, it is but fair to observe, fully. bears 
out the estimate of his historians :— 


. “ The Doctor’s pupils in and about Norwich wished to present him with a 
piece of plate. We had a small committee to conduct the business: and found 
it less difficult to raise the money than to provide an appropriate inscription. 
One produced a scrap of Greek, another a sentence of Latin. The Doctor 
having an intimation of what was going forward, relieved us by sending an 
inscription with three superlatives, doctissimo, optimo, integerrimo, in which we 
readily acquiesced.” 


In another case.—This is from the recollections of a clergyman of the 
established church :— 


“ Left to himself Parr was a sloven ; but he was very punctilious, when he 
meant to be dressed. He plumed himself much upon the fulness of his gown, 
and bade me admire it. In the vestry he bade me examine his dress to see 
that all was correct. Observing sometimes, what did not please him in the 
buckling of his shoes, he put up his foot, and with a smile said—‘ Here, you 
dog, alter this.’ ” 


One more anecdote is all that we can afford: although the story of 
Mr. Stewart’s flannel waistcoat, and the half glass of brandy in his last 
cup of tea, is worth the whole price of the book if we had room for it :— 

“ Soon after this I went with him to the gallery of the House of Commons. 
Sir James Mackintosh, I think, went with him. The debate was of great 
importance. The Doctor sate in the side-gallery, from whence he could see « 
and be seen by the leading members of the opposition. Mr. Fox rose, and 
spoke. The Doctor’s eyes sparkled with animation. As Mr. Fox proceeded, 


1828.] ‘Notes for the Month. 289° 


the Doctor grew more animated, and at last rose as if with the intention of 
speaking. He was reminded of the impropriety, and immediately sat down. 
After Mr. Fox had concluded, he exclaimed :—‘ Had I followed any other pro- 
fession, I might have been sitting by the side of that illustrious statesman ; I 
should have had all his powers of argument,—all Erskine’s eloquence,—and 
all Hargrave’s law.” 


Mr. Field’s second volume of “ Memoirs” (the first we noticed in our 
Magazine some numbers back) is out; with a good characteristic like- 
ness of Parr, by way of frontispiece. It is dull as a narrative ; but, as 
it contains less “personal anecdote” than the former volume, it exhibits 
the learned Doctor under an aspect less ludicrous. 

A writer in the Post of this morning, who signs himself “ A Friend to 
Fair Dealing,” is prodigiously angry with our review of Mr. Kinsey’s 
« Illustrations of Portugal.” If “ Fair Dealing” have no better friends 
than this gentleman, her condition is somewhat an unlucky one ; but the 
poor Post is absolutely run mad these last twelve months, about politics 
and religion. There is a stop to all that choice “ Fashionable Intelli- 
gence,” and still more to those inimitable “ musical and dramatic criti- 
cisms,” which we used to copy out every month for the admiration of our 
readers ; and the editor does nothing, as it were, but sit upon the house 
top—at the office, just by Exeter ‘Change, in the Strand —crying 
out “ The Duke of Wellington, and the Established church !” from one 
month’s end to another. We confess we don’t like these symptoms 
about the Post. Calling us heretics and Atheists, because we refuse to 
damn French barbers for going to the play on a Sunday! And we shall 
watch its symptoms, and perhaps admonish it from time to time as we 
see reason. 

The whole “ Protestant interest” of Ireland, is looking, in open- 
mouthed astonishment, to the speech of their heretofore representative and 
champion, Mr. George Dawson, the member for Derry. Mr. Dawson, it 
appears, as violent people on all subjects are not unapt to do, has all at 
once entirely changed his opinions upon the Catholic question; and 
the reasons which he assigns as having produced this alteration of view, 
we shall give in his own words, as we find them in the Irish report of 
the Derry meeting. After describing the universal interest felt by 
all classes in Ireland on political subjects, Mr. Dawson says— 


© It is true that we have a government to which an outward obedience is 
shown, which is responsible to parliament, and answerable to God for the 
manner of administering its functions ; but it is equally true, that an immense 
majority of the people look up, not to the legitimate government, but to an 
irresponsible and to a self-constituted association, for the administration of the 
affairs of the country. The peace of Ireland depends not upon the government, 
but upon the dictation of the Catholic Association. It has defied the government, 
and trampled upon the law of the land—and it is beyond contradiction, that the 
same power which banished a cabinet minister from the representation of his 
county, because he was a minister of the king, can maintain or disturb the 
meoee of the country just as it suits their caprice or ambition. The same 
ger impends over every institution established by law. The church enjoys 
ignity, and the clergy enjoy their revenues by the law of the land; but 

we know not how soon it may please the Catholic Association to issue its anathemas 
against the payment of tithes ; and what man is hardy enough to say, that the 
Catholic people will disobey its mandates? It depends upon the Catholic Asso-~ 
ciation—no man can deny it—whether the clergy are to receive their incomes 
or not. The condition of the landlords is not more consoling—already they 


M.M. New Series—Vow. VI. No. 33. 


290 Notes for the Month. (Serr. 


have been robbed of their influence over their tenantry—already they are 
become but mere ciphers upon their estates—nay, in many places they are 
worse than ciphers—they have been forced to become the tools of their domineering 
masters, the Catholic priesthood ; and it depends upon a single breath, a single 
resolution of the Catholic Association, whether the landlords are to be robbed 
of their rents or not. So perfect a system of organization was never yet achieved 
by any body not possessing the legitimate powers of government; it is power- 
ful, it is arrogant—it derides, and it has triwmphed, over the enactments of the 
legislature, and is fillmg its coffers from the voluntary contributions of the 
people. I say, that the Catholic Association, by securing the voluntary con- 
tributions of the people, consolidates to itself a power from which it may supply 
the sinews of war, or undermine, by endless litigation and persecution, the 
established institutions of the country. Such is the power of this new pheno- 
menon; and I will ask any man, has it been slow to exercise its influence ? 
The aristocracy, the clergy, the gentry, are all prostrate before it. In those 
devoted regions a perfect abandonment of all the dignity and influence belong- 
ing to station and rank, seems to have taken place ; or if a struggle be made, 
as in Clare, it is only to insure the triumph of this daring autocrat.” 


Now it will hardly be a matter of much surprise, that this address, 
delivered in the town of Derry, was received with very unequivocal tokens 
of disapprobation ; and, notwithstanding the “ utter contempt” which 
Mr. Dawson professed to feel for the individuals who opposed him, we 
suspect that the hon. gentleman’s change of opinion will have lost him the 
greater part of his old friends, without gaining him many new ones. 
That which is exaggerated in his speech (which is a good deal) will be 
treated, by all parties, as a cry of “ Wolf!” set up to cover his own 
flight, or excuse his apprehension: that which is sound and true (which 
is a very great deal) he ought to have discovered some years ago. 
The rights of the Catholics of Ireland have not increased one jot, since 
Mr. Dawson was among their most determined opponents. If it be their 
threats which have worked upon him, such a conversion does almost as 
little credit to his personal honour, as to his political judgment. For our- 
selves, as we shall rejoice to see this question in any fair way amicably 
settled, we are content to find one more seceder from the policy that 
resisted concession altogether. But we are compelled to say that Mr. 
Dawson’s arguments in favour of accommodation, are likely to excite 
more opposition to that course, than any he ever used against it. The 
question is not quite yet, as he puts it—< Whether we will meet the 
hazard of a rebellion in Ireland, or submit to its dictation?” But, if 
such were the case, painful as either alternative would be, we should not 
hesitate a moment in deciding upon the former. 

The evening papers of to-day, state that “the pistols’ with which 
Mr. Corder committed murder, have become an object of great curiosity 
and contention, in Suffolk. The police officer, Lea, “who is collecting a 
museum of weapons with which persons have been destroyed,’ claimed them 
as a “ present” made to him by the culprit on his first apprehension: 
and the High Sheriff of the county, who also, we presume, is forming an 
armorial collection of some description, insisted that they were his by for- 
feiture in virtue of his office. The newspapers, in describing the con- 
troversy, say— 

“ At the close of the proceedings, the High Sheriff proceeded to the gaol, 
and after transacting some business, he said to the gaoler—‘ Mr. Orridge, my 
carriage is at the gate, you had better put the sword and pistols into it. Mr: 
Orridge represented to him that Lea had sworn they had been presented to 


1828. Notes for the Month. 291 


him by the prisoner, when he was only suspected. To this the High Sheriff 
replied, ‘ No, no! why, man, J would not part with them for one hundred 
guineas. The sword and pistols were then put into the sheriff’s carriage.” 


The worshipful Sheriff’s profession of the estimate that he sets upon 
the property, is rather an odd mode of answering another person’s claim 
to it. But it occurs to us that “ presents” ought not to be received by 
officers of justice from criminals in their custody ; and, indeed, that the 
interchange of courtesies generally between parties so situated, has been 
carried, by modern refinement, to rather too extended a degree. There 
should be some demonstration, at least outwardly affected by the minis- 
ters of our gaols, that a robber or a murderer is a scoundrel ; and not 
merely a gentleman who has to try a question with the law, which 
unfortunately may be serious if it goes against him. We should be in- 
clined even almost to object to conversations in the manner of the follow- 
ing—described as having taken place between Mr. Lea, the thief-taker, 
and Mr. Corder, a few days before his trial ; and given, by the daily 
prints, for greater perspicuity, in the form of question and answer. 


Lea.—“ Well, Mr. Corder: I promised to call upon you; and J am 
glad to see you so well.” 

[This is to a fellow whois about to be hanged, for one of the most cold- 
blooded, cowardly, and brutal murders that ever perhaps was put upon 
record !] 

Corder.—«< I am much obliged to you for your kindness.” —Shaking 
hands with him very heartily. 

[This friendly recognition is to the very gentleman, to whose particu- 
lar offices the “ obliged” party is, ina great measure, indebted for his 
approaching execution. | 

After the trial and sentence—the material point in the case being set- 
tled—a more general and discursive kind of conversation is used to pass 
away the time of Corder. And accordingly, one of the guardians who 
sits up with the murderer in the condemned cell, opens a very pleasant, 
edifying colloquy with him, on the manner in which he gol a nife by 
advertisement ! 

Another individual, belonging to the gaol, speaks at another time of 
the murder, somewhat as of a curious and interesting experiment.— 
« Mr. Corder, you must have had a good deal of nerve to dig that grave 
with the dead body of the woman there beside you!” &c. &c. 

There is an offence to reason, as well as to decency, in thus coqueting 
with the cutting of throats. A murderer should be a person with whom 
we decline “shaking hands heartily ;’ and “ table-talk” is out of its 
place, with a person going to-suffer the last penalties of the law to-mor- 
row. The officers of the law, especially, who are responsible to the 
public for the decorum of their conduct, should be made to understand 
that they are not to enter into such communications. The treatment of 
criminals, whether under accusation only, or under sentence, should be 
temperate, and free from all needless cruelty ; but the affair of justice is 
not to jest or trifle with such people ; and even among the lowest of her 
ministers, the sternness of her character should not be lost sight of. 


New books are scanty always in the present season. Nothing in the 
shape of light reading has appeared in the course of the last month: and 
Dr. Granville’s “ Russia,” from which a good deal is expected, is not yet out, 
There is one book, however, Dr. Burrows’s Commentaries on Insanity, 
which we recommend to all our readers—who can afford to read on such 


2 


292 Notes for the Month. [Suprr. 


a subject. It is a work no less valuable as a production of science, than 
curious from the great mass of singular and striking anecdote that it 
contains: not more grave and instructive with “ wise saws,” than enter- 
taining with modern instances. We restrict our recommendation, how- 
ever, of perusal, to those who can venture to read upon such a subject: 
and a very great many may take our word for it, they cannot. Nervous 
persons, and those of lively imaginations, should eschew the study of 
medical works generally, and especially of those which treat upon insanity. 
We are all of us very much the creatures of sympathy and imitation. 
The impression made by any scene or description of horror, is got over 
for the time: but, in an after hour of sickness or dejection, it is apt to 
return, and sometimes with a vividness, the effect of which it may be 
difficult to calculate upon. 

We copy the following paragraph from a London evening paper :-— 

“Tur Bisuop or Lonnon Execr.—The amount of subscriptions raised in 
the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, for the piece of plate to be presented to 
the new Bishop of London, on his departure from that parish, is about 500/. 
The amount would have been much greater, but that the meeting on the 
subject was ‘ got up’ by some of his lordship’s indiscreet friends, who, in the 
hurry of their zeal, forgot to consult the proper parochial authorities—the church- 
wardens and others: what was intended to be a general measure, dwindled 
into the act of a few forward individuals. One ot the churchwardens went 
out of town a day or two before the meeting ; and although their names were 
put on the committee, it was without their sanction, and they have not since 
co-operated with any zeal inthe proceedings. A confectioner in Bishopsgate- 
street-Within, in answer to an application by the committee for his subscrip- 
tion, said he had but little to give in charity ; and what he had to bestow he gave to 
the poor—not to a rich bishop, who wanted nothing earthly he could desire. The 
piece of plate is to be a splendid epergne, about two feet high, richly chased. 

Without intending the slightest offence to the noble and reverend 
prelate here particularly in question, it seems to us that the confectioner 
had all the reason in the world. Ninety-nine “ subscription” affairs of 
this kind out of a hundred, are, to say the best of them, very excessive 
impertinencies.. The last of the kind, the “‘ Duke of Clarence’s Medal,” 
is a job offensive to common honesty ; and. one which we are surprised 
the Royal Duke should have been wrought upon even to lend his name 
to. It must require a vanity beyond the vanity of princes, that should 
induce his Royal Highness to believe, that there is any thing in his per- 
sonal pretensions, or connexion with the navy, which should dispose a 
long list of junior officers, cramped upon the narrow allowance of half- 
pay, to give a guinea for a copper medal—a pocket-piece—bearing his 
likeness ; and if this be not the case, what is the whole proceeding 
but an indirect extortion? a legal forcible obtaining of so many guineas 
from a number of men who can very ill indeed afford to part with them, 
and who submit to.the demand absolutely from no other cause than 
dread that refusal may “injure them in the course of their profession ?” 
The Bishop of London’s collection is of a less offensive character than 
this ; because the object is one which lays no compulsion upon the con- 
tributors ; but still it challenges a number of men (under no sort of 
authority), to publish their private opinions of a particular individual ; 
and moreover, to pay a fine of twenty shillings, if the judgment be a 
favourable one. A tradesman may be perfectly well satisfied with the 
conduct of the clergyman of his parish, without being induced to place 
a silver epergne upon the reverend gentleman’s table—while, perhaps, 
he finds a difficulty in putting a joint of mutton upon his own. It is 


Beek ks ma — 


1828. | Notes for the Month. 293 


curious, too, the reason assigned in this case for the subscription having 
only reached 500/.:—the “ indiscreet” neglect to propitiate the “ ehurch- 
wardens,” and other local dignitaries, in the first instance. Hence it 
appears that the real question—whether the tribute suggested should 
be paid to the late reverend incumbent of St. Botholph’s ?>—did not depend 
upon the feeling of the parishioners, but on the countenance that the 
“vestry” might or might not give to the object. Such “subscribing 
propositions” generally are the jobs of a handful of meddling indivi- 
duals, who are desirous to pay some court or serve some private purpose, 
at the expense of their neighbours ; and the public is indebted to every 
individual who has the courage to risk unpopularity by setting the 
example of resistance to them. 

The public attention continues to be devoted very sedulously to the 
subject of Mr. Corder’s murder ; and a weekly newspaper advertises 
“ the picturesque” of it! in a series of wood-cuts, engraved for the occa- 
sion. The John Bull, speaking of the result of Corder’s trial, makes a 
very extraordinary assertion. “Itis singular,” he says, “ that of all the 
murders on record, not six have been committed with impunity!” John’s 
wish, we are afraid, has been father to his belief here. To go back to 
“all the murders upon record,” or even to those on record within the last 
ten years, collecting all particulars of name and place, would be more 
trouble than we can bestow just now upon the subject. But, within only 
the last twelvemonths, four cases at once suggest themselves to us, in 
which murders have been “‘ committed with impunity.” The case of the 
old man, Akehurst (if we recollect the name right), and his housekeeper, 
near Leatherhead, for which William Page and Mary Acres were tried 
and acquitted ; the case of Mrs. Jeffs, for which Jones was tried and 
acquitted ; the case, only a few weeks since, at Bedford, in which Eave- 
staff was tried for the murder of a woman, found in a wood with her 
throat cut, and (very properly, upon the evidence) acquitted; and the 
case of Sheen, who cut his own child’s head off, and who was also tried, 
and, upon an informality in the indictment, acquitted. Besides these, 
there is at once the case of Mrs. Donatty, and a number of others which 
we could refer to: but the names and dates are not exactly in our 
memory, and they will probably be familiar to the greater portion of our 
readers. 

It is a singular feature, in the case of this fellow Corder, who seems to 
have been a “ cogging rascal” all his life, that he makes what he calls a 
confession of his guilt before he dies, and even that confession is a lie. 
His story of “the quarrel,” and “ the scufile,” ig which he is, in our 
view, wholly unworthy of credit. It is too inconsistent with the fact of 
his having enticed the woman from her home by a false statement ; and, 
besides, it is manifestly a piracy from the scheme first hit upon for his 
defence—that he should acknowledge the manslaughter, and fudge some 
story of “a struggle” in which the fatal wound had been given. The 
denial, too, of having inflicted the wounds with a sharp instrument, seems 
to us to be entitled to no consideration. It becomes a question of 
importance, whether the medical men examined were, or even could be, 
entirely in error in all that they stated. And we do not think that the 
evidence of intelligent and respectable individuals, ought for a moment 
to be impugned upon the statement of such a ruffian. 

The newspapers have announced the final resignation of the Duke of 
Clarence as Lord High Admiral. His highness and the heads of the 
government are known to have been jarring for some time; but the 


294 Notes for the Month. [Sepr. 


immediate cause of his retirement is variously stated. The Globe says, 
in noticing the difficulties likely to follow the event— 

“One story which has been propagated—that the expense of his Royal 
Highness’s tours has been a subject of difference between him and the First 
Lord of the Treasury—may be true, but can scarcely be the real cause of his 
removal. The expense must have been in itself very trifling, and if it had 
been much greater, must have been repaid by the activity which a vigilant super- 
intendence produces. To suppose, however, that the difference between the 
Prime Minister and the High Admiral arose on a question of economy, though 
a trifling one, is to put it on the footing most favourable to the former. If 
the real cause of the resignation of the Duke of Clarence was the desire of 
the ministry to interfere with the patronage of the navy, the event will be 
deeply discreditable to them.” 


The true spirit of Whiggery peeps out in this paragraph. The expense 
of his royal highness’s fétes and tours, at the rate at which it was pro- 
ceeding, would have spent more in a fortnight than all Mr. Hume’s 
motions of economy could save ina month. And the Globe, and those 
who support it, if the expences had been paid, would have been the first 
to exclaim against the “ profligate extravagance” of ministers for allowing 
them. The true cause of this sudden and unwonted liberality on the 
part of the Globe, is that the Duke of Clarence is supposed to be in some 
way or other opposed to the Duke of Wellington, and that he was one 
of the stays set up to prop the tottering throne of Mr. Canning. 

We observed a little way back, in noticing Dr. Burrows’s “‘Commen- 
taries upon Insanity,” upon the disposition of that malady to communicate 
itself by sympathy. It is universally admitted, indeed, that a great pro- 
portion of individuals, if compelled to associate with persons in a state 
of derangement, would become mad in the course of a short time them- 
selves ; and there is as little doubt that many of the medical men, whose 
practice has been devoted nearly altogether to cases of lunacy, have 
gradually undergone a change in their habits and demeanour very nearly 
approaching, at times, to mental alienation. A singular instance of this 
fact presented itself only a few weeks since to a foreigner of some dis- 
tinction, who was desirous of seeing the interior of a lunatic asylum. 
He visited (by permission) an establishment of considerable eminence, 
and was a good deal interested by what was shewn to him, though some- 
thing uneasy at finding himself occasionally almost left alone by the 
officer who attended him, among a number of persons who walked about 
perfectly at liberty, but who were, nevertheless, as he was assured, in a 
state, many of them, of incurable insanity. One man was described to 
be religiously mad ;*a second as melancholy ; a third, who had been 
confined seven years, could not be convinced that he was not a hair- 
dresser : but all walked about the passages and avenues of the building, 
and conversed with the keeper, occasionally, apparently with reason 
and good sense. At length, as they were passing through one of the 
lower halls, a man of very singular aspect and manner came up and 
spoke to the attendant. He was a little man, very spare in figure, dressed 
in black clothes, and spoke with great rapidity and gesticulation ; he 
talked for some moments, laughing repeatedly, and, at parting, shook 
hands repeatedly with the superintendent.— What is the matter with 
that man, now ?” asked the visitor, who had been struck by the oddity 
of the person’s demeanour ; and concluded of course that he was a 
patient. “ Him?” was the reply—“ Why, that is our house-apothecary !” 

The veracity of hunters and anglers is proverbially held of a punic 
description. A huntsman who can tell how many hairs a fox has in 


1828.) Notes for the Month. 295 


his tail, by the very way in which he breaks cover; and a fisher, who 
professed that he could throw his line blindfolded, and, the moment he 
gota rise, swear to the weight of the fish at the end of it, would either 
of them be considered in many companies to be “ using the sportsman’s 
privilege.” Sir Humphrey Davy, however, in his “ Salmonia,” throws 
all former performers of miracles into shade ; and we hope that his testi- 
mony will put an end to these heretofore injurious suspicions. The three 
fishers—Halieus, Physicus, and Poietes—are angling in the Colne; and 
Halieus—the adept—(understood to be Sir Humphrey himself)—has 
caught a trout, which the two others are admiring. The dialogue then 
continues thus :— 

« Porer.—This great fish, that you have just caught, must be nearly of the 
weight I assigned to him. 

«< Har.—O no; he is, I think, above 5lbs. but not 6lbs.; but we can form 
a more correct opinion by measuring him, which I can easily do, the butt of 
my rod being a measure. He measures, from nose to fork, a very little less than 
twenty-four inches, and, consequently, upon the scale which is appropriate to well- 
Sed trouts, should weigh 5lbs. 100z.—which, within an ounce, I doubt not is his 
weight. 

« Puys.—O, I see you take the mathematical law, that similar solids are to 
each other in the triplicate ratio of one of their dimensions. 

« Hat.—You are right. 

« Puys.—But I think you are below the mark, for this appears to me an 
extraordinarily thick fish. 
_ © Han. He is a clean fish, but, in proportion, not so thick as my model, 
which was a fish of 17 inches by 9 inches, and weighed 2lbs.—this is my 
standard solid. We will try him. Ho! Mrs. B.!—bring your scales, and 
weigh this fish. There, you see, he weighs 5lbs. 1030z.” 


The nicety of the gentleman in the play who calculates the expences 
of taking Breda.— Please your highness, it will cost you one thousand 
two hundred and forty dead on the field—six hundred and ninety-seven 
legs—three hundred and twenty-eight arms—a hundred and fourteen 
compound fractures—ninety-two operations for the trepan,” &c. &c.— 
was a trifle compared to the fractional accuracy of our friend Sir Hum- , 
phrey Davy. 

The Poor Laws in Ireland.—The author of a clever and tersely- 
written pamphlet just published, entitled, “ Fiance and Currency” 
[of England] “ for the year 1828,” desires to have the establishment of 
a system of Poor Laws in Ireland made one of the very earliest objects 
of parliamentary consideration. 

« Why,” he asks, “ should Ireland have the liberty of exporting her 
poor, and her produce, free to Great Britain, and yet herself be exempt 
from land-tax, small tithes, and poor’s-rate?” Why should England 
continue to uphold a system, “ which enables the absentee Irish landlord 
to extract to himself more of the produce of the land than the landowner of 
any other country, and that at the expense, and to the injury, of Great 
Britain ?” 

Now we are among those who take the English poor laws, when fairly 
administered, to be an incomparable advantage and relief, rather than a 
burthen to the country; and as far as the interests of humanity and 
public order are concerned in their existence, we should be extremely 
glad to find them capable of being introduced into Ireland ; but we think 
that those who expect that the establishment of poor laws in Ireland, will 
stop the emigration of Irish poor into this country, will find themselves 


296 Notes for the Month. [Sepr. 


mistaken.—For example. The wages of labour in Ireland are at present 
very low—incomparably lower than either in Scotland or England. 
Some of the best-informed witnesses who gave evidence before Mr. 
Wilmot ‘Horton’s Emigration Committee, state that an able-bodied Irish 
labourer may be considered fortunate who earns, through the year, 
seven-pence a day ; and that the common diet of the agricultural classes, 
(who expect little better), is “potatoes and water.” Now, if this be the 
condition of labourers in employ, it becomes necessary, of course, that 
the relief afforded by a poor rate in Ireland should be fixed at a very 
low rate indeed; or else men would have no inducement to prefer 
obtaining work, to throwing themselves upon the parish. And then, if 
the relief given, is to be of this very narrow character, can it be expected 
that an Irish reaper will remain at home—say on a parish allowance 
equal to three-pence per day, when he can get a shilling, or even eight- 
pence, by coming over to work in England? This position of affairs 
alone, we suspect, will be quite sufficient to answer those who believe 
that the establishment of poor laws in Ireland will at once produce an 
important relief to this country. But the argument, if we are not mis- 
taken, might be carried even farther than this ; and, instead of materially 
preventing the influx of Irish pauperism into England, it is by no means 
clear that the establishment of an Irish poor law would not tend rather 
to increase it. The emigration of Irish labourers to England, even though 
only for a season, is already encouraged by all those who possess pro- 
perty in Ireland ; and it is even in proof that societies have been regu- 
larly formed for the purpose of assisting and promoting it. There is 
nothing in this surprising. It is natural that the Irish landowners should 
desire to clear a surplus and starving population as much as possible 
off their estates. But if they are thus anxious, as the matter stands 
already, to send their poor to England—when, in fact, they are no way 
bound, even indirectly, to contribute to their support—how much more 
interested they would become in the accomplishment of the same object, 
if a law existed by which they were compelled to maintain them! It 
may be urged, that the enactment of a poor law in Ireland would have 
other effects beyond those which we have stated; that it would render 
parishes in that country liable for the charge attendant on their poor 
in this ; and that the expense of their removal, &c. from time to time, 
would diminish the gain accruing to the proprietors by getting them 
over. But, practically, this would not be the case; for it is not the 
Trish labourer who, in the surplus supply of labour beyond the demand, 
will become chargeable in this country. The Irishman will get the work 
that there is ; for he will be content to take it at ten-pence the day : 
the man who becomes chargeable will be the Englishman, whom the 
stranger displaces, and who cannot afford to perform the same work under 
two shillings, or, taking the lowest rate, under eighteen-pence. The 
fact, we are afraid, is, that there are no means of maintaining a different 
rate of wages long in two countries which have the means of ready com- 
munication’ with each other, unless by some arbitrary enactment which 
should prevent men from travelling from their homes. A good deal of 
misery will be saved, and a good deal of common begging and pilfering 
checked in Ireland, by the establishment of poor laws ; but the labourer 
will still continue to take advantage, where he sees a possibility of doing 
it, of the inereased gain to be acquired by coming to offer his services in 
this country. 


_ end of a fortnight. 


1828.] 


[ 297 


J 


MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 


Burton’s Diary. 4 vols. 8vo. ; 1828.— 
Here are four goodly volumes of parlia- 
mentary debates during the Protectorate, 
not an atom respecting which was ever sup- 
posed to have been preserved, and of the re- 
covery of which, of course, no mortal could 
ever have dreamt. To Mr. Upcott, of the 
London Institution, and his passion for old 
papers, are the public indebted for these 
inestimable treasures—inestimable they are, 
for they introduce us directly, and most in- 
timately, to a conference on scores of sub- 
jects, with scores of distinguished men, 
whose names and general achievements are 
as well known to us as “‘ our own houses,’’ 
but of whose specific sentiments on any one 
topic we had scarcely any memorial. 

Here then we are, we had almost said, 
suddenly deluged with such information— 
the supply is not only unexpected, but 
abundant, and almost superabundant. It 
is cut and come again to satiety—but to a 
Satiety contrary to the common course of 
things—which quickly reproduces an appe- 
tite—if it does not exactly grow by what it 
feeds upon. We have read them, and shall 
read them over and over again—for really 
no conceivable mode of communication 
could be so directly calculated to give a 
thorough acquaintance with the characters of 
men, who had, numbers of them, played 
distinguished parts on the theatre of the 
world, and whose inextinguishable energies, 
though kept down for a time by the strong 
pressure of a powerful and iron hand, were 
continually bursting forth. 

But the reader is yet very much in the 
dark, and can have little sympathy with us ; 
and it is our sole business to tell him what 
he has to expect in the volumes before us. 
—The Diary then consists of the debates 
of Oliver Cromwell’s last parliament, and 
Richard’s only one. Oliver’s parliament 
assembled on the 17th of September 1656, 
and sat till the 26th of the following June 
—about nine months. The Diary com- 
mences on the 3d December, has a gap 
from January to April, and then resumes— 
proceeding uninterruptedly to the end of 
the session. The same parliament, the 
reader will know, re-assembled, according 
to the terms of its prorogation, on the 20th 
of January, 1658, and was dissolved at the 
Of this short session 

n’s reports are complete and minute. 
In the September of this year Oliver died; 
and on the 27th January, 1659, Richard 
assembled a new parliament, which sat 
about three months—the debates of this 
also are complete and minute. 

The MS. of these debates were placed by 
the discoverer in the hands of Mr. Towill 
Rutt, who has in numerous places illus- 
trated them with biographical and historical 
notes, collected with great research and 
ability. In the course of his labours he 

M.M. New Series.—Vouw. VI. No. 33. 


had the good fortune to unearth, from the 
piles of MSS. in the British Museum, a 
considerable volume, containing another 
Diary, written by Guibon Goddard, a mem- 
ber of the 1654 parliament, which record 
the discussions through the whole session, 
but without individualizing the speakers. 
The substance of the debates is given col- 
lectively, while Burton exhibits the senti- 
ments, speaker by speaker—regularly, and 
very much after the supposed improved 
manner of our own days. This MS. of 
Goddard’s contained several speeches of 
Cromwell’s, which, as is believed, were 
never published—bearing upon them the 
stamp of unquestionable authenticity. 

The possession of all these treasures 
prompted the editor to present the public 
with a complete view of the whole of the 
Protectorate parliaments, and accordingly, 
in the volumes before us, the reader will 
find, first, the proceedings of the Little Par- 
liament, or Barebone’s Parliament, as Hume 
ridiculously calls it—but taken literally— 
there was no other source—from the com- 
mon journals. Then follow those of the 
second parliament, which assembled under 
the sanction and authority of the Instri- 
ment, on the third of September, 1654, and 
sat till it was abruptly broken up by Crom- 
well in the following January. The mate- 
rials are supplied wholly by Goddard’s MS. 
—who was himself member for King’s 
Lynn, and colleague of Gen. Skippon, and 
one of those who accepted a certificate of 
approval from Cromwell’s council, to enable 
him to retain his seat through the session— 
** though condemning,’’ he says, ‘ the 
breach of privilege (é. e. being excluded 
from admittance into the House, but upon 
submitting to receive a certificate of ap- 
proval) as much as any, yet he doubted not 
but to acquit himself to God and his coun- 
try, in so doing, rather than put the nation 
in another combustion and confusion.””— 
Next follows Cromwell’s third parliament, 
the proceedings of which are taken from the 
journals from the opening of the first ses- 
sion till Burton’s Diary begins, and from 
the same common source is supplied the 
middle of the session—the remainder, and 
the whole of the succeeding session, and the 
whole of Richard’s parliament, are, as we 
said, all furnished by Burton’s Diary. 

This, then, is the feast which is ready for 
the reader’s enjoyment—we assure him he 
will find a rich repast. Let him not sup- 
pose, for a moment, that, because Cromwell 
kept a tight hand over his institutions, 
there is a lack of freedom of debate. He 
had turbulent and energetic spirits to deal 
with. There is abundance of plain speak- 
ing, and that by men of eminent abilities— 
much, indeed, upon topics of private in- 
terests, but more, and for the most part, on 
subjects of permanent importance. Oliver’s 

2Q 


298 


last parliament was occupied during a part 
of the first session chiefly on matters of a 
private, but often of a very interesting cha- 
racter—the whole of the discussion relative 
to Nayler, the crazy quaker, are of the most 
instructive kind. About the middle of the 
session was detected the conspiracy by Sex- 
by, Sindercomb, &c., against Cromwell’s 
life; and from that period was started the 
project for making the Protector king. The 
remainder of the session was in consequence 
taken up in arranging the terms of the 
“ Humble Petition and Advice,’’ by which 
Cromwell was to be invested with the name 
and attributes of royalty, and empowered to 
name another house, consisting of 70 mem- 
bers. When presented for his acceptance, 
the articles of this “ Petition and Advice” 
were, in many respects, distasteful to the 
Protector, and underwent, in consequence, 
a long and minute revision ; and finally, as 
every body knows, he found it expedient to 
reject the dazzling offer, but accepted the 
powers (which indeed he exercised before) 
conferred by the new instrument, under his 
- old title of Protector, and appointed another 
house. A new inauguration took place, 
amidst a most splendid ceremonial. 

When the period of prorogation expired, 
the parliament re-assembled, and among 
the members re-appeared as many of the 
93, who had been excluded at the begin- 
ning of the former session, as had not be- 
fore, by one means or other, procured their 
re-admission. Some of these were men of 
the most resolute, spirits, and, above all, 
Harlerigge. He had been nominated to 
the other house, but insisted on taking his 
seat in the Commons. 'Tumultuous scenes 
of debate followed, chiefly on the name 
and powers of the other house—the Com- 
mons refused to acknowledge them as peers, 
and at the end of a fortnight—all hopes of 
accommodation being despaired of—they 
were abruptly and angrily dissolved. 

. On the assembling of Richard’s parlia- 
ment, the same resolute persons re-appeared 
—and besides, Vane, Ludlow, and others ; 
and the same determination was shewn to 
resist the usurping authority of the other 
house—the “ negative voice upon the peo- 
ple of England’’—augmented now by the 
little respect or dread they felt for the old 
protector’s feeble successor. The Commons 
immediately questioned his right to the 
*¢ succession’’—day after day was the ques- 
tion keenly and fiercely debated; and when 
at length the point was conceded, others of 
equal interest sueceeded—the privileges of 
the other house—the Scotch and Irish mem- 
bers—the militia, &c., for full three months, 
till, finally, by the cabals of Wallingford 
House—sanctioned by Fleetwood, the dupe 
of more designing men—Richard was in-- 
duced to dissolve, and, in a few weeks, him- 
self to resign. ; 

The debates of Riehard’s parliament oc- 
cupy two of the volumes, and are detailed 
at greater length, and with greater care than 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Serr. 


those of the preceding one—there is more 
vigour and interest, both in the matter and 
manner. 

Independently of all historical value, and 
that is incaleulable—these volumes furnish 
amass of colloquial phraseology, a body of 
sound and vernacular English, that con- 
trasts most advantageously with the more 
laboured and artificial writings of the period 
—shews how little is ovr real imprevement 
—and often puts to shame the stilting, pa- 
rading, balancing elaborations of our own 
days. 


Salmonia, or the Days of Fly-Fishing =; 
1828.—A volume of dialogues on the art 
and mystery of fly-fishing—written in stu- 
died imitation of Isaac Walton’s fantastic 
but not unamusing book, and, like most 
other imitations, with scarcely an atom of 
the original spirit. Indeed, the very at- 
tempt at imitation seems to involve a con— 
sciousness of the lack of independent and 
distinctive power ; for surely no man, pos- 
sessed of it, would think of servilely track- 
ing the path of another—he would insen- 
sibly pursue the impulses of his own soul. 
One man of genius, it is true, cried out, on 
contemplating a picture, ‘I tooam a paint- 
er!’ and proved it too—but not by imi- 
tating the artist, whose performances had 
aroused his own latent energies. 

The author of the little volume before us 
—no less a personage than Sir Humphrey 
Davy—has not, we repeat, a spark of Isaac’s 
fire about him; though excelling him, no 
doubt, in extent of positive facts, and per- 
haps in sagacity of inference—and yet, for 
the apparent abundance of his facts, we may 
trace him to well-known sources. 

Excepting as a record of certain facts, the 
whole concern—particularly the machinery 
of it-. is stupid and pedantic to a most into- 
lerable degree. The characters chosen te 
support the conversations are—Halieus, an: 
accomplished fly-fisher ; Ornither, generally 
fond of the sports of the field, though not a 
finished master of the art of angling; 
Poietes, an enthusiastic lover of nature, and 
partially acquainted with the mysteries of 
fly-fishing ; and Physicus, who knows no- 
thing of angling, but is fond of inquiries in 
natural history and philosophy. The sen- 
timents of each are of course meant to be 
characteristic. But Halieus—the aceom- 
plished, the finished fly-fisher—he is prime 
talker, as well as director and performer. 
He is aw fait in all departments. The rest 
of the dialoguists are insignificant, and the 
poet a fool. 

The introductory dialogue is occupied in 
rebutting the squeamish charge of cruelty, 
and in finding out—a more diffieult task, 
and a very superfluous one—the moral ad- 
vantages of fly-fishing. For the first, the 
fishing in question is fly-fishing, and with 
the artificial fly—so much for the bait ; and 
as to the fish—its nervous system, it seems, 
and that indeed of all cold-blooded animals, 


1828.] 


is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded 
ones; and if not, the hook is usually fixed in 
the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where 
there are no nerves. Besides, fishes often, 
after they have been heoked—with the hook 
still sticking in their jaws—will leap at the 
natural fly, and feed as if nothing had hap- 
pened ; and, moreover, the catcher usually 
knocks his prize on the head, and thus puts 
a speedy end to any tortures it may by pos- 
sibility suffer. And as for the moral advan- 
tages of fly-fishing, it so obviously demands 
patience, forbearance, and command of tem- 
per, that not a word need be said—and no 
doubt every fisherman practises with an espe- 
cial view to the cultivation of these virtues. 

The fisherman, moreover, is favourably 
placed for acquiring “ natural’ knowledge. 
His attention is insensibly directed to the 
modes of life of fishes, insects, birds ; and, 
moreover, fly-fishing furnishes materials for 
the poet—“ green meadows—shady trees— 
songs of nightingales—full and clear rivers” 
—and similar stuff. 

The rest of the conversations are taken up 
with the details of eight days’ fishing in the 
Colne and the Wondle, for trout—in the 
lochs and rivers of Scotland, for salmon— 
in the Downton, for graylings—and finally 
in the Traun, of Upper Austria, for something 
else. The whole circle of the sciences is 
enlisted in the service—philesophy, meta- 
physics, and mathematics. Mathematics ? 
—Yes. Similar solids are to each other in 
the triplicate ratio of one of their dimen- 
sions. What then? Why, if you have 
ascertained the proportions and weight of 
one fish, you can, by merely measuring in 
one direction, calculate the weight of another 
of the same species (nature never errs, though 
man may), and thus save the trouble of car- 
rying scales with your fishing-tackle. To 
determine the weight of a fish is evidently — 
by the stress laid upon it through every 
day’s fishing—of indispensable import- 
ance. 

Then, again, Sir Humphrey’s geology and 
chemistry find a place—in discussing the 
colours of waters ; Ornither talks of migra- 
tions, and the physician of the generation 
of eels; and prodigious taste, judgment, 
and ability are shewn by the whole party 
in cookery, flavours, and digestion—the red 
mullet has the most exquisite flavour of all 
our fish—a fresh fish, if not crimped, is gene- 
rally tough—&ce. 

The real knowledge the volume contains 
—which is considerable, and entirely to be 
depended on, we have no doubt—we should 
like, for our own parts, to have had in some 
other shape. The dialogue is all an incum- 
brance, and, we should think, must prove 
so to the most passionate or dogged admirer 
of the sport. How his companions could 
tolerate the insufferable coxcombry and con- 
ceit of Master Halieus, is to us a marvel. 
He is absolutely oppressive with his supe- 
riority, and could surely excite no other 
emulation than which should kick him first 


Domestic and Foreign. 299 


—the temptation to duck him, too, must 
have been irresistible. 

We must give up our hopes of seeing a 
mermaid, we perceive—Sir Humphrey has 
clapped a logical extinguisher upon them. 
After quizzing Sir John Sinclair about his 
Caithness mermaid—which proved to be no- 
thing buta gentleman with unclipped locks, at 
some distance from the shore, seen not by 
himself, but some young ladies, who very 
naturally mistock the genus and the sex— 
“JT do not,” Halieus solemnly declares, 
“ IT do not believe God ever did make a 
mermaid.’’—And why ? 


Because wisdom and order are found in all his 
works, and the parts of the animals are always in 
harmony with each other, and always adapted to 
certain ends consistent with the analogy of na- 
ture; anda human head, human hands, and hu- 
man mamme are wholly inconsistent with a fish’s 
tail. The human head is adapted for an erect 
posture, and in such a posture an animal with a 
fish’s tail could not swim—and a creature with 
lungs must be on the surface several times ina 
day—and the sea is an inconvenient breathing 
place; and hands are instruments of manufac- 
ture—and the depths of the ocean are little fitted 
for fabricating that mirror which our old prints 
gave tothe mermaid. Suchan animal, if created, 
could not long exist; and with scarce any loco- 
motive power, would be the prey of other fishes 
formed in a manner more suited to their ele- 
ment, &c. 


This is not begging the question—nor 
exhausting the resources of nature—nor, in 
some respects, arguing in the teeth of facts— 
Is it ? 


Subterraneous Traveis of Niels Klim, 
from the Latin of Lewis Holberg ; 1828. 
—Niels Klim is a poor scholar of Norway, 
whose ardour for science prompted him to 
explore some distant cavern of unknown di- 
mensions. Scarcely had he descended ten 
or-twelve yards, when the rope by which he 
was let down snapped, and he shot down 
with the rapidity of lightning, for some 
quarter of an hour or so, as near as he could 
guess, tillhe found himself alighting in a 
new world—the reigning inhabitantsof which 
were not human beings, but trees with hu- 
man passions, but with manners and under- 
standings philosophically disciplined. In the 
scale of intellect and honours, these arbo- 
rescents ranked according to their branches 
—the more boughs the more brains; and 
the object of the author is to represent their 
customs and institutions, and contrast them 
with those of us bipeds above—very much, 
of course, to our disadvantage. Among other 
indications of superiority, one is that among 
them offices are assigned according to the 
qualities of individuals ; and Klim himself, 
after due investigation, is made running- 
footman to the government, from the extra- 
ordinary make and length of his legs—the 
extreme quickness and consequent slipperi- 
ness of his intellect disqualifying him for any 
more important appointment among people 

2Q2 


300 


as much distinguished for the slowness of 
their deliberations as of their locomotion. 
Mortified at this contemptuous treatment, 
he never rests a moment till he discovers 
some mode of proving his capability of more 
usefulness ; and at length, by dint of impor- 
tunity, he is employed in surveying the 
globe—which it was calculated he might ac- 
complish in a couple of months, though two 
years or more would be required by one of 
themselves. In this tour he meets with all 
sorts of varieties—some nations all oaks— 
some all cypresses—some with one ocular 
power, some with two, and others more— 
some, as to their creeds, tolerant, and some 
intolerant—some devotees, others mere mo- 
ralists—in some the young had the privi- 
leges of age, and the old exhibited the fol- 
lies of youth—in some the females ruled, 
and kept the gentlemen in subjection— 
some were all philosophers, and of course 
every thing was in sixes-and-sevens—some 
all reasoners and wiseacres, and the great 
lack of the nation was folly—some saw clearly 
at immense distances, and nothing under 
their noses—&c. Ke. 

Returning, and communicating the results 
of his survey, his merits are still overlooked ; 
but, nothing daunted, and still sighing for 
distinction, he proposes to the nation some 
new law—which not being approved, by the 
custom of the country, on such occasions, 
he is ordered for execution ; but the punish- 
ment is finally commuted for banishment 
by the post-birds. These are migratory birds, 
returning periodically from nobody knows 
where. To one of these, pursuant to sen- 
tence, he is attached, and borne along with 
perfect ease and safety to another planet, 
where new races are presented to his wonder- 
ing eyes—chiefly quadrupeds and birds— 
and eventually he drops on a nation in a 
state of semi-barbarism, which, by his Eu- 
ropean superiorities, he drills into order, 
and, by the introduction of gunpowder, en- 
ables them to overcome their enemies—par- 
ticularly a neighbouring people of tigers. 
Grateful for these benefits, they elect him 
king ; but seared, according to the common 
course of things, with the common vice of 
grasping, he makes war on all sides, and 
adds kingdom to kingdom — elephants — 
monkeys—cats, &c.—thus founding the Fifth 
monarchy—till at last his cruelty and des- 
potism, fostered as usual by success, rouses 
up numerous enemies ; and, in a sudden 
explosion of the public feeling, he flies for 
his life, and taking shelter in a hole, and 
pursuing it to its exit, he unexpectedly dis- 
covers a passage to the upper world, where 
he arrives in safety, stript of his subterranean 
crown. 

No mortal can read the book. The whole 
is a sheer piece of extravagance, where the 
object originally contemplated is fairly lost 
sight of in the extreme absurdity of the con- 
trivance. The source of the failure lies in 
the want of the minutie. Every thing is too 
vague and general. The author has nothing 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Serr. 


approaching the wit or the particularity of 
Swift. Instead of aiming at endless variety; 
he should have confined himself, as Swift 
did, to developing two or three—and at least 
satirizing intelligibly. 

The Dialect of Craven, by a Native. 
2 vols. ; 1828.—The deanery of Craven is 
a kind of insulated district in the rocky re- 
gions of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 
extending to the distance of thirty miles 
each way, and embracing twenty-five pa; 
rishes, with about 60,000 inhabitants. The 
pronunciation of the natives is, in some re- 
spects, quite peculiar; and words and 
phrases abound which are thought to be used 
in no other spot on the globe. The mark- 
ing peculiarity of the pronunciation is the 
breadth of it, making monosyllables dis- 
syllables—co-al, fo-al, no-a, so-a, bre-ad, 
le-ad, &c. 3 butits native purity is, it seems, 
fast corrupting. The southern boundaries 
partake of the dialect of Leeds, Bradford, 
and Halifax; and to the eastward, house, 
and mouse, and cow, is hoose, and moose, 
and coo, exactly as in the North and East 
Ridings. Its vernacular beauty is to be 
found solely in the interior of the district 
—perhaps from Skipton to Strother; and 
even there it is evaporating. The author, 
from his own knowledge and experience, 
testifies that many words and expressions, 
which were in constant use thirty or forty 
years ago, are either lost or imperfectly un- 
derstood by the rising generation. 

The language of Craven, says he, with 
becoming pride, is not the contemptible 
slang and patois which the refined inha- 
bitants of the southern parts of the kingdom 
are apt to account it, “ but the language of 
crowned heads, of the court, and of the most 
eminent historians, divines, and poets of 
former ages.’’ He has his own theory as to 
its genealogy, and, upon the whole, the 
soundest we have seen among philologers— 
corresponding best at least with admitted 
historical facts. The language of Craven is 
that of the Saxons—if not altogether in its 
original state, certainly in its highest exist- 
ing purity. The Saxons drove the English 
to the frontiers—to Wales—to the lowlands 
of Scotland ; the English, in like manner, 
drove the Scotch to the hills, and the Saxons 
pursued the English even there. The con- 
querors imposed their laws and language 
(the one is not, however, we dare say, so 
easily accomplished as the other), and the 
language of England and the lowlands of 
Scotland became thus essentially one—the 
effect was only not so complete in Scotland, 
as in the northern counties of England. 
The language of the hills continued distinct 
—call it Gaelic—Irish—British—it was the 
same, both there and in Wales, and in 
Cornwall, and in Ireland. 

In spite of all Dr. Jamieson’s learning 
and authority, the lowland Scotch and the 
English of our northern counties is, in the 
author’s opinion, the same—Saxon. Gawin 
Douglas’s translation of Virgil establishes 


1828.] 


the fact. The old English authors—Lang- 
land, Brunne, Chaucer, Gower, Spencer, 
Fairfax, Wiclif, Verstegan, Elyot, Latimer, 
Ridley, Hooper, Hall, Bacon, Beaumont, 
Shakspeare, &c.—contain numerous words 
now unintelligible in the south, but well un- 
derstood in the northern counties; and 
many expressions, now obsolete there, are 
still common in Scotland—the lowlands—. 
but evidently imported from England. The 
language travelled north. 

The lowland Scotch is nothing but a 
corruption of that which is now spoken in 
Craven and the northern counties of Eng- 
land. The author is doubtless a little too 
peremptory. If our old English writers be 
better understood by the Scotch lowlands 
than by our northern counties, then must 
the Scotch be the /ess corrupted. He is, 
however, imperative—he is fully convinced, 
if the Scottish dialect were accurately ana- 
lyzed, and all the English words, now in use 
in the northern counties, extracted from it, 
the residuum would be a moderate portion 
of archaisms, and a large quantity of modern 
slang. But what would be those archaisms ? 
Might not some of them be Saxon—the 
words now lost in Craven? No doubt the 
men of the Hills would leave some Gaelic 
behind them ; but our historical conclusion 
—we have no knowledge of the facts—would 
be; there is more Saxon in Scotland than 
in Craven. 

In the execution of his task, the author’s 
principle has been to admit no word which 
he or his friends have not heard used in the 
deanery. With this we quarrel—the prin- 
ciple is evidently wrong—he should have 
confined himself strictly to peculiarities. 
As it is, his work is full of words and 
phrases that are met with in every corner of 
the kingdom—some the language of the un- 
learned, or even the learned—others the slang 
ofthe refined—many perfectly legitimate, and 
admitted as such in every circle—and others 
sheer modern introductions. Much of this 
must arise from misapprehension—from not 
knowing what is actually in colloquial use 
in other parts of the country. He is himself 
a Cravenite ; and, learned as he undoubtedly 
is, his is the learning of books, and books 
only. We must make good our assertion 
in as few words as we can. 

These are mere slips :—autority for au- 
thority—bacco for tobacco—dacity for auda- 
city—consate and dissait for conceit and 
deceit—bailey for bailiff—priminary for 
premunire—souger for soldier—howsomdiv- 
ver for howsoever—admirablest—argufy— 
hainous—mends (for amends)— &c. 

Others are universally received.— Boot, 
something given to effect an exchange” — 
no, a sort of make-weight ;—to badger, “to 
bait, to give trouble ;” borrowed from the 
animal so frequently exposed to barbarous 
treatment’’—no doubt about it at all—consult 
Lord Goderich ; back-stitch, a needle-work 
phrase, understood and used by all who use 
a needle—larring-out, the school-boy’s sa- 


Domestic and Foreign. 


301 


turnalia—castor, a little box, pepper-box— 
cheatry, fraud — churching, thanksgiving 
after childbirth—cockering, indulging —dog- 
ears, the twisted or crumpled corners of 
leaves—rather dog’s-ears—dumpy, short and 
fat—dunderhead, blockhead —/fidgit, rest- 
less, impatient—/innikin, particular in dress, 
trifling—footing, money given by a person. 
to his fellow-labourers, when he enters on a 
new office or employment—/iddle-fuddle— 
Scotch-fiddle—gauky, “ simpleton, staring 
vacantly; TEuT. gauch, stultus; SwE. gack,” 
but obviously it seems to us from the French 
gauche, with an English or ignorant pronun- 
ciation—goose, a silly fellow—greenhorn, 
inexperienced youth—to haggle, to attempt 
to lower a bargain, to higgle—handse/, the 
first use of a thing—harwm-scarum, helter- 
skelter—jog-trot, a gentle, equable pace— 
lickspittle, a toad-eater, a base parasite— 
moonshine, a mere pretence, illusive shadow 
—chatterbox—ragamuffin, covered or muf- 
fied in rags—narrow-souled, parsimonious, 
ungenerous — nest-egg, ‘‘ a fund laid up 
against adversity ;”’ rather the beginning of 
such a fund—to pet, to indulge—pria/, 
three cards of a sort, a corruption of pair- 
royal—smallish, rather small—sess-pool, an 
excavation in the ground for receiving the 
deposition of streamlets—(could not the au- 
thor have said simply, a reservoir for drains ?) 
—and very many more. 

Others are every where equally intelligi- 
ble, though used colloquially only, from one 
end of the kingdom to the other. As— 
It’s all Dicky with him—he’s dished—he’s 
done up—balderdash—gab—Old Nick — 
granny—span-new (i. e. new-spun)—sly 
boots—side-wipe, for indirect censure— 
prim’d, drunk, exhilirated with liquor— 
Sawny, for Scotchman—quandary, from 
French quand-irai-je, or qu’en dirai-je, or 
qwen dirai—fudge, not, according to Mr. 
Todd (whose dicta are seldom worth a rush), 
introduced by Goldsmith, for the author 
finds fage used by John Lidgate, which, 
however may not be the source of fudge— 
squad, a party, or company—banger, large ; - 
she’s a banger—whap, blow—king’s. pic- 
ture, *‘money;”’ rather, formerly, a guinea 
—Adam’s ale, for water—butler-fingered, 
“one not afraid of touching any heated ves. 
sel or instrument ;”’ is it not one who cannot 
holdfast ?—and, finally, aumacks, “ 
sorts,” intelligible to us for the first time. 

Others are merely coarse or vulgar.—F'lea- 
bite, a matter of indifference—greedy-quis— 
thorough-go-nimble — foddum-clean (what 
implications !) sir reverence, i.e. according 
to Mr. Nares, salva reverentid, corrupted 
to saw’ reverence, and thence sir or sur re- 
verence—game-leg, from cam, crooked— 
down? th’ mouth—word o’ mouth—born- 
days—marrow, for equal—muzzy, drunk— 
&e. Xe. 

Others, modern flippancies :— Cirewm- 
bendibus —uncomeatable —undercumstand 
—schism-shop, a dissenting-chapel—scan- 
dal-broth, team&c. 


302 


Others, though provincial, are as well 
known in Leicestershire, for instance, as in 
Craven—as jist, cattle taken to graze— 
clam, to hunger, to starve. 

The book, again, is stuffed with proverbial 
phrases, familiar to every body, high and 
low ;—as, to have other fish to fry—to make 
Sish of one, and fowl of another—to burn 
one’s fingers—to burn daylight—to make 
ducks and drakes of one’s money — to 
make no bones of a thing—to stick in the 
gizzard—to grumble in his gizzard—in 
apple-pie order—in black and white—blind 
man’s holiday—to kick the bucket (an un- 
feeling phrase, adds the author, for to die)— 
to give the go-by ;—and others too coarse at 
present for common usage; as, to look as big 
as bull-beef—to make a bridge of one’s nose, 
which is used, he says, by a party of topers 
drinking out of a common vessel. Thus, if 
the first drink, and, by way of joke, offers 
to give the mug to the third, the second will 
exclaim, “‘ Stop thear, thou sall’nt make a 
brig 0’ my noaz.”” We have heard it used, 
by good authority, in the provinces, for 
“thrusting your nose where you have no 
business.” Of these phrases, generally, the 
use, not the origin, is explained. 

Here and there quaint phrases, still not 
peculiar to Crayen, are successfully illus- 
trated. Cater-cousins—quatre-cousins, or 
intimate friends, or near relatives, being 
within the first four degrees of kinship, 
(Blount). Jack Robinson—What a strange 
perversion of words will time frequently oc- 
casion ! (is the author’s exclamation). “ As 
soon as you can say Jack Robinson,” is a 
phrase common in every part of the kingdom ; 
but who would suppose that it is a corrup- 
tion of the following quotation ?— 


« A work it ys as easie fo be doone 
As ’tys to saye, Jack! robys on.” 
Old Play. 


Bishopp’d—the bishop has had his foot in 
it, &c. We were going to quote; but we 
perceive, by a second glance, the author has 
left the obscurity where he found it. 

We may say the same of bonfire. He talks 
of the Baal hills, as hillocks on the moor, 
where fires have formerly been, which he 
refers to the ancient idolatry of Baal; and 
then asks, “ Is not Baal-fire the true ety- 
mon of bonfire ?”” Mr. Todd (whose guesses 
are no worse than his dicta) supposes the 
primitive meaning to be a fire made of 
bones. This, notwithstanding his profound 
veneration for Mr. Todd, to whom he dedi- 
cates, does not satisfy the author. The 
Craven pronunciation baan for bone, chang- 
ing the letter for /, exactly corresponds 
with Baal. Here be proofs! Moreover, 
he doubts if a sufficient quantity of bones 
could be collected, on any public occasion, 
to make such a fire—but does not doubt 
whether bones, were they collected, would 
readily make a blaze. 1 

On the word fell, a hill, he again ques- 
tions his patron’s correctness, though not 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Sepr. 


without throwing a screen before him. Mr. 


Todd’s authority was— 
“© So shall the first of all our feZZs be thine ;” 


which, one Mr. Moor observed, was irrele- 
vant. The fell here mentioned (in the 
verse) is synonymous with the Craven word 
fall, or a crop of lambs. The following line 
confirms the supposition, as it relates solely 
to cows and goats :— 


«« And with the beestning of our goats and kine ;” 


which shews that, though Mr. Todd, with 
many another critic besides, can read one 
line, he cannot read two. 

Under the rose—a derivation is suggested 
from the Persian ander-raz, in secrecy. 


To patter, to speak hastily ; “ the people 
patter and praie” (Chaucer). Will not this 
come from repeating the paéer-noster, in the 
way in which such repetitions were and are 
notoriously performed ?—To peg away, “ to 
move hastily.” Has not this a reference to 
the game of cribbage ? 

We have no space to notice illustrations 
of sundry customs, particularly such as re- 
late to courtship and marriage. The pighul, 
or farthing candle—the pitchering—throw- 
ing the stocking, virgin garlands, &c.; nor 
of the dialogues—in which the author pro- 
fesses to furnish specimens of the dialect in 
its most immaculate elegance. 


Italy as it is, or Three Years in Italy ; 
1828.—This is another volume by the au- 
thor of “ Four Years in France.’’ The 
writer is well known as Mr. Best, who some 
years ago became somewhat conspicuous for 
his apostacy—rather a harsh term, to be 
sure—from the church of England, of which 
he was a minister, to the idolatries of the 
church of Rome. This very decisive act— 
the result of the purest conviction, however 
absurd it may sound to Protestant ears—no- 
body can by possibility impute such an act 
by such a man, so circumstanced, to sinister 
motives—deprived him of certain civil rights 
—-placed him, to a certain extent, in a state 
of degradation ; and, by the generosity of 
the world—by which must always be under- 
stood the reigning party—he found himself 
comparatively cut—curtailed of his fair pro- 
portions— his former acquaintance shying 
him—and, in imagination still more than in 
reality, a sort of outcast—a proscribed of- 
fender. Luckily for him, he was independent 
in fortune, and could go where he liked; 
and, accordingly, he withdrew with his 
family to the Continent, at once to screen 
himself and his children from mortifications, 
and educate them in a Catholic country. 
After a seven years’ residence in France and 
Italy, he returns to England, less sensitive 
perhaps than when he left it, and more ca- 
pable, we trust, of sustaining, without winc- 
ing, the arrogance of his orthodox contem- 
poraries. 

The ostensible motive for publication is 
his conviction of peculiar advantages for de- 
scribing Italy. His is not the narrative of a 


—, 


> =. oe a 


1828.) 


tour, but of a residence—not of the residence 
of an individual, but of a family—the results 
of the varied and multiplied impressions of 
many individuals—not of one who “ pro- 
tests” against the religion of the country he 
visits, but of one who professes it, and well 
understands the religions of both ;—not of 
one—we give nearly the author’s own words 
—who, proud of his own rights and privi- 
leges, looks with contempt upon every coun- 
try unblessed with English institutions, but 
of one who is relieved from all extravagant 
admiration of his own government, by being 
refused all share in it—placed, in short, 
inter erarios—with no privilege, but that 
of paying taxes. 

Mr. Best is plainly a reformer by circum- 
stances—-necessity forces him forward; not 
led by ratiocination, nor prompted by any 
generous desires to promote the common ad- 
vantages ofimproved institutions, but driven 
by suffering. As a Fellow at Oxford, and 
reading for the Bampton lecture, he was, we 
scarcely doubt, a zealous champion for the 
powers that be—a railer, perhaps, at Catho- 
lics and dissenters—charging all opponents 
of the existing administration with a wilful 
design to pull down the church and the 
constitution, so long the admiration of 
the world—resolute to keep down all that 
were down—exclaiming against change as 
innovation, and treachery, and treason— 
imputing scandalous motives where it was 
safe, and damning with faint praise where 
it was not. Now he takes the tone of a man 
born in oppression—the iron has sunk into 
his soul—the sense of wrong is inveterate in 
him—he is alienated from his country—is 
blinded to her superiorities—sympathizes 
with his Catholic brethren of Ireland—vin- 
dicates their rights to freedom and inde- 
pendence—is spiteful towards King William, 
and rails at the Custom-house. ‘ Is an ec- 
clesiastic a fit person to be a temporal sove- 
reign ?”’ he asks, when discussing the Pope’s 
sovereignty. ‘‘ Why, as to the internal go- 
vernment of a state, if by this phrase is 
meant all the farrago of protecting, prohibit- 
ing, and countervailing duties, and inter- 
ference in the affairs of commerce, down to 
the retail trade of the lowest shopkeeper—if 
it mean the balancing of party interests, and 
the work of determining how far the good of 
the whole should be sacriticed to the clamours 
of parties—if it mean the business of reme- 
dying the irremediable evil of poverty, an 
evil only aggravated by political regulation 
— if it mean the preservation of hares and 
partridges from the profane touch of those 
on whose land they are nourished—if such 
and such be the senses in which the words 
‘internal government of a state’ are to be 
understood, an ecclesiastical person is an 
unfit head of the state,’ &c. 

Nevertheless, the author’s thorough good- 
nature occasionally overcomes his ill-humour, 
and his natural turn for the facetious throws 
a gleam of sunshine over the gloomy and 
querulous cast of his political sentiments. 


Domestic and Foreign. 


363 


It is difficult—zealous Catholic as no doubt 
he is—to believe that he is not laughing in 
his sleeve, even when taking his sternest 
tone of defence. At Turin, he speaks of a 
chapel much frequented by Protestants for 
a sight of the holy napkin, exhibited to the 
faithless once a year, but to the faithful at 
any time on especial application, and “ as- 
sisting’? at mass. Protestants visit, it 
seems, for the sake of saying something in 
their ‘‘ tour”’ about miracles—‘“‘ as the co- 
lonel put sticking-plaister on his shoulder, 
that he might in his dispatches report him- 
self wounded. Fortunately for the mock- 
ers,” he continues, ‘‘ there is somewhere in 
Flanders another holy napkin: it follows, 
therefore, that no veneration is to be paid to 
relics, and that popery is a cheat through- 
out, Q@. E. D.”” What thinks the Protestant 
of this retort? Again: “ at Florence is a 
picture of the blessed Virgin, said to be by 
St. Luke; it is a relic much venerated; and 
kept in a little chapel, which, being an in- 
closure of bars of brass, looks like an aviary 
or other large cage. It is enriched with all 
that looks glittering and precious ; a golden 
lamp, the present of Charles IV., hangs 
from the ceiling. The picture was exposed 
twice during our stay: once on occasion of 
prayers for rain, and once during the lying- 
in of the archduchess—hboth times with good 
success ; for the archduchess recovered, and 
the rain came swbito, as a workman in the 
Palazzo Nicolini observed to me, imme- 
diately on the exposition of the picture. I 
know not if the conservators of this madonna 
had the prudence of the Bishop of Avignon. 
His clergy waited on him to propose that the 
image of St. Agricol should be carried 
through the streets in procession, with 
prayers for rain: the bishop went to look at 
his barometer, and seeing the top of the 
mercury to be quite spherical, said, ‘ Mes- 
sieurs, ne compromettons pas le crédit du 
saint; attendons.’’”? After telling this 
story, the author adds, with all imaginable 
gravity, “ This will be called trickery by 
those who blame the Catholic clergy for be- 
lieving in modern miracles, and at the same 
time for not expecting them to be wrought 
whenever they ask for them. The church of 
England has in its prayer-book prayers for 
rain and fair weather, which are recited at 
times, I believe, in the country parishes 
during haymaking and harvest.” 

The church of St. Paul fuori delle Mura, 
in the Via Appia, by the carelessness of 
some workmen repairing the roof, took fire, 
and burnt furiously thirty-six hours, when 
the roof fell in, and the whole was a mass of 
ruins. The beautiful marble pillars were 
found calcined, or fallen, or cracked, or tot- 
tering. The shrine in which repose the 
relics of the apostle, though in the centre of 
the conflagration, was unhurt. ‘ Yet so 
incredulous is the age,’’ observes the author, 
*¢ that no one cried out, ‘ A miracle! a mi- 
racle !’ Does the miraculous nature of a 
fact depend on human belief? If so, "tis 


304 


man, not God, that works the miracle.’’— 
Anticyram ratio illi destinet omnem! At 
Naples he describes the church, where— 
taking his own phrases—“ the precious trea- 
sure, or precious trickery, as faith orincredu- 
lity may decide, of the blood of St. Januarius 
isseen. Kneeling at the rails of the altar, I 
touched with my lips, and, by consequence, 
had very near to my eyes a phial, in which 
was a liquid substance resembling blood. 
Persons of my family testify to having seen 
this substance in a solid state a few minutes 
before, when the phial was turned in every 
direction by the hands of the priest.” 


Speaking of the late Pope Pius VII., he 
observes he was a man of great mildness and 
urbanity, and of a tolerant spirit; of which 
an instance occurred a few years before his 
death. The Duchess of Devonshire, then 
at Rome, said to an Anglican clergyman, 
“Tt would be a great comfort, if, on a Sun- 
day, you would read prayers to us ;’? mean- 
ing by us those English in Rome who might 
wish to attend. The clergyman assented, 
with some apprehension of giving offence to 
the papal government. The duchess under- 
took to speak to Cardinal Gonsalvi, and the 
cardinal communicated her wishes to his 
holiness. The pope quietly answered, 
“ Meglio il parlo senza—Better, that is, do 
at, and don’t ask.” 

It is very much, he observes, in the style 
of Italian finesse to let a deceit work its 
own way. An English gentleman at Flo- 
rence had a fall from his horse; besides 
some slight bruises, he felt great pain in one 
of his thumbs, which was soon attended with 
inflammation ; and the surgeon continued 
to dress this thumb after the other hurts 
were cured. One day his son attended in 
his stead“ Have you visited the Signor In- 


glese ?”? said the father to the son in the 
evening. ‘“* Yes, I have drawn out the 
thorn, and 72% Pazzo che sei !”’ ‘cried 


the father, “ ecco finita la bottega—Block- 
head that thou art! then there is an end of 
the shop !” 


The volume is full of churches and pic- 
tures; but really, after all, we find nothing 
to distinguish it above the common run of 
tours, which he inclines so much to depre- 
ciate ; nor any thing that shews very con- 
spicuously the advantage of a residence over 
a tour. 


The Cambrian Tourist; 1828.— For 
touring people, little compendiums of this 
kind, if not absolutely indispensable, are at 
least very useful reminders of local histori- 
cal events; and of the existing state of 
things, if they do not always make the most 
accurate reports, they enable you, by sug- 
gesting on the spot the specific subjects of 
interest, to do more for yourself by personal 
inquiry than you would without them. Nor 
are they altogether useless to the stay-at- 
home—for our own parts, we, who must 
always be supposed to be spell-bound in the 
centre of the publishing circle, glanced over 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Serr. 


the pages of the Cambrian Tourist not with- 
out pleasure, from the reminiscences it sug- 
gested, and which without it might have 
been extinguished for ever. 


The similarity of productions of this kind. 
is worth remarking.—One might readily 
believe them all written by one person— 
they have all the same tone—see with the 
same eyes, and think (!) with the same 
soul: but as they cannot all be the pro- 
ducts of the same pen, there must be some 
common cause, and that, we suppose, is to 
be sought for in the means which are uni- 
yersally had recourse to, to make the book 
sell—to please those, that is, who are likely 
to buy the book, or to recommend it. <Ac- 
cordingly, every where, especially at water- 
ing-places—all the establishments—libraries 
—rooms—nhotels—baths, are of the most 
admirable kind—skilfully arranged, and 
capitally and courteously conducted. Then 
as to the magnificoes in a neighbourhood, 
their houses and grounds are all beantiful 
and in excellent order—their manners con- 
ciliatory and affable—their liberality un- 
bounded, &c. Next, as the great are all 
tories, and those who cater for their accom- 
modation, of course, tories also—there are 
no limits to the extollings of our excellent 
constitution—our laws—our liberties—and, 
above all, our unparalleled sovereign. All 
this is supposed to hit the taste of the 
wealthy—and who but the wealthy travel— 
and who-but the traveller buys a Tourist ? 

But be the taste, or the sentiments, or 
the composition, what they will—books of. 
this kind are next to indispensable, and 
this is as good as any of its class. It is 
strictly a tour—with a single exception, 
from Abergavenny to Caermarthen—cours- 


ing the boundaries only—from Chepstow to_ 


Chepstow again. There are maps of North 
and South Wales, and a view of the beauti- 
Menai bridge, to this sixth edition of the 
Cambrian Tourist, and rules for uttering 
unutterable Welch. 


Lilustrations of the Literature of the 
Eighteenth Century, by J. Nicholls. 
Vol. V.; 1828.—This is a posthumous vo- 
lume of that incomparable scraper-together 
of odds and ends—good, bad, and indif- 
ferent—the veteran John Nicholls: two 
more are still to come. Nicholls was an ex-’ 
cellent man of business, with a good deal of 
bonhommie and simplicity about him, cu- 
riously mixed up with conceit and coxcom- 
bry—a collector and compiler, equally inde- 
fatigable and indiscriminating—connected, 
beyond any man of his time, with the minor 
fry of authors—topographers, and antiqua- 
rians, and black-letter folks—the peddlers 
and pioneers of literature—critics, and edi- 
tors, and publishers—himself the Cerberus 
of a bottomless pit, into which were thrown 
monthly the rags and fag-ends of the learned 
and unlearned—the very refuse of which 
grew into piles and pyramids, convertible ars 
to iit purposes. 


all 


1828.] 


From the masses of acquisition, thus ga- 
thered in the course of a long life, the good 
man published first—we know not how 
many volumes of what he called Literary 
Anecdotes; and then the immediate pre- 
cursors of the present, which, with his usual 
felicity, he termed “ Tustrations of the 
Literary History of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury,”’ intended to be in character, as well 
as in order, the “ sequel’’ of the Anecdotes 
—bushels of chaff, with but here and there 
a grain of corn. The particular volume be- 
fore us contains, if possible, still fewer 
“ grains’ of a marketable quality—scarcely, 
indeed, any thing of general or permanent 
interest ; and yet an idle hour may not un- 
agreeably be spent in turning over the pages 
even by those who never heard of the nume- 
rous persons here celebrated for every virtue 
under heaven; and no doubt with deep 
interest by their surviving friends. Most 
people like to see their dead acquaintance 
brought into notice; it gives distinction to 
themselyes.—“ I knew him.” 

The more remarkable part of the original 
materials are some letters of Dean Swift’s— 
not the Dean’s, but a relative of his—to 
Nicholls, when Nicholls was projecting an 
edition of the Dean’s works, containing— 
the Letters we mean—particulars, especially 
of his birth—invaluable to his biographers, 
and we cannot imagine why they weve not 
communicated to. Sir Walter Scett, who 
certainly fished in Mr. Theephilus Swift’s 
reservoir. There are half-a-dozen letters 
also of Priestley’s, chiefly concerning his 
“ Theological Repository,” of no intrinsic 
value ; some of George Steevens, Sir Henry 
Croft, Daines Barrington; and others from 
persons who were never, we imagine, heard 
of in their own days, and it would puzzle 
any body to find out why they should be 
_ in ours. 

Of the biographical parts, there are lives 
of Malone, by a son of Jemmy Boswell’s— 
of Windham, by Malone—the sum and 
Substance of which have already figured in 
the Gentleman’s Magazine—of Parsons, 
Bishop of Peterborough—of Pearson, mas- 
ter of Sidney—of Barrington, Bishop of 
Durham—and Milner, the Catholic bishop 
_ —the latter, by-the-way, much the most 
attractive of the volume. Among others of 
still less significance are those of Jefferson, 

chdeacon of Colchester — Christopher 
Hunter, tutor of Sidney—Dr. Ford, of Mel- 
ton—Hugh Moises, of Newcastle, Lord El- 
don’s tutor—&c. ; the whole exhibited in a 

strain—written, indeed, by the 
friends of the parties—where all is told en 
beau, and whatever does not tell well is sup- 
pressed. Archdeacon Jefferson’s preferment 
was all conferred wnsolicited—to enhance 
his merits—which may, for any thing we 
know, have been very considerable; but 
then we do know that he was tutor to some 
of the Duke of Beaufort’s children, and got 
what he did get, mainly or wholly, through 
the interest of the family. 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 33. 


Domestic and Fereign. 


305 


A long story is told of one Mr. Gulstone, 
a gentleman of somewhat eccentric habits, 
who contrived to get through a magnificent 
property without himself knowing how, and 
who died aruined man at forty-one—no- 
body’s enemy but his own. Nevertheless, it 
seems, he brought legitimate and illegiti- 
mate children into the world—neglected the 
education of some, and left all without a 
provision. He was, however, a collector of 
old books and papers,-and had “ completed 
a biographical dictionary of all the foreign- 
ers who had ever been in England, forming 
a supplement to Granger.’’ At his death, 
the voluminous MS. sold for little; and, it 
is believed, bought by Mr. Jeffery, the 
bookseller, of Pall Mall. 

We distinguished Swift’s Letters, and 
will give an extract :— 


It is true that a negative upon all occasions is 
hard to be proved, and sometimes almost beyond 
the power of reason to prove, so far as to convince 
gainsayers, if an alibi donot intervene. But hap- 
pily for the reputation of Swift’s mother, it was 
quite, nay absolutely impossible, she could have 
had any connexion or intrigue with Sir William 
Temple; for Sir William was constantly resident 
at Brussels, as appears from his correspondence 
with the ministers of state in England, from Sep; 
tember 1665, until the January after Dr. Swift 
was born. And Swift's mother immediately after 
her marriage went over to Ireland, where his sister 
was born about a year, I suppose, or thereabouts, 
before her brother; and her husband haying died 
a very young man, about the time of the spring 
assizes, in the year 1667, she was invited to my 
grandfather, Counsellor Swift's house, in Dublin. 
And, as I have been told, and helieve it to be true, 
she was then so young with child, that properly 
speaking, she was not aware of it, and the Doctor 
was born at my grandfather’s house, the 30th of 
November following. How soon afterthe doctor’s 
birth his mother returned to Leicester, where I 
think she was born, I cannot exactly say, but at 
Leicester she spent the remainder of her days, and 
lived to be anold woman. Neither was Swift’s 
mother ever out of the English dominions, ex- 
cepting in Ireland, during her whole life. What 
I have said to you respecting the doctor’s mother, 
I declare to you upon my honour, or what is in- 
Jinitely more sacred, I will declare to you upon 
my oath, if you please, that I believe it to he 
true. And if true, is not that negative proved by 
an alibi toa demonstration ? Or, is it possible to 
resist the force of it? All I shall further say is, 
that, if you were acquainted with the name and 
spirit of the Swrrrs, you would soon acknow- 
ledge, that if a woman of infamous conduct, after 
marriage with any of the family, should have the 
impudence to attempt a visit to one of her hus- 
band’s relations, instead of mecting with favour 
or pity, she would have had the dvor shut in her 
face ; or, if she happened first to get into the hall, 
she would as suddenly be turned out of the house 
with reproach and contempt. And give me leave 
to assure you, thatit is a remark in the Swift 
family, and so delivered down by tradition, that 
no woman of the name was ever known to be 
guilty of misconduct; nor, what is more extra- 
ordinary, was any woman that eyer married into 
the family guilty of the like. r 


2R 


306 


The same Swift, speaking of the Dean’s 
works, says— 


As for the Journal to Stella, not one line of it 
would ever have been printed, if it had not been 
for me.—In short, I was the person who about the 
year 1740 saved all that part of the journal from 
the flames, which was published by Hawkesworth. 
In the next place, the first paragraph in Hawkes- 
worth’s preface is really and truly a confounded 
lie, for Swift never in his days gave one line of 
his writings to that Dr. Lyon, who had no more 
capacity to judge of Swift’s productions, either in 
prose or verse, than he had to write an Tliad. 
Neither had Swift any the least intention that his 
letters to Stella, which now go by the title of his 
journal, or perhaps any other letters in that col- 
lection, should ever be published. And now I 
must tell you, that if Hawkesworth had not pub- 
lished that part of the journal,I neyer should have 
published the rest of it, &c. 


But he was plainly a hot-headed person ; 
and little is the reliance to be placed on a 
memory, or a judgment, which passion is so 
likely to over-rule. 


Specimens of the Lyrical, Descriptive, 
and Narrative Poets of Great Britain, 
From Chaucer to the present Day, by John 
Johnstone. One small volume; 1828.— 
This is a companion to the Specimens of 
Sacred and Serious Poetry published a short 
time since by the same editor. To the se- 
lections are added an animated sketch of 
the history of early English poetry, and 
short biographical accounts of the more dis- 
tinguished poets. Remarkable for neatness 
of construction, the absence of prejudice, 
and independence of tone, the selections 
themselves give evidence of the editor’s 
sound judgment. 

His object is to put into the hands of 
young people, with whom poetry is a pas- 
sion, but whose tastes are necessarily false or 
unripe, a volume of specimens calculated to 
raise their poetical feelings to a higher stand- 
ard —even to the highest of all—that 
formed by the fathers of English poetry. No 
specimen is introduced which has not stood 
the test of time, or been allowed to possess 
enduring qualities. The volume contains, 
in the editor’s judgment, more beautiful 
verse—far more of the very highest order 
—than is, likely to appear in all the periodi- 
cal volumes that shall be published for the 
next hundred years—glancing, we suppose, 
at the annuals. The larger extracts are 
taken from the early poets, for the purpose 
of diffusing a more intimate knowledge of 
them—such as Herrick, Caren, Lovelace, 
and the Nut-brown Maid. The specimens 
from living poets are very defective. We 
were struck by some omissions. Amongthe 
ladies, we do not find Miss Mitford ; and, 
by the way, we are not sure Mr. Dyer, in 
his collections of poets, has noticed her; and 
certainly his reviewer, Leigh -Hunt, has 
not. 

In his preface, Mr. Johnstone expresses a 
wish it were possible, by some short-hand 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


(Serr. 


process of printing yet undiscovered, to 
compress half the pages of Wordsworth into 
a cheap work, adapted to the daily house- 
hold use of the people of England—it would 
gladly have been done in the warm and sin- 
cere conviction, that no poems of nearly 
equal merit now remain to be freely diffused 
among them; and among the specimens so 
fitted for popular use, is Ruth—which ends, 
the reader may remember, with the follow- 
ing doggerel :—_ 
Farewell! and when thy days are told, 
Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow’d mould 
Thy corpse shall buried be; 
For thee a funeral bell shall ring, 
And all the congregation sing 
A Christian psalm for thee. 


On Indigestion, by David Uwins, M.D. ; 
1828.—Some men indulge their vanity by 
professing to know more than others—Dr 
Uwins gratifies his by professing to know 
less, and the gratification, we venture to 
say, is at least equally exquisite. The book 
before us is as full of conceit, to use a vul- 
gar but expressive illustration, ‘as an egg’s 
full of meat.’ His very abnegations become 
as pretty affirmances as even he, in the full- 
ness of pride, could desire. Ingeniously 
and delightfully this contempt for cotem- 
poraries involves a self-superiority, which 
shines through the liquid veil of his hu- 
mility with a brilliancy perfectly unclouded. 
Refusing, as this important person does, to 
affirm one thing to be fact, or to adopt 
another, or admit a third, or indeed any 
thing at all, Truth herself, delighted with his 
fastidiousness, in her own naked charms, 
rushes to the Doctor’s exclusive embrace. 
To reject is all the art he knows to make 
men wise and keep them so—what is left, 
at the bottom of the crucible, is the evenxe— 
though it be often nothing but a caput mor- 
tuum. Others, at a pinch, take the reverse of 
wrong for right ; but Dr. Uwins will neither 
accede to the one, nor take to the opposite ; 
no, nor turn ina middle path, if that should 
be one which another could trace; he will 
have nothing to do with what is common, 
nor scarcely with what is uncommon—he 
will take no precedent, nor is he inclined to 
make one. 

This is the general complexion of the 
book. Now and then the author starts a 
paradox—rather of the oldest too: for in« — 
stance—seeing is not always believing, even 
in medicine; for disorders of the skin, which 
are most obvious to sight, are the least un- 
derstood ; or a truism, as—disorder is not 
the same thing in every body—the idiosyn- 
erasy of the individual makes a new dis- 
ease. Whatthen? Why, then, Dr. Uwins 
will have no classing for it—no naming it— 
no vulgar treatment of it. EXvery case be- 
comes thus a new case—one swi generis— 
not to be judged of by others, but exclu- 
sively on its own merits, and all experience — 
must go for nothing, for you never meet — 
with a case a seeond time. For our own — 


; 


parts, ignorant as we confessedly are of — 


i 


“4 


ae 


1828.] 


these matters—(but then the book was writ- 
ten expressly to illuminate persons in our 
unenlightened state)—-we see not how Dr. 
Uwins can himself, with any consistency, 
venture upon prescribing at all—not even a 
grain of his favourite fox-glove—and yet we 
ourselves saw a prescription of his the other 
day lying on the counter of a druggist’s 
shop. With his convictions, prescribing 
must be altogether, and at all times, ¢enta- 
tive—a matter of chance and guess-work. 
To prove the soundness of his conclusions, 
he produces cases, where the disease has, 
with the profession, taken a name—been 
attended with common symptoms, and 
treated for a time in the usual manner— 
and where, by some chance or other, a dif- 
ferent course being adopted, a patient, be- 
fore despaired of, recovers—“ all which,” 
he says, with the utmost gravity, and as 
becomes the latent oracle—“‘ proves that 
there is something more in the workings of 
the morbid state than the philosophy of 
morbid anatomy dreams of.” 

If this course be not enough to establish 
covertly the loftiest pretensions, the Doctor 
takes another tack—he raises the more 
alarming and terrible shadows, and then by 
a wave of his magic wand disperses them 
into invisible air. ‘ There is no such 
thing,” says he, ‘ as an abstract disease.’’ 
No body says there is; but, then, to destroy 
an assumption is something, though it be 
your own. ‘“IfIam asked’’—this is Dr. 
Uwins himself—“ whether I subscribe to the 
doctrine of Clutterbuck or Broussais? I 
reply to both and to neither. Does any one 
appeal to me on a disputed point (no mat- 
ter what) whether asthma and hooping- 
cough are affections of the stomach or the 
lungs? I say, they are both and neither. 
Is fever contagious? I say it is, and it is 
not.”’? Could the inquirer do any thing but 
laugh in the Doctor’s face? If there was 
any definite sense in these dicta, we should 
have supposed he might, by possibility, 
mean that the seat of disease was sometimes 
one place, and sometimes another, the source 
of it sometimes one thing, and sometimes 
another—but, in his own language, which 
he considers to be popular, these discrepan- 
cies are referrable to the “ constituent and 
circumstantial variety of condition with 
which the excitant is engaged.”” We as- 
sure Dr. U. he is not yet entitled to take 
the high tone of authority he does—not- 
withstanding he contributes, as he informs 
us he does, to the Quarterly. While affect- 
ing to ridicule practitioners, who assign the 
stomach, or the brain, or the lining of in- 
ternal surfaces, as the primary scat of all 
disease, he exposes himself to a similar 
charge of quackery—for with him even all 
is referrable to indigestion. Abstracting, 
however, all the affectation, verbiage, and 
pretension, the common sense of the book, 
and there is some of that valuable quality in 
it, amounts to this, that every man, in the 
matter of indigestion, may be his own best 


Domestic and Foreign. 


307 


doctor. Every man must know what sits 
uneasily on his stomach—and that it is for 
him to avoid, and thus avoid also two other 
disagreeable things—swallowing drugs, and 
paying fees. 


The Beauties of Don Juan, including 
those Passages only which are calculated 
to extend the real Fame of Lord Byron; 
1828.—This is well meant, but ill planned. 
The object may be good, but it is imprac- 
ticable. There is no handling pitch with- 
out soiling the fingers. Obvious gaps— 
broken stanzas— interrupted narrative — 
what are they but exciters to curiosity— 
setting the imagination a working, and sug- 
gesting probably worse than what is sup- 
pressed—they are signals for the entrance of 
forbidden topics. 

And, to mend the matter, the expurgator 
tells us in the preface what has been omit- 
ted, with respect to which, also—lest, per- 
haps, he or she should be thought not to 
appreciate the passages thoroughly — the 
most superlative terms of eulogy are em- 
ployed. “ Innumerable passages of the 
most brilliant wit and caustic satire have 
been omitted, but a fearless sacrifice has 
been hereby made to Lord Byron’s real 
fame, &c.”—Pray, who that reads for the 
first tine—and the book is expressly meant 
for such—will not choose to see this bril- 
liant wit, &c.? Again, ‘if much of the 
wit and humour of Lord Byron’s powers, 
and of the astonishing insight he possessed 
into the deepest and most dangerous re- 
cesses of the human heart, have been sacri- 
Jiced, all the serious and contemplative 
parts of his poem have been retained, to- 
gether with a considerable portion of its 
playfulness and variety.’? Really the good 
lady had better have said nothing about the 
matter—does she suppose nobody will see 
the preface? Or is the preface meant for 
one class of readers, and the book for 
another ? 

The great difficulty in the general selection has 
arisen out of that extravagant admixture of the 
burlesque with the pathetic, in which the original 
abounds. In many instances the burlesque has 
been carried to such excess as to neutralise the 
pathetic entirely ; and there is something almost 
withering in the scorn, with which the noble 
author, after haying awakened the best and most 
eleyated feelings of the human heart, dashes the 
cup of promise from our lips, and with a sudden 
and a stern misanthropy, surrenders to ridicule 
and contempt the very emotions his genius had 
inspired. It has been the object of the present 
volume to defend the reader, as far as possible, 
against the pain of this cruel and unjust re- 
action, &e. 


This is well said; but the very persons 
for whom the writer cuts and carves will 
defeat the project. The bad must go with 
the good—there is no clapping an extin- 
guisher upon it—they must go together— 
and make their own impression. The good 
may correct the bad, as well as the bad cor« 

282 


308 


rupt the good. Why should the writer 
suppose none will feel the incongruity but 
herself ? 

«“ A lady of my acquaintance,” says Mr. 
Best, in his Three Years in Italy, ‘‘ was 
standing, with her little boy, before a naked 
bronze Cupid, that supported the wax lights 
on the sideboard. The figure was regarded 
by the child with peculiar complacency ; 
and the lady, for the purpose of correcting 
the expression of fun that appeared in the 
eyes of her little one, said, as if addressing 
the cupid—‘ Naughty little boy.’—‘ No,’ 
said the child, ‘not naughty, mamma, only 
no clothes on.’ ” 


An Account of the Public Charities of 
the Town of Bedford, by R. B. Hankin, 
Solicitor, Bedford. 1828.—Our readers may 
think “An Account of the Public Charities 
of the Town of Bedford,” perhaps, hardly 
deserving a place in a review of literary 
productions. The utility of such works, 
however, may plead an excuse for the indul- 
gence. The idea, at least, is a new one ; 
and if it had been acted upon some years 
ago, through the different towns in the 
kingdom, there would, probably, have been 
less occasion for the labours of Mr. Brougham 
on the subject of public charities. The 
present book is dedicated to the Duke of 
Bedford; and the editor begins with an 
analysis of a very recent act of parliament, 


for the better management of what is called, . 


commonly, ‘ The Harpur Charity.” He 
afterwards gives an account of a great many 
minor bequests and donations, at different 
periods, for the benefit of the town of Bed- 
ford; and concludes with a topographical 
description of the place. The notice of the 
town will not be uninteresting, even to a 
stranger—and it seems that Mr. Hankin 
has not been contented with availing himself 
of the researches of others, but has frequently 
gone in quest of antiquarian novelties him- 
self. We hope his example may be gene- 
rally followed; and that the inhabitants of 
other places may, by similar publications, be 
made acquainted with the nature and extent 
of their advantages, and be able to obviate 
or correct the abuses which are the inevitable 
consequence of their being unknown or dis- 
regarded. 


A Compendium of Modern Geography, 
for Schools, by the Rev. Alex. Stewart ; 
1828.—Mr. Stewart is favourably known 
by some judicious school abridgments 
of histories. The advantages offered in 
this compendium —similar compendiums 
abounding—is first, “by a judicious typo- 
graphy,’ more information in the same 
compass. It contains all the usual mate- 
rials of what is now-a-days called a geo- 
graphical grammar, with exercises, ques- 
tions, &c. ; but what the compiler avowedly 
wishes to be regarded as the characteristic 
superiority is the tabular list of the more 
remarkable places annexed to the descrip- 
tion of each country, with vernacular pro- 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Sepr. 


nunciation of each word critically marked. 
This, correctly performed, must prove un- 
questionably a great accommodation to 
untravelled Englishmen —tutors and go- 
vernesses; but correciness in this matter, 
not only for Europe, but the world, is not 
easy of accomplishment, and even if the 
difficulty of acquisition be overcome, the 
author may not succeed in conveying his 
knowledge correctly to the reader. Mr. 
Stewart has, probably, upon the whole, 
done as well as any one individual can be 
expected to do; but looking to his English 
list, he has plainly given us some of his 
own Scotch. Leicester is directed to be 
pronounced Leester—Reading, Reed/ing— 
Chichester, Chee’chester—Lincoln, Ling’- 
con, when Lin’cun would have been nearer 
the mark — Doncaster, Dong’-caster. Is 
Chee’vot for Cheviot right? Evesham is 
accented Ev’esham, though it should be 
Ee/sham—Kes’sick, but Kess‘ick would be 
nearer the sound. 

The Scotch, we have no doubt, are all 
correct enough, and we shall, for our own 
parts, confide in them. The Irish are gene- 
rally, we believe, right, though Monaghan 
is not-Mr. S. directs Mona’gan, but it 
should be Mona/an, or perhaps Monawn. 
But when right himself, he may mislead 
by placing the accent, when it is used with 
the last syllable, on the last letter—that is 
where that last letter is what grammarians 
call a silent e—for instance, he marks Bal- 
linrobé, Athloné, Kildaré. To be sure, 
this will mislead no Englishman who ever 
heard of these places ; but the same system 
will inevitably mislead pursued with the 
French names. Alsace is marked and spelt 
Alsancé—Angouleme, Angoolarmé—Puy de 
Dome, Pwee de Domé—The Spanish Bada- 
joz is directed to be uttered Vad’ahos—Barce- 
lona, Var-the-léna, which is a useless nicety. 
Granada is not accented at all. The Por- 
tuguese Braganza is Vagran‘ha—Coimbra, 
Coimyra—all which, though correct enough, 
will be adopted by nobody. In Greece, 
Scio is described Skéo, which, we believe, 
should be Shéo. The penult of Egina is 
accented according to the quantity, we 
suppose, in ancient days; but the modern 
Greeks undoubtedly make it short. 

The Compendium is the best and fullest 
we have seen. 


An Etymological Dictionary of the Latin 
Language, by the Rev. F. E. I. Valpy, 
A.M. ; 1828.—To discover what a writer 
is driving at, is of course the prime object 
with every reasonable person, when reading 
the language of his own country, or any 
modern language with the idiom of which 
he is familiar, without troubling himself 
much with the involutions of phrases, or 
their general or specific senses—much less 
with the niceties of particular terms —an 
obscure conception of a few words obscures 
but little the ultimate glance—his habitual 
acquaintance with customary combinations 


a ee 


I mie 


1828.] 


carries him lightly, but safely, over pas- 
sages, with the minutie of which, if he 
dwelt upon them, he would soon be per- 
plexed. But with languages which exist 
only in bocks, which are only to be under- 
stood by dint of great labour—by searching 
and sifting—single phrases, and even single 
words become of prior, if not of mightier 
importance—for before you can get at the 
sense of the whole, you must detect, and, to 
a certain degree, define that of the parts. 
For the accomplishment of this purpose, 
etymological learning comes usefully in— 
not that the bare knowledge of immediate 
derivations will carry you safely through 
writers of every kind and every age, who 
use the language. Amidst an abiding ana- 
logy, and a general steadiness, there are 
great and progressive changes, which have 
arisen not cnly from changes as to the 
knowledge of the thing the word indicates, 
but from the introduction of new phrases by 
successive writers, and the consequent ap- 
plication of the old to new purposes, or at’ 
least a modification of the old usage, for 
they were seldom utterly abandoned—and 
these from a variety of causes—fashion— 
whim — intercourse with foreigners — pe- 
dantry—power. But still the tracing back 
to their sources tends to specificate the 
sense, and frequently suggests to the in- 
quirer the causes that led to new or un- 
usual applications. It isa sort of general 
index—or, still better, it is the polarity of 
the language. Every body feels that he has 
a firmer hold of his native tongue, the more 
he knows of the sources, whether Greek, 
Latin, or Saxon, from which it flows; and 
the same satisfaction, in degree, is derivable 
from the same sort of knowledge in every 
other language, though it be true that he 
cannot get thoroughly to the root of 
them. r 
The author of the volume before us, one 
of the numerous, industrious, and learned 
family of the Valpys, who come into the 
world with Latin at their tongue’s end, as 
some do with their teeth ready cut, has 
made a very useful book—nothing of the 
kind has hitherto been introduced to schools 
—compiled from a variety of books, most 
of which are beyond the reach of numbers, 
and quite useless to learners—not that we 
mean to insinuate the volume is wholly bor- 
rowed, for the author has shewn consider- 
able sagacity, and, occasionally, no little 
dexterity. In the preface, he proves that 
the Latin and Greek are. relative languages 
—mnother and daughter—not sisters or cou- 
sins—by a very obvious and satisfactory 
process ; for instance, Domus and Aoj.os— 
plainly the some words—which is the pro- 
genitor ? What can we make of Domus 
in Latin? Nothing. What of Aoo¢ in 
Greck? Refer it to Aduw, to build, and 
that to Aw, to bind, or bind together. 
Therefore, Domus comes from door, and 
not Ao40¢ from Domus. To be sure both, 
by. possibility, may be traceable farther 


Domestic and Foreign. 


309 


back, and to a common source, and thus be 
proved to be sisters—though we have no 
great expectation from oriental sources, not 
even from the Sanskrit, to which certain scho- 
lars seem disposed to point; and none at 
all from the north—though Egypt we think 
not utterly unlikely, should the present re- 
searches of Champollion, Young, &c. make 
any progress. The very history of Greece 
and Rome, however, leads to a confirma- 
tion of the author’s hypothesis ; and the 
dates are precisely marked of numerous 
words, when they passed from Greece to 
Rome. At all events, the more the Latin 
language is looked into, the more are words 
traceable to significance. Vossius, as Mr. 
Valpy remarks, did not know that zewive 
was the source of pruina—ss a thing of the 
morning—hoar frost. 

The great fault of the book is too fixed a 
determination to find a Greek origin for 
every thing, and the consequent admittance 
of wild and random guesses. Too much 
reliance, again, is placed upon analogous 
substitutions of letters—e. g. “ Dirus for 
dinus,” says Mr. Valpy, “ from 8etvos 3” 
and by way of proof, or, at least. of illustra- 
tion and confirmation, he adds, “‘ mora from 
pon.” Refer to jrovn, and you find it sup- 
ported in like manner, by dirus from dewos 
and so they prop one another. But farther, 
to shew that dirus may very well come from 
dewvoc, that is, that in this case m may be 
changed into r, an instance is produced 
where r is changed into 7, as donum from 
dwpov, which itself, if it really have any thing 
to do with the matter in hand, wants au- 
thority. But other sources are, it seems, 
thought worthy of being quoted. It may 
come from ‘éz0s, doc, fear; for yvog makes 
nurus, which latter, though it be true 
enough, will go a very little way in esta- 
blishing the other. Or again—this is still 
Mr. Valpy—if the Greek utterly fail, the 
Anglo-Saxon may be called into requisition 
—dere, hurtful, mischievous—Shakspeare 
has, “would I had met my dearest foe in 
heaven,”’—which itself had surely better be 
read direst—-but who, except an etymologist 
by profession, would have gone to Anglo- 
Saxons for a word in use with the Romans 
long before the Romans came in contact 
with them. Surely the wiser and more 
manly way would be to avow ignorance ; 
the tendency of the present course is to con- 
firm errors, or to check inquiries, or to ex-: 
cite ridicule. 

Take another instance — Comis—cour- 
teous, mild, affable; from cémo, I trim, 
polish, as Quintilian has comere et eapolire 
orationem. Hence cdmis is much the same 
as our word polite, from polio—all which 
may do. But not content with this, we 
have al. from xw.w, I adorn with care; 
al. from cosmis, from xoo~w, I adorn; al. 
from xwj.0s, festivity, hilarity. Once more, 
al. from com, i.e. cum and eo—somewhat as 
the Greeks use oipumepupsponee for 1 am ob-~ 
sequious, or complaisant. But o would be 


310 


short as in comes. 
miserable trifling. 

 Facetus—witty, facetious, from pew, to 
speak, as dicax from dico. Cetus seems to 
be a termination—somewhat as cundus in 
facundus.”’ Very like a whale, my Lord ! 
Manifestus seems to have been found a 
tough morsel. ‘Held so, as it were (manu), 
by the hand, that it cannot be denied or 
dissembled.”’ But what is festus? asks 
Mr. V. It can scarcely be a termination. 
Why not, say we, as well as cetus and cun- 
dus? Some refer it, continues Mr. V., to 
Jfendo, to find, discover ; whence fensi and 
Jfenstum (as hausi, haustum), then for soft- 
ness, festum. Others refer it to festim, 
i.e. confestim, immediately. In manibus 
positus et confestim cognitus. Or, as from 
HAvw, was formed «Aupaw (through a word 
adrumcw pf. Avoa) 3 shall we say that from 
fanviw, to disclose, make known, was a word 
pamupew, whence ponvyemw, and (through the 
pf. pass.) vzvupaisoc, Dor. pavufaisoc? Like 
H¢acos. To all this rig-ma-rol is added, 
by way of confirmation, a note—escos, clear, 
is a word which Schneider admits, though 
with doubt ; and jx«vog was rare, fine, clear. 

Less learning—less display of it of course 
we mean—would have pleased us better; 
and we cannot think that Mr. Valpy would 
have done any discredit to his judgment, 
his candour, or his courage, by frankly con- 
fessing ignorance upon pressing occasions, 
and fearlessly rejecting the worthless guesses 
he has sometimes so wantonly accumulated. 
The great merit of the book—and it is a 
very great merit—is the English explana- 
tions, free and full, of the sense of the 
words, according to their origin and compo- 
sition, where that origin and composition is 
distinctly traceable. 


All which is surely 


Farewell to Time, &c., by the Author of 
the Morning and Evening Sacrifice ; 1828. 
—As a book of devotion, it is long since we 
have seen any thing so free from objection 
both in matter and phrase—so full of sound 
and practical good sense—with so many 
marks of reflected thought—and so much 
infusion of a philosophical spirit. 

Among the offices of religion, that of 
ministering to the instruction and conso- 
lation of the afflicted and dying, is surely 
one which demands the most careful pre- 
paration—none can be more important— 
none more imperative. But it is not the 
clergy only on whom the task of consoling 
the dying devolves. Their visits can be 
but occasional. The office of comforting 
the sick chamber falls infinitely more on 
those who take a deep and family interest 
in the welfare of the sufferer—who should, 
therefore, be qualified to discharge it. The 
author found reason to regret the want of 
“¢ good helps’’ for the performance of this 
duty, among the multitude of treatises, in 
other respects of great value, which profess 
to have this object in view. His purpose, 
therefore, has been to supply what appears 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Sepr. 


to him a deficiency—to make his book di- 
rectly useful to the afflicted—to assist the 
younger members of his profession—and to 
enable Christians of all ranks, in their visits 
to the death-beds of the sick, or in the 
hours of patient watching, to soothe and 
instruct. 

For the successful prosecution of his pur- 
pose, four things appeared to him pre-emi- 
nently proper to be attended to, and his 
book is constructed according to that ar- 
rangement. To enlighten their under- 
standings on the subject of religion—to 
give them, that is, such views of the charac- 
ter of God—of his providential dispensa- 
tions—of his future plans—as may enable 
them to repose, with some measure of con- 
fidence, in the loving kindness of Him, who, 
during all the past portions of their exist- 
ence, has never failed to watch over them 
“for good ;”—to assist them in the per- 
formance of their devotional duties—to give 
those duties such a direction and tone as 
are suited to the condition of those who are 
labouring under mortal disease—who re- 
quire consolation and strength in the trials 
they are undergoing ;—to enforce certain 
actions—such as setting their affairs in or- 
der—being reconciled to those with whom 
they are at variance—giving a beginning 
to useful plans—offering good advice to 
those whom they are about to leave, and for 
whom they aré naturally interested ;—and 
finally, to suggest and impress prospective 
views—respecting that future life on which 
they are about to enter; and which may 
render it an object of desire, which, as the 
greatest of all the articles of revelation, it 
was undoubtedly intended to awaken.— 
“ These views differ in some respects,”” says 
the author, “ from such as are commonly 
given.”’ He is, however, satisfied it is im- 
portant to render the great doctrine of ever- 
lasting life as interesting to the affections of 
the human heart as possible ;—and that 
though the subject is confessedly above the 
complete investigation of any mortal mind, 
yet views better founded on nature—more 


conformable to the plans of divine wisdom ° 


as we now observe them—and more con- 
solatory to the sick, as well as engaging to 
the healthy and active, than those commonly 
presented on these topics—may be gained 
by those who apply themselves to the inter- 
pretation of the “visible things of God,” 
with all the helps which improved know- 
ledge, and a judicious use of revealed truth, 
are fitted to afford. 

Of the devotional services, some are 
adapted to the funeral forms observed by 
the Scotch. The constitution of the Scot- 
tish church, and the habits and views of the 
people of Scotland, do not admit of any 
formal service—such as is used in most 
Christian countries. ‘ But, perhaps,” ob- 
serves the author, “lest this should look 
like a reproach—the want of it has been 
less felt in Scotland, than it would shave 
been among a people of different habits ;— 


a ee 


- 


1828.] 


and, indeed, there is something about all 
the forms which are observed in Scotland 
on this occasion, that not only accords most 
strikingly with the unostentatious character 
of all our religious services—but that has 
been felt by all observers of our ceremonies 
to be in affecting unison with the severe but 
simple and serious piety by which our peo- 
ple are distinguished.”’ 

The reader may, perchance, like to know 
how this ceremony is conducted— —~ 


The relations and friends of the deceased are 
inyited to assemble, commonly, an hour before the 
time when the funeral procession is to take place, 
A simple repast is prepared, suited to the cireum- 
stances and means of the family; a short prayer 
is said, craving a blessing, before the refreshment 
is handed round ; sometimes a short thanksgiving 
is pronounced after this ceremony; the procession 
then moves slowly to the place of interment ;—the 
whole ceremony of interring the corpse is per- 
formed amidst the reverential silence of the at- 
tendants, the chief mourners commonly standing 
uncovered at the head of the grave; a silent sign 
of acknowledgment is made by the principal 
mourner to the company, when the last turf has 


Domestic and Foreign. 


311 


been laid, and the attendants then disperse to their 
several homes, commemorating, by their conver- 
sation, the virtues of the deceased, or with other 
reflections suited to the interesting character of 
the ceremony they have witnessed. 


If we objected to any thing in this devo- 
tional volume, it would be to a section, en- 
titled “‘ Short Ejaculations in the Language 
of Scripture to be used by the Sick.’’__This 
is a direct initiation into cant—that is the 
adoption of customary phrases, without spe- 
cific application—unprompted by the natu- 
ral course of the feelings. Some of them 
are very strange—and some only not ridi- 
culous. ‘ Why hast thou set a mark 
against me, so that Iam weary of my life ?” 
Surely there is too much of the querulous 
here ?—“ I have fought a good fight—I 
have finished my course—I have kept the 
faith—henceforth there is laid up for me a 
crown of life’—and here too much confi- 
dence. ‘* O that I had wings like a dove, 
for then would I flee away and be at rest”’ 
—which under the circumstances we will 
not designate. 


MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 


THE summer theatres are now making 
their harvest, not indeed according to the 
maxim, while the sun shines, but in spite of 
as inveterate a monsoon as ever washed the 
black visages of Hindostan. Our rivers 
overflow, and so do those little theatres, and 
we can only hope that the sympathy will not 
go further, and that they will not run dry 
together. 

The Haymarket has been, since the com- 

mencement of the season, exerting itself 
with great activity in the performance of 
new farces, and those other brief displays of 
plot and pleasantry which have been so long 
appropriated to this very pleasant stage. 
The latest and the most amusing that has 
appeared late enough for our notice at pre- 
sent, is the ‘‘ Green-Eyed Monster,” a two 
act farce, from the French of course, but ex- 
tremely well adapted by Mr. Planché, who 
is becoming one of the most dexterous and 
successful contrivers of those very amusing 
little productions. 
- The reigning idea of this farce is jealousy. 
The old Baron Speyenhausen is jealous of 
his showy wife ; the eccentric gardener, an 
humble copy of the Baron, is jealous of his 
intended bride, and the Baron’s ward is 
jealous of the Baroness. So far goes the 
real passion. But, for the purpose of repel- 
ling the difficulties to which the passion 
subjects the more rational personages, the 
Baroness and the ward’s lover assume its 
appearance, and become furiously jealous, 
the one of her husband, the other of his mis- 
tress. The plot proceeds, thickening and 
entwining to the last; when the Baron is 
forced to confess his absurdity, acknowledge 
the claims of the lover, and promise eternal 
confidence in the wife. 


Farren is Speyenhausen, and his acting is 
excellent. The affectation of a superiority 
to all suspicion, with the eager readiness to 
turn every shadow into reality ; the nervous 
struggle to appear calm, with the miserable 
agitation of fear, shame, and doubt, growing 
into conviction, are pourtrayed with as much 
nature as perhaps the modern stage has ex- 
hibited. But the part is closely and stu- 
diously adapted to hisstyle. Miss F. Kelly, 
as the Ward, is clever, as she is in every 
thing ; yet, before she can rise to the height 
to which her talents would naturally lead 
her, she must be more mistress of her physi- 
cal means. She always gives proof of a 
striking and peculiar conception of charac- 
ter. Some of her “effects” are finely true to 
nature, and the general description of her 
style is power. But she still wants the fa- 
cility of voice and figure, that ought to 
second her ingenious mind. Her tone is 
often harsh, and apparently beyond her 
guidance. Her voice breaks, and runs alter- 
nately into high and low key, each the re~ 
verse of harmony. ‘This is a formidable de- 
fect in female performance, which must be so 
frequently conversant with sentiments of the 
tender, the delicate, and the touching. One 
of Miss F. Kelly’s efforts on those occasions 
is enough to put the whole covey of Cupids 
to flight. She must study the management 
of her rebellious throat, with unwearied per- 
severance, and she will succeed in the con- 
quest ; its gutturals will no more startle the 
stage hero and the audience together, and 
this very intelligent and promising performer 
will realise the promise that she has made. 

Cooper should be an example and an encou- 
ragement to her and to alllike her. No actor 
of the metropolis startled the echoes with a 


312 


more turbulent voice during his first three 
or four years. It has at length begun to be 
modulated into an excellent and articulate 
tone. His acting was harsh and inanimate. 
He has learned better things, and is now 
among the liveliest players of the liveliest 
dramas. His performance of the lover in 
this farce is as spirited a compound of sol- 
dierlike sincerity, gentlemanly feeling, and 
gay burlesque as we have lately seen. 

One subject more of our not unwilling 
panegyric remains, the peasant-love of the 
old gardener, Louise. Mrs. Humby is a 
favourite with the audience from her singular 
featness of dialogue, pleasant archness of 
expression, and prettiness of face and figure. 
We have no actress who makes more of the 
insignificant supernumerary characters of 
those little dramas. She has the talent of 
saying the most piquant things with the 
dryest simplicity, and is always accurate, 
. lively, and amusing. We can scarcely un- 
derstand why both she and Vining, who is 
a good deal in her style, and an excellent 
and busiling stage intriguant valet, and 
coxcomb, should not be transferred to either 
of the winter theatres. They would un- 
doubtedly be popular. 

Miss Bartolozzi has'gone through several 
of the principal operas of this house with 
considerable efiect. She is young, well- 
looking, and evidently a carefully-taught 
singer. But she has some obvious defi- 
eiencies which will require both study and 
time to overcome. Her embarrassment on 
the stage may wear off by the habit of looking 
an audience in the face; but her stage ac- 
tion will require additional variety, expres- 
siveness and ease. Her voice is naturally 
powerful, and may yet be of the very first 
order, for its tone is fine and Italian. But 
it must cultivate flexibility, finish, and accu- 
racy, peculiarly in the higher parts of the 
scale. However, a few months may make a 
prodigious improvement. The debutante 
and the popular performer live in different 
elements, and when this showy, and certainly 
clever girl, shall have acquired the self-de- 
pendence of practice and popularity, she 
may be a highly-important acquisition to 
opera. 

This theatre has lost some of the principal 
public favourites since last season. In this 
we admit and allow for the difficulties of the 
management. The proprietor may be in- 
defatigable, as we entirely believe he is, in 
providing the best possible company for his 
stage ; while the actors are equally inde- 
fatigable in struggling for the largest pos- 
sible emoluments that they can contrive to 
extract from the manager ; or, if he grow 
wisely reluctant, from the curiosity, taste, or 
profusion of the Squiredom. 

Thus the bidding is raised on the theatre 
which has brought those performers into the 
public view, and thé manager of a single 
establishment, with but a quarter of a year to 
reimburse him for the necessary expendi- 
tures of a year, has to contend with the 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[Serr. 


whole pocket money of the provinces. Every 
play-going shilling in the range of the 
empire is in open conflict with his single 
purse, and the victory is, of course, soon 
decided by the weight of numbers. Thus; 
we have lost the poignant and lively per- 
formance of Vestris; Miss Tree has taken 
to flight with her beauty and her grace ; and 
Liston has, either in fastidiousness of the 
Summer Treasury, or in some other odd im- 
pulse of the most eccentric and amusing 
humourist of the stage, hid his pleasantry 
from us for the season. 

The ‘ Friends,” a little drama from the 
French, and well adapted by Mr. Lacy the 
violinist, has been popular for some time. 
The plot turns upon the rather repulsive 
conception of a love between a supposed 
brother and sister, and a real brother and 
sister. A young captain ofa privateer, who 
had saved a child from a wreck, brings her 
up as his sister, to avoid the indecorum of 
having a young stranger in his house. He 
becomes enamoured of her on her approach 
to womanhood ; but believing her attracted 
by another, and dreading that she would fly 
from his house at once, if she knew that she 
was living with only a benefactor, he refrains 
from the discovery. The captain (Cooper,) 
has for some years quitted the sea, and is 
now a merchant. His partner (Farren,) is 
the suitor to the presumed sister. The cap- 
tain sees a love scene between them, and in 
a fit of furious jealousy, quarrels with his 
partner, yet without developing his secret. 
The agitation which this quarrel excites, 
betrays to the sister that her fondness for 
her brother is of a more ardent kind than 
belongs to mere relationship. She is con- 
firmed in this alarming opinion by the ex- 
perience of her pretty little friend, (Mrs. 
Humby,) who is on the eve of matrimony, 
and describes the genuine passion in all its 
symptoms, with her usual naiveté. The 
high-minded and delicate girl is shocked by 
the involuntary crime, and instantly deter- 
mines to marry the suitor whom she had 
previously rejected. The captain is dis- 
tracted at this intelligence, and believing 
that all hope is at an end, reveals the secret. 
The heroine’s terror is suddenly turned to 
joy ; she acknowledges her passion, and 
yows to live and die with him. The sum- 
moned suitor now comes, but it is only to 
be rejected a second time. In the midst of 
his chagrin, the additional discovery is 
made that the captain’s bride is the suitor’s 
actual sister, supposed to have perished in 
the vessel in which his mother was lost 
returning to France. He is consoled by 
the discovery, and all are in raptures to- 
gether. 

There is in this slight story much more 
for the taste of the French stage than the 
English. Those equivocal relationships 
always excite an unpleasant feeling with us, 
and the mere possibility of brothérs and 
sisters falling in love with each other, bor- 
ders upon the disgusting. The heroine is 


+ 


1828.] 


well played by Miss H. Kelly; Cooper’s 
Captain is spirited, and Farren’s Merchant 
is strikingly characteristic. The busy bride, 
played by Mrs. Humby, is, after all, our 
avourite of the entire. Nothing on the 
London Stage is more animated and amus- 
ing than her matrimonial eagerness ; her 
sinking all subjects, let their importance. to 
others be what it will, in her own marriage ; 
and her reminding all the world every five 
minutes, that the hour of “ her wedding is 
two o’clock.’’ The only performer whose 
appearance discredits the play, is West, who 
has unfortunately conceived a very passable 
part in the most quirkish spirit of a low 
attorney, and whose dress is something 
between that of a baker and a stable-boy. 
Yet he is in a merchant’s counting-house, 
and there is no reason for this idle carica- 
ture, unless it be that the actor chose to 
sharpen the wonder of the audience at Mrs. 
Humby’s matrimonial zeal when such was to 
be the prize. However, West is a smart 
actor, and when he shall reform his costume, 
will probably appear to advantage. 

The English Opera House has laboured 
with great, and we conceive, successful dili- 
gence, since the beginning of the season. 
Four or five performances, all of merit, and 
some very striking, have followed each other. 
Mozart’s music in the “ Cosi fan Tutti,” 
has attracted considerable attention, and is 
‘still among the nightly displays of the 
Theatre. The “ Bottle Imp,” a mad tale 
from our mad friends of Germany, is the 
best that we have seen of its species ; 
altogether outdoing the Freischiitz in oddity, 
variety, and effect, with the single exception 
‘of the bullet casting scene, which absorbs 
all the horrors of Rhenish invention so 
effectually, that there is not a horror left for 
any future dramatist of the infernals. The 
music of the Freischiitz is, we need scarcely 
Say, not likely to find a rival. Yet the 
* Bottle Imp” offered so striking an occa- 
‘sion for that finer order of composition which 
is essentially dramatic, that we regret its 
not having fallen into the hands of some 
great composer. 

As it stands, however, it is a highly 
eccentric, and even pleasant piece of 
Diablerie. Keely, as the innocentinstrument 
‘of the spells, is completely in his vocation ; 
and between actual sheepishness, peasant 
craft, and real terror, he exhibits a very 
curious versatility. 

A petite piece, “He lies like Truth,” 
translated from the ‘‘ Menteur Véridique,” 
is also popular. Wrench is the hero, and 
in his abhorrence of the simplicity of fact, 
which he calls dull and mechanical, em- 
broiders every thing with the most elaborate 
invention. He is on the eve of marriage 
with a lady whose father hates this vigorous 
faculty so much, that with a view of getting 
rid of the son-in-law, he protests that he 
will not give his consent unless the hero can 
abstain from a “Jie” for the next twelve 
hours. The promise is made instantly, 

M.M. New Serics.—Vou.VI. No. 33. 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


313 


which unluckily turns out to be only a fresh 
illustration of the inventive talent, for it is as 
instantly violated by a merciless exaggera- 
tion about a place under government. But 
the lady, who is solicitous for the match, 
dextrously provides against the detection, by 
introducing a stranger who corroborates the 
statement, and declares the place to be only 
waiting his acceptance. The lover falls into 
another breach of the contract, by detailing 
the history of a fictitious quarrel. The lady 
introduces the very man with whom the 
quarrel had existed. The liar is naturally 
as much astonished as any one else 5 but the 
gentleman, after demanding his presence 
with pistols, and finally accepting the due 
apology, retires, and all is safe for the time. 

A third exaggeration as to the patron who 
is to supply him with place and pension, is 
about to be sustained in the same way by 
the lady’s agent, when all parties are thrown 
into equal embarrassment by the appearance 
of the actual individual, who is alike uncon- 
scious of having thus extended his patron- 
age, and of the very visage of the hero. The 
lady trembles for her marriage ; the agent, 
for his master’s reproof, he being the valet 
of the newly arrived personage, and dressed 
in his court suit ; and the lover for the 
results of inevitable detection. But farce is, 
luckily, not tragedy. The affair ends in a 
laugh, and the father forgets the invention, 
and forgives the inventor. 

The great Theatres are sedulously pre- 
paring for the winter opening. A tragedy, 
said to be by Miss Mitford, is, we believe, in 
managerial hands, and we may expect the 
usual succession of pleasant petite pieces 
from the usual writers. Messrs. Poole, 
Peake, Planche, and Renny, are, of course, 
hard at work, and we shall have the benefit 
of their Summer roamings up the Rhine, 
down the Danube, and across the Black 
Sea. A Turkish Pastoral, Sultan Mahmoud, 
in the disguise of a shepherd, makes love to 
one of the sisters of Nicholas, who, capti- 
vated by his skill on the flageolet and his 
rural simplicity, elopes with him from the 
stately halls of St. Petersburg, for, as she 
presumes, the rustic happiness of a cottage 
in Asia Minor, and finds herself, to her 
astonishment and delight, conveyed to the 
Ottoman Court, and sitting beside the hand- 
somest man of Europe or Asia, with the 
longest beard and the best diamonds, is to 
be read on the opening of the Theatre. 
Green-room whispers are already active on 
the subject ; and the authorship is divided 
among several pens of the very highest 
rank of the noblesse. But the general 
opinion attributes it, beautiful as it is, to 
the genius of a literary Duke “ not a hun- 
dred miles from the Green-park.’” So say 
the papers, and as they are bound to know 
every thing, and to tell all they know, we 
are bound to believe them. 

A celebrated dramatist has a play vibrat- 
ing between the Theatres. The story goes, 
that the cause of this vibration was the 

25 


314 


author’s wish to leave it to the managerial 
judgment, whether his play should be con- 
sidered as the offspring of Thalia or Melpo- 
mene. One Theatre, after some hesitation, 
in the first instance pronounced it a Comedy, 
the other Theatre pronounced it a Tragedy ; 
further consideration made both reverse their 
judgments, and the former advocates for its 
‘comic rights now pronounce it a Tragedy, 
while the latter are “ fearless in giving their 
opinion”? that it was intended for a Comedy. 
Until the point is settled, the proprietorship 
is held in abeyance. Several Operas are 
conjectured at Drury Lane, where Young is 
engaged. Charles Kemble is stated to have 
sold his interest in Covent Garden to Mr. 
Willett. The projected arrangement with 
Mr. Harris is put aside for the time. M. 
Laporte, who has not been shot by his 
heroic ballet-master, nor, we rejoice to hear, 
kept back by the tyranny of the Théatre 
Francaise, for the puypose of playing the 
principal roles in Paris, promises to open his 
“Theatre in December with an influx of 
singers and dancers unparalleled since the 
Norman invasion. The grand Opera of 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[Serr. 


the ‘“ Eumenides” is to be among the first 
achievements, and Pasta, Sontag, and 
Pessaroni, are to play the three furies. In 
the course of the year we are, we understand, 
to have two new Divertisements, which is 
one more than we had in the last ; and one 
new Ballet which the manager may assure 
himself will be a novelty—if the news be 
true. 

The showers have washed Vauxhall nearly 
out of recollection. But the lamps glitter 
there still. Mr. Cooke plays his pleasant 
caricature we presume, and from the shots 
heard in that direction about the witching 
hour, we have reason to believe either that 
Vauxhall exists, or that the French have 
sent an expedition up the Thames, and are 
storming the Commons of Clapham. 

However, the weather must grow dry 
some time or other, and as the managers are 
really active, and have made Vauxhall a 
really pleasant place, instead of the tedious 
affair that it was before their reign, we wish 
that they may be able to revenge themselves 
for the showers by a full tide of the monied 
currency, before their season be over. 


PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 


DOMESTIC. 
ROYAL SOCIETY. 

May 8.—A communication was read to 
the Society, containing some particulars of 
the earthquake felt in the Netherlands, and 
in some of the frontier towns of France, on 
the 23d of February, in a letter to Captain 
Sabine, from Professor Quetelet, of Brus- 
sels. It was particularly felt along the banks 
of the Meuse ; its greatest violence was in 
the towns of Liege, Tongres, Tirelemont, 
and Huy; many of the walls and buildings 
of which suffered considerable injury, but no 
lives were lost. In the adjacent towns of 
Maestricht, Namur, Louvain, and Brus- 
sels, strong shocks were also experienced, 
but their violence diminished in proportion 
to-the distance from the former or principal 
seat of concussion. An account was also 
read of some particulars of an earthquake 
experienced at Bogota, and in the Cordil- 
lera, between Bogota and Popayan, on the 
16th of November, 1827, in a letter from 
Colonel P. Campbell. The city was in 
great measure destroyed, but not more than 
five or six persons were killed. To the 
north of Bogota the earthquake was not 
much felt, but to the south the devastation 
has been most extensive. Popayan, which 
is 200 geographical miles S. S. W. of Bo- 
gota, and Patea, still farther to the S.S.W.., 
have suffered severely.—May 15. A long 
and elaborate paper was read, entitled, A 
Comparison of the Changes of Magnetic In- 
tensity in the Dipping and Horizontal 
Needles throughout the Day at Truernberg 
Bay, in Spitzbergen, by Captain Foster. 


Also was read a paper on experiments, re- 
lative to the effect of temperature on the 
refractive index, and dispersive power of 
expansible fluids, and on the influence of 
these changes in a telescope with a fluid 
lens, by Peter Barlow, Esq., from which it 
appears that the author considers it as pro- 
bable, that in all expansible fluids the index 
of refraction varies directly as the density : 
on the other hand, it would appear that the 
dispersive ratio remains at all temperatures 
constantly the same.—May 22. A_ letter 
was read from Fhomas Andrew Knight, 
Esq-, containing an account of some cir- 
cumstances relating to the economy of bees. 
He infers that not a single labouring bee 
ever emigrates in a swarm without having 
seen its proposed future habitation. He 
finds that the same remark applies not only 
to the permanent place of settlement, but 
also to the place where the bees rest tempo- 
rarily soon after swarming, and also con- 
cludes that unions of swarms are generally, 
if not always, the result of previous concert 
and arrangement. — June 5, A paper was 
read, entitled, Description of a Sounding 
Board in Attercliffe Church, near Sheffield, 
by the Rey. J. Blackburn, minister ; it is 
the section of a paraboloid, and so placed, 
that the mouth of the speaker is in the 
focus. 


FOREIGN, 
INSTITUTE—ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Paris, May }2.—A sealed pacquet, con- 
taining a memoir on urinary concretions, 
and a note on a new treatment of gravel, 


1828. ] 


was delivered to the secretary from Dr. 
Miguel. M. Cogniard de Latour observed, 
that brass wire, after having been stretched 
for a few days in the open air, easily breaks 
when bent at a sharp angle, which seems to 
imply some change in the molecular state of 
the metal, and proposed to investigate the 
cause.—19. M. Dupetit Thouars made some 
remarks on a note of M. Mirbel, relative to 
Cambium and Liber. M. Finot claimed 
the priority of invention of sizing paper by 
means of amidon. M. Guy-Lussac made 
a proposal for establishing to investigate and 
determine the various prizes. —26. Mr. War- 
den gave some details of an earthquake felt 
at Washington and cther places in the 
United States, between 10 and 11 p.m., on 
the 9th March. The minister communi- 
cated all the details his office could furnish 
regarding gunpowder. MM. de la Billar- 
diere and Desfontaines reported favourably 
on a botanical memoir of M. Cambessedes, 
and recommended its insertion in the Re- 
cueil des Savans Etrangers. M. Poisson 
read a memoir on some points of the Mé- 
canique Céleste. He terminated his me- 
moir by yarious remarks on the invariable 


Proceedings of Learned Societies. 


315 


plane which M. Laplace determined for our 
planetary system, and on the plane which 
M. Poinsot had recently proposed, and 
which alone he regards as invariable. MM. 
@’Arcet and Chevreul reported upon M. 
Donne’s memoir upon Iodine and Bro- 
muim.—June 2. M. Baudelocque an- 
nounced certain discoveries he had made 
in the obstetric art. M. Villermet read a 
memoir on the medium height of the inha- 
bitants of France.—9. M. Cuvier presented 
to the Academy some teeth of the gigantic 
tapir, which had been dug up in the arron- 
dissement of Saint Gaudens.—16. At the 
public meeting. held this day, La Lande’s 
astronomical prize was awarded to MM. 
Carlini, of Milan, and Plana, of Turin. 
M. de Monthyon’s prize for experimental 
physiology was given to Dr. Dutrochet, and 
MM. Andouin and Milne Edwards. The 
memoirs of Dr. Vincent and M. Collard de 
Martigny, were honourably noticed. M. 
Monthyon’s statistical prize was bestowed on 
M. Thomas. On the other subjects, for 
which prizes were offered, none of the com- 
petitors were thought worthy of success. 


VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


Prospects of British Science. — The 
peace which almost ushered in the present 
century was scarcely ratified, when the greater 
number of our ships were dismantled with 
precipitate haste, and the marine stores, with 
which our arsenals were amply provided, 
were eagerly dispesed of at any price, to any 
one who would take them : hostilities soon 
recommenced, fleets were to be equipped 
anew, the recently sold stores were to be re- 
_ purchased at any cost, the urgency of the 

_ case was appreciated by the sellers, and go- 
_yernment paid dearly for their ill-timed 
economy. This occurence was charac- 
teristic, but the example has been lost. 

So long as the aristocracy of England 
think it right to provide for the younger 
members of their families at the public ex- 
pense, instead of setting apart for the pur- 
pose any portion of their revenues, no minis- 
ter will dare to effect a reduction of the ex- 
penditure of the country, under the head of 
places and pensions. A finance committee, 
composed of the most able and upright men, 
may be embodied ; they may investigate with 
‘scrupulous fidelity ; may censure with in- 
dignant freedom, but the sinecurists and 
placemen deriying strength from the extent 
of their own delinquency, will brave their 
denunciations, and too powerful to be awed 
by the frowns of a minister, will laugh at 
the clamours of the people. When, there- 
fore, as at the present moment, the em- 
barrassments of the country are deeply felt 
ay ihe executive, and an honest as well assen- 

le body of gentlemen are in consequence 
required to examine, and recommend for 


abolition every office of no immediate utility, 
they will, if not with the hope of producing 
any other beneficial effect, still with the ex- 
pectation of quieting any public discontent, 
proceed to the removal of all petty places 
within their reach, since those of greater 
weight defy their jurisdiction. Unfortu 
nately, with rather reckless indiscrimination, 
the present finance committee has prosecuted 
their labours: one of their last acts, for as 
theirs it must be considered, was the abo- 
lition of the board of longitude ; not that we 
are the advocates of that board, for, with the 
exception of perhaps three members, it was 
as badly constituted as such a board could 
be, and its conduct was framed, as might 
reasonably be expected. It had the disposal 
of £4,000 annually for philosophical pur- 
poses, in other words to be jobbed with, 
and jobbed with it was accordingly ; every 
scientific conundrum of its members was 
prosecuted to the fullest extent of their 
funds} while objects of real utility submitted 
to their consideration were treated with con- 
tempt or neglect.* Still, in a maritime na- 
tion, some board of the sort isalmostindispen- 
sable. With the termination of its existence, 
that of the nautical almanack is supposed to 
have terminated also: yet, such as it was, 
this, or some similar publication, is abso- 
lutely necessary. Unchanged for more than 
half a century, it was consequently the worst 
of its kind in Europe; but still it was bet- 


* On the flint-ylass making scheme, and the 
furnace now lapsed to Méssrs, Pellat and Green, 
together with various other of their proceedings, 
we shall supply the details at some future time, 

28°2 


316 


ter than none at all. For a maritime nation 

thus to be ieft without a competent body to 

superintend and direct the scientific arrange- 

ments for its navy, shows in the government 

lamentable indifference, to call it by no 
harsher name: but before we prosecute this 
subject further, we shall notice a few topics 
which have some relation to it. It was pro- 
posed some time since, by an able navigator 
at the head of a naval office, to establish a 
sort of journal, for communicating to the 
public interesting abstracts of the voluminous 
and accumulating information which at pre- 
sent is supposed to be lost in the archives of 
that department. From various causes, the 
idea of this journal was abandoned, nor was 
it thought advisable to place foreign nations 
in possession of intelligence which was col- 
lected at the expense, and for the service of 
England. Toa certain class of reasoners 
this latter argument was specious enough ; 
but what was the fact? The whole of this 
intelligence had to pass through the hands 
of another personage, who receives from a 
trading bookseller £500 per annum for 
communicating it to a journal, of which he 
is the proprietor : patriotism thus appeared, 
as is usual, but a cloak for self-interest, and 
so jealously was this self-interest guarded, 
that when, on. the return of a celebrated ex- 
pedition, one of the persons who had accom- 
panied it was applied to to contribute a slight 
sketch of its proceedings to a popular work, 
a direct refusal was given, for fear of offend- 
ing the fortunate gentleman who profited by 
the sale of the intelligence, and would resent 
with the whole weight of his official power 
any interference with his prerogative. 

But these are the days of retrenchment and 
economy, and as the scientific character of 
the nation cannot be expressed in pounds, 
shillings, and pence, it may consequently be 
estimated as nothing, and scientific estab- 
lishments an useless burthen, we would 
therefore recommend the completion of the 
work that is begun. ‘The royal observatory 
at Greenwich, and its astronomers, are the 
laughing stock of Europe; and assailed on 
all sides by invective and ridicule, the latter 
is upheld only from the partiality of private 
friendship, or because it has been made the 
point of attack upon a system in which its 
supporters are interested. Should it be neces- 
sary, from his own acknowledged incom- 
petence, or from natural causes, to appoint 
a successor to Mr. Pond, it is in vain that we 
should look in Great Britain for an indi- 
vidual able to compete with the continental 
philosophers; there has been no public en- 
couragement here to stimulate or reward ex- 
ertion, so that among those who might have 
conferred honour upon the appointment, uot 
one has thought it worth his while to sacri-. 
fice his individual pursuits, and at the ex- 
pense of much bodily and mental fatigue, 
prepare for a difficult situation, when, should 
it be otherwise disposed of, his labours would 
be totally lost. Do away then with the 
mockery of Greenwich altogether; if we 


Varielies. 


[Sepr. 


cannot have a high scientific character as a 
nation, let us enter into no competition ; it 
is better to have no national philosophical 
establishments, than to have such as excite 
contempt throughout Europe. The £500 
per annum, which was given for our wretch- 
ed nautical almanack, would have purchased 
one equal to that now published at Berlin, 
and half the expense which Greenwich costs 
would command for us the services of the 
greatest genius alive—as to the national dis- 
grace from such a system, why that too, as it 
cannot be expressed in pounds, shillings, 
and pence, may safely be neglected by go- 
vernment. Their own individual reputa- 
tion the philosophers of England will always 
maintain. Unsupported by the expectation 
of reward or emolument, it is the love of 
science alone that can stimulate their ex- 
ertions ; and rendered more eminent on that 
very account, while they are a living libel 
on their government, they will excite the 
admiration of the rest of Europe. 

Antiquities. —A human mole who has 
burrowed during the last eight or nine years 
into no less than forty-six. ancient tumuli, 
upon the range of Southdown hills, and 
been rewarded for his pains with the dis- 
covery that they had been previously ran- 
sacked, at the end of July last, after opening 
what appeared to be a barrow, upon Laning 
hill, about eight miles from Brighton, and 
four from Worthing, found the remains of a 
small Roman temple ; the pavement was of 
the most coarse description, but several coins 
of Constantine, Trajan, others of the Roman 
Emperors, as well as a few conjectured to be 
Saxon, together with numerous brooches, 
and some rings, were all in the highest state 
of preservation ; the various urns, however, 
in which they were contained, unfortunately 
crumbled to pieces. 

Cheap and valuable Manure.—Raise a 
platform of earth, eight feet wide, one foot 
high, and of any length, according to the 
quantity wanted, on the head land of a field. 
On the first stratum of earth lay a thin 
stratum of lime fresh from the kiln ; dissolve 
or slake this with salt brine or sea-water from 
the nose of a watering-pot; add imme- 
diately another layer of earth, then lime, 
and brine as before, carrying it to any con- 
venient height. In a week it should be 
turned over, carefully broken and mixed, so 
that the mass may be thoroughly incorpo- 
rated. This compost has been used in Ire- 
land, has doubled the crops of potatoes and _ 
cabbages, and is said to be far superior to — 
stable dung. . 

Novel Artillery.n—A_ gentleman of the 
name of Sievier has recently invented a 
method of projecting shot, which consists in 
making the shot with a cylindrical chamber, 
so as to pass freely on to a maundid or bar, 
fixed on trunnions, a powder chamber being 
formed at the bottom of the cylindrical cavity _ 
in the shot. The powder is inflamed by 
means of a touch-hole in the shot in the — 
usual way. A charge of powder thus used — 


a 


igh 


1828.] 


is found to produce effects very much sur- 
passing those of a shot of equal weight 
thrown from acannon, and this is accounted 
‘for by supposing that the force of recoil, 
which in a cannon is so great as to throw it 
‘a considerable distance backwards, is added 
in the new form of shot to the usual quantity 
of projectile force. The experiments made 
with shot weighing up to twenty-five pounds, 
were successful beth as to force and direc- 
tion, and the advantage gained as te light- 
ness in the apparatus is extraordinary. 

Discovery of a MS. of Ediesi.—A dis- 
covery has been made in the royal library 
of Paris, of a manuscript of the Geography 
of Ediesi. Hitherto only an abridgment of 
this Arabian geographer has been known, 
than which, the work in question is five 
times more voluminous. Ediesi wrote at 
Almeira, of which he was a native, about 
the year 734 of the Hegira (1345 of our 
ra). His Geography affords some ex- 
-tremely curious details on the state of places 
at the time he wrote. Many extracts have 
been made from it, but fragments only 
have come down to us. The new MS. af- 
fords many different readings of names, 
which haye not been always correctly writ- 
ten in the passages which have as yet ap- 
peared ; indeed, the errors have been mul- 
tiplied with the number of copies, so that 
the present MS., more than 200 years old, 
will in this respect afford some valuable in- 
formation. 

Waste of Food.—From an experiment 
recently made of the loss sustained by the 
usual process of cooking rice, and throwing 
away the water in which it has been boiled, 
it has been ascertained that about one- 
thirtieth part of the rice is lost: in other 
words, food enough for one day in every 
month is habitually thrown away; and a 
«country which, like Bengal, maintains near- 
ly 30,000,000 of people fed with rice, might 
nourish one million more from the same 
tillage and produce, which now support a 
Jess number. 

Improved Mariner’s Compass.—An im- 
provement in the disposal and hanging of 
the mariner’s compass on shipboard has been 
made in America. It dispenses with the 
use of the binnacle; a hole is cut in the 
deck, within this hole the compass box is 
placed, and at top covered by a very thick 
glass ; the bottom of the box is also made 
of glass, the compass card is made semi- 
transparent, and the whole lighted from be- 
low. By these means the use of a tell-tale 
is dispensed with, and the compass rendered 
much more secure than in its former posi- 
tion, as it is as firm as the deck. 

- Brazilian Tea.—The tea plant has with- 
in the last few years been cultivated in 
Brazil on a very large scale, and with great 
success. It was originally brought from 
China about the year 1816, when a number 
‘of Chinese, accustomed to its cultivation 
‘and preparation, were at the same time con- 
veyed to Rio de Janeiro, for the purpose of 


Varieties. 


317 


naturalizing it. It was at first planted at 
the royal estate at Santa Cruz, formerly be- 
longing to the Jesuits, and, eventually, it 
was spread to several of the provinces. In 
that of Saint Paul, where the soil and cli- 
mate have been found peculiarly congenial, 
the plantations are on an extensive scale; 
and the Brazilians are said already to grow 
‘sufficient for their own consumption. In 
five years it is expected they will be able 
to export a considerable quantity. Some 
scientific persons in London, who have been 
furnished with samples of Brazilian tea, 
have found it on infusion stronger than that 
of China, usually drank, which may per- 
haps be -owing to its being of last year’s 
growth, while the Chinese tea consumed in 
England is generally three or four years 
old. 

Solution of adfected Quadratic Equations. 
—Whatever be the original form of aqua- 
diatic equation, it must always be reduced to 
this formula of three terms: v2--pa-+-g—=o, 
in which p is the sum of the roots, and ¢ is 
their product. Now having their sum, and 
substituting d for their difference, we have, 
by a well-known theorem, the two roots in 
their expression: --p-+-d 

2 
sign of p is always contrary to what it is in 
the above formula. Also we have pdy, 

2 
p—2 : , 
5 =+ 9. In which equation d=+4 


3 in which the 


— > 4 
WV p® 44g: here the sign of g is con- 
trary to what is in the formula. Hence, 
es — fio 
Fret¢ +eptv pty 
See drew eev@e anda 


= 


$ an expres- 


sion containing the two roots of the given 
equation in terms of known quantities. 
Archeology.—In the village of Voor- 
burg, near the Hague, there is a country- 
house, called Arensburg, where the ruins of 
a Roman edifice have been discovered, of 
which the bricks bear the marks of the 
10th, 16th, and 30th legions, as well as those 
of the army of Lower Germany ; numerous 
fragments of wine and oil jars, furniture, 
ornaments, &c. have been found. The 
structure appears to resemble the Roman 


villas which have been met with in England. 


It is certain that the Roman fortress at the 
mouth of the Rhine was swallowed up by the 
sea, and which was commonly called Het 
Huiste Britten, did not at all resemble the 
edifice at Voorburg, but was much smaller. 
The remains are very spacious, and extend 
beyond the domain above mentioned. M. 
Renvens, professor of Archeology at Ley- 
den, has the charge of superintending the 
excavations. 

Human Salamander.—A Spaniard, by 
name Francisco Martinez, has been asto- 
nishing the Parisians, as much by his as- 
sumed title of an incombustible man, as by 
exposing himself to a degree of heat thirty 


318 


degrees above that of boiling water, and 
capable of roasting in a few minutes the 
flesh of animals deprived of life. In this, 
however, there is nothing new. Dr. Blag- 
den, secretary to the Royal Society about 
thirty years since, remained, accompanied 
by a female dog, during eight minutes in 
an oven heated to 100° of Reaumur, 20° 
above the point at which water boils. Wa- 
ter, although covered with oil, boiled close 
to him, and in thirteen minutes, the hot air 
being concentrated by a pair of bellows, 
some beef was dressed in the same place. 
Two French academicians of the last century 
saw at Larochefoucault, a man who from 
habit supported during ten minutes the heat 
of an oven, in which fruits and meats were 
cooked ; they found the heat to be 112° of 
Reaumur, 32° above that of boiling water. 
The rarity of the air, its weak conducting 
power, and its small capacity for caloric 
serve to explain how a person can exist in 
SO warm an atmosphere. It is by its action 
upon the skin, and the consequences which 
ensue from that that fire becomes injurious. 
Now the Spaniard who has been exhibiting 
himself in Paris, is wrapped up in wide 
pantaloons, en molleton, of red wool, a loose 
mantle also of wool, and wears on his head 
a great quilted felt cap—and the wool being 
a bad conductor of heat, this wonder-work- 
ing genius, like the Monsieur Velocipede 
recently imported into this country, should 
awaken the astonishment of the ignorant 
alone. 

Fossil Whale Rib.—A short time since 
a fossil bone, which has been considered the 
sternal portion of a rib of a whale, was ex- 
tracted from the base of the cliff under 
Kemp-town, Brighton. This fragment, for 
it evidently was but a small portion of the 
original, measured nine feet in length, the 
piece destroyed by the workmen, who first 
saw it, was estimated at about three feet, 
and from its slight degree of curvature, it 
could not haye been less than thirty feet 
when entire. The circumference of the 
largest extremity was thirty-four inches, and 
the bone gradually diminished in size, ter- 
minating obtusely. Unfortunately, in at- 
tempting to remove it, it fell to pieces—one 
fragment, however, has been preserved of 
the length of five feet. 

Useful Cement.—In a late number of 
the Franklin (North American) Journal, a 
cement is mentioned, which has been ap- 
plied with good effect to ships’ bottoms, 
and which, it is suggested, might be sub- 
stituted for the costly Roman or Dutch 
water cements in fresh water works. The 
composition of it is this: take best barrelled 
stone lime, slake it, by the affusion of as 
much fresh water as is just necessary to 
produce that effect, and cause it to fall into 
a dry white powder; when cooled sift it 
through a fine wire sieve into a trough like 
a bread trough, then add common fish oil, 
sufficient to bring it to the consistence of 
soft putty, so as to work with ease under the 


Varieties. 


[Sepr. 


trowel. No water is to be used except for 
slaking the lime in the first instanee. After 
it is prepared for use, it is kept in covered 
vessels, to preserve it from the rain or other 
moisture. 

The Cherokees.—The following account 
of the present state of a once powerful tribe 
of North American Indians, is too curious 
to be omitted in a Miscellany in which it 
has been endeavoured to concentrate what- 
ever is most worthy of notice. The Che- 
rokees, hemmed in on all sides by the 
white population, and unable to subsist any 
longer by the chace, or by fishing, have been 
forced to have recourse to agriculture and 
the mechanical arts, in which, within the 
last twenty years, they haye made surpris- 
ing adyances. They inhabit commodious 
houses, united into villages, and many of 
them possess farms of thirty or forty acres, 
highly cultivated, and abundantly provided 
with horses and cattle of every description. 
The Baptist, however, and other mission- 
aries, have converted many of them to 
Christianity. They have now schools where 
500 of their children learn to read, write, 
and cypher ; they will soon possess a library 
and museum. A printing press has also 
been established in their capital, where an 
Indian publishes, in his native tongue, with 
an English translation on the opposite page, 
a weekly paper, entitled the Cherokee Phe- 
nix. The territory occupied by the Chero- 
kees contains about 1,400 square miles, and 
comprises the north-west angle of Georgia, 
the north-east of the State of Alabama, and 
the south-east of that of Tennessee. Their 
population amounts to 15,060 individuals, 
of whom 13,563 are natives, 147 white men, 
73 white females, and 1,277 slaves. New 
Echota is the name of their principal town. 
July 26, 1826, they adopted a form of go- 
vernment nearly resembling that of the 
states of the American Union. 

Improvement in Road-making. — The 
mire of the roads near the metropolis in wet 
weather, and their dustiness in times of 
drought, have often been complained of as 
both inconvenient and expensive. The mat- 
ter that caused these inconveniences has 
been found not to be the powder worn from 
the gravel, or flints, or broken stone used in 
making the road; but from the rising of 
the matter, which is in the whole district 
mostly or partly clay, and therefore very 
retentive of moisture. To cure the evil, 
two things are wanted—a better drainage 
of the water, and a harder foundation on 
which to lay the broken stone. The 
drainage is always a matter of mere engi- 
neering and expense ; but the improvement 
of the foundation is a good deal more diffi. 
cult, at least involves an additional ex- 
pense. A pavement of large stones would 
be the best foundation, if those stones could 
be cheaply obtained of sufficient size, and 
regular shape; but in the districts in ques- 
tion there is no native stone, nor any to be 
had, the carriage of which would not meke 


Ne ee ee OS Re Te ee TS 


———— 


ora 


1828. ] 


a serious addition to the expense. An ex- 
periment for the cbviating of both difficul- 
ties has been tried with every chance of suc- 
cess, upon a very bad part of the Archway 
road, a little beyond Highgate. The ground 
has been cut to some depth in the centre; a 
complete set of under-drains has been put in, 
at the sides of the carriage way, and also 
across. Then the middle has been laid with 
a payement of artificial stone—formed of 


Varieties. 


319 


pebbles, Roman cement, and sand, in blocks 
of regular size ; and the broken stones have 
been laid over that. The experiment is yet 
hardly completed, and the upper surface of 
the road is not consolidated; but in as far 
as we can judge, it will render the road far 
more economical, both in the wear of cattle, 
and in repairs. Mr. Mac Neill, civil engi- 
neer, the inventor, has taken out a patent 
for the artificial stone. 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


— 


WORKS IN PREPARATION. 


Mr. Gleig, Author of the Subaltern, has 
in the press a Series of Tales of Military 
Life and Adventure, entitled, ““ The Chel- 
sea Pensioners.”” 

The Story of the Cock and the Hen, a 
Spanish Romance. By Mr. Southey. 

Another Volume of Mr. Buckingham’s 
Travels in the East, and through regions of 
great general interest. 

Sir Walter Scott’s next Novel is founded 
on certain incidents in the History of 
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and 
will include, on dit, his final conflict with 
the Swiss. 

Three new Volumes of Tales ofa Grand- 
father will be ready by Christmas: they 
will bring down the Scottish History to the 
Rebellion in 1745. By Sir Walter Scott. 

Captain Basil Hall has finished his walk 
of 16,000 miles in the United States, in 
fifteen months, and is now engaged in pre- 
paring an Account of his Observations. 

Tales of the Cottage: a Series of Tales 
for Youth. By the Author of “ Keeper’s 
Travels.” . 

A new edition of The Memoirs of the 
Life and Character of Miss Sarah Savage, 
eldest daughter of the Rev. P. Henry, A.M. 
With additions. By J. B. Williams, Esq. 
F.S.A. And a Recommendatory Preface 
by the Rev. W. Jay, of Bath. In 12mo. 

An Essay on the Operation of Poison 
upon the living Body. By Mr. Morgan 
and Dr. Addison, of Guy’s Hospital. 

A Treatise on the Diseases and Injuries 
of the Spine; being the Substance of an 
Essay to which the Jacksonian Prize was 
adjudged, by a Committee of the Royal 

ge of Surgeons, in the year 1826. 

Two Letters in Reply to the Bishop of 
Salisbury, on 1 John, v. 7. By the Rev. 
J. Oxlee, Curate of Stonegrave. 

A Letter to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, 
on some of the Impediments, Defects, and 
Abuses existing in the Present System of 
Medical Education, with Suggestions for 
their Removal and Correction. By Henry 
Wm. Dewhurst, Surgeon, &c. 

Literary Remains of the late Henry Neele, 
Esq. consisting of Lectures on English 
Poetry, Tales, and Miscellaneous Pieces in 
Prose and Verse, never before published. _ 

The Dissertation on the Priesthood of 


Christ. By the Rey. John Wilson, of 
Montrose. 

St. Petersburgh at the Close of 1827; 
a Journal of Travels to and from that Ca- 
pital, through Flanders, along the Banks 
of the Rhine, through Prussia, Russia, 
Poland, Saxony, Bavaria, and France. By 
A. R. Granville, M.D. 

A Refutation of the Doctrines of the 
Hypostatical Union of the two Natures in 
Jesus Christ, and of his Eternal Sonship ; 
as both these doctrines are advocated by the 
Rey. Richard Watson, and the former by 
Dr. Adam Clarke: with critical remarks on 
the most popular errors relative to the mode 
of the divine existence by a Trinity in 
Unity; and a development of the true 
identification of the Divine Logos with 
human nature, as revealed in the Scriptures, 
in a Series of Letters addressed to the Pre~ 
sident of the Wesleyan Conference. By 
Samuel Tucker, V.D.M. 

Mr. B. R. Green is preparing for publi- 
cation a Numismatic Chart, comprising a’ 
series of 350 Grecian Coins of Kings, ar- 
ranged in chronological order, from their 
earliest period to the beginning of the 4th 
century ; executed in outline on stone, the 
gold and bronze will be coloured. The 
object of the undertaking will be the eluci- 
dation of Grecian History through the me- 
dium of Coins. The selection will chiefly 
comprise the series of the Macedonian and 
Sicilian Kings, the various kingdoms of 
Asia-Minor, those of Egypt and Numidia, 
of Syria, Parthia, and Armenia. The work 
will be accompanied with descriptive letter- 
press, and dedicated by permission to the 
Earl of Aberdeen. 

An Inquiry into the popular notion of an 
Unoriginated, Infinite, and Eternal Pre- 
science, for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether that doctrine be supported by the 
dictates of reason and the writings of the 
Old and New Testaments. With a Pre- 
face, containing a Dialogue between the 
Author and one of his Readers. By the 
Rey. James Jones, 

The Last Autumn at a Favourite Resi- 
dence, with other Poems. By a Lady. 

A Universal Prayer, a Poem; Death; a 
Vision of Hell, and a Vision of Heaven. 
By Robert Montgomery, Author of ‘* The 
Omnipresence of the Deity.” 

We understand “ The Juvenile Forget 


320 


Me Not,”’ for the Year 1829, is in a state 
of considerable forwardness. It will contain 
a number of Engravings on Steel, and seve- 
tal exquisite Wood-euts. Its principal fea- 
ture of attraction in this department will 
be an Engraving by Thompson, from 
Behnes’ Bust of her Royal Highness the 
Princess Victoria. The literary portion of 
the volume is formed of the Contributions 
of Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. 
Hemans, the Author of “ Selwyn in 
Search of a Daughter,” James Montgo- 
mery, William and Mary Howitt, the Au- 
thor of “* My Early Days,’’ &c. Rev. Dr. 
Walsh, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Hofland, Ri- 
chard Howitt, Miss Jewsbury, the Author 
of “ Solitary Hours,’ Allan Cunning- 
ham, &c. 

We understand that “ The Amulet”’ for 
the year 1829 will be published early in 
Noyember, with attractions, both literary 
and pictorial, greatly exceeding either of its 
predecessors, and will contain articles from 
anumber of the most distinguished writers 
of the age, among whom are many who 
have not heretofore contributed either to 
this work, or to those of a similar character; 
that its illustrations will be of the highest 
order of art, both with reference to the pro- 
ductions of the painter and the engraver ; 
and that there will be several other improve- 
ments of a novel and important character. 

The Last of the Plantagenets, an Histori- 
cal Romance, chiefly illustrative of the pub- 
lic events and domestic manners of the ]5th 
century. 

The Musical Souvenir for 1829. This 
work, in which the first talent is combined, 
will afford in the most neat and finished 
style, a pocket volume of new Vocal and 
Instrumental Music, with a beautiful vig- 
nette title and frontispiece. 

Medical Essays on Fever, Inflammation, 
Rheumatism, Diseases of the Heart, &c. 
By Joseph Brown, M.D. of the Royal Col- 
lege of Physicians, of the Royal Medical 
Society of Edinburgh, and one of the Phy- 
Sicians to the Sunderland and Bishopwear- 
mouth Infirmary. 1 vol. 8vo. 


LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

The Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, writ- 
ten by Himself, and extracted from his Jour- 
nals. The American edition of his Life 
and Works. 18mo. 3s. 6d. boards. 

The Memoirs of the Life, Character, and 
Writings of the Rey. Matthew Henry. By 
J.B.Williams, Esq., F.S.A., with a portrait. 
l vol. 8vo. 8s. boards. 

Parriana; or, Notices of Rev. Samuel 
Parr, LL.D., collected from various sources, 
printed and manuscript. By E. H. Barker, 
Esq. 8vo. Vol. 1. 16s. 

The Second and concluding Volume of 
the Memoirs and Correspondence of the late 
Dr. Parr. By Rev. W. Field. &8vo. Ids. 
boards. 


List of New Works. 


[Serr. 


The Collected Works of the Rev. S.. 
Parr, LL.D., Prebendary of St. Paul’s, and 
Curate of Hatton, &c. The whole preceded 


by Memoirs of his Life and Writings. By. 


John Johnstone, M.D. 8 vols. 8vo. 71. 7s. 3 
large paper, 12]. 12s. boards. 

Transactions of the Society of the Anti- 
quaries of Scotland. Vol. III. Part I. 4to- 
16s. sewed. 

History of England. By a Clergyman. 
12mo. Vol. 1. 6s. boards. 

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL. 

The Second Volume of Researches into 
the Causes, Nature, and Treatment, of the 
more prevalent Diseases of India, and of 
Warm Climates generally. Illustrated with 
Cases, Post Mortem Examinations, and nu- 
merous cdloured Engrayings of Morbid 
Strictures.. By James Annesley, Esq., of 
the Madras Medical Establishment, late 
Surgeon to the Madras General Hospital, 
M.R.C.S. and M.R.A.S. Imperial 4to- 
7FLi7s: 

A Series of Observations on Strictures of 
the Urethra; with an Account of a New 
Method of Treatment, successfully adopted 
in cases of the most obstinate and aggra- 
vated form of that Complaint; illustrated 
by Cases and a Plate. By Rich. Anthony 


Stafford. 8vo. 6s. boards. 
Monrow on the Brain. Vol. 1. 8yo. 
12s. boards. t 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

Plain Advice to the Public to facilitate 
the Making of their own Wills; with 
Forms of Wills, simple and elaborate, adapt- 
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persons of all ranks, and containing almost 
every description of Bequest ; especially the 
various Modes of Settling Property for the 
sole Use and Benefit of Married Women 
for their Lives, with Powers of Appoint- 
ment to them by Deed or Will. By John 
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Executors and Administrators,” &c. &c. 
Second Edition, greatly Improved. 4s. 

A Popular Sketch of Electro-Magnetism 5 
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Parent Sciences, Electricity and Magnetism. 
By Francis Watkins. 8vo. 3s. boards. 

Conversations on Geology: with Embel- 
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The Picture of Birmingham; being a 
Concise Description of that Place, and most 
Complete Guide to Residents and Visitors. 
With a Plan and Twelve Views. 18mo. 
3s. boards. y 

Tales of the Affections; being Sketches 
from Real Life. 
7s. boards. 

Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. By 


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royal 4to. 101. 10s. boards. 
Mitchell on the Ergot of Rye. 
boards. 
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Vo- 
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The Motherless Family; or, Maternal 
Influence Displayed. By Esther Copley 


8vo. 6a. 


By Mrs. Caddick. 18mo. 


——— 


—_ Or 


1828.] . 


late Hewlett), author of “ Cottage Com- 
rts,” &c. 18mo. 1s. 

An Appendix to the First Volume of an 
Introduction to Practical Astronomy. By 
the Rey. W. Pearson, LL.D., F.R.S., 
Treasurer to the Astron. Soc. 4to. 10s. 6d. 
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Index Testaceologicus; or, a Catalogue 
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Historical Sketch of the Native Irish, 
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Guesses at Truth. By Two Brothers. 
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Marcella ; or, the Missionary Abroad and 
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On the Landscape Architecture of the 
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POETRY. 

The Baitle of Navarino, Malta, and 
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The Beauties of the British Poets ; with 
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Don Juan, complete. 2 vols. 12mo. 14s. ; 
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An Address to both Houses of Parlia- 
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Elementary Thoughts on the Principle 
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RELIGION, MORALS, &c. 

A Parallel View of the Four Gospels, 

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M.M, New Series.—Vor. VI. No, 33. 


List of New Works. 


321 


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An Exposure of Religious and Civil 
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Londonderry in 1689. Post 8yo. 6s, 

Travels in Italy, Sicily, and the Lipari 
Isles. By R. Duppa, LL.B. with illustra~ 
tive Wood-cuts. Post 8vo. 8s. boards. 

A Spinster’s Tour in France and Italy. 
12mo. 10s, Gd. 


7 ee 


ii n92 9 


[Sept. 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


— 


New Patents Sealed in August 1828. 

To Anton Bernhard, of Finsbuty-square, 
Middlesex, engineer, for a method, or prin- 
ciple, or apparatus, for raising water or 
other fluids—24th July ; 6 months. 

To Robert Wornum, of Wigmore-street, 
Cavendish-square, Middlesex, piano-forte- 
maker, for certain improvements on upright 
piano-fortes—24th July ; 2 months. 

To Joseph Clisild Daniell, of Lumphey 
Stoke, Bradford, Wilts, clothier, for cer- 
tain improvements applicable to the ma- 
nufacturing and preparing of woollen cloth 
—5th August ; 6 months: 

To John Lane Higgins, of Oxford-street, 
Middlesex, gentleman, fer certain improve- 
ments on wheel carriages—lith August ; 
6 months. 

To William Mencke, of Park-place, 
Peckham, Surrey, gentleman, for certain 
improvements in “preparing materials for, 
and in the making or manufacturing of 
Bricks—11th August; 6 months. 

To Lewis Roper Fitzmaurice, of Jamaica- 
place, Commercial-road, Middlesex, master 
in the royal navy, for improvements on 
ship and other pumps, which improvements 
are also applicable by certain alterations to 
turning lathes and other purposes—11th 
August; 6 months. © ‘ 

To William Grisenthwaite, of the town 
of Nottingham, Esq., for a new process for 
making sulphate of magnesia, commonly 
called epsom salts—11th August; 6 months. 

To Henry Maxwell, of No. 99, Pall 
Mall, Middlesex, spur-maker, for an im- 
provement in spring spur sockets—13th 
August ; 2 months. ' 

To Thomas Stirling, of the Commercial- 
road, Lambeth, Surrey, for certain improve- 


ments on filtering apparatus—16th August ; 
6 months. 

To Benjamin Matthew Payne, of the 
Strand, Middlesex, scale-maker, for certain 
improvements on weighing machines — 
18th August ; 6 months. 

To Edward Barnard, of Narlsworth, near 
Minchinhampton, Gloucester, clothier, for 
certain improvements in weaving and pre- 
paring cloth—198th August ; 6 months. 

To Philip Foxwell, clothier, William 
Clark, cloth-dresser, and Benjamin Clark, 
cloth-dresser, all of Dye-house mill, Min- 
chinhampton, Gloucester, for certain im- 
provements on machinery, for shearing, 
cropping, or cutting, and finishing woollen 
and other cloths and kerseymeres—I#th 
August ; 6 months. 

To William Sharp, of Manchester, Lan- 
caster, cloth-spinner, for certain improve- 
ments in machines for spinning, or roving, 
of cloth, silk, wool, or other fibrous sub- 
stances—19th August ; 6 months. 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in September 1814, expire in the present 
month of September 1828. 


8. J. Penny and J. Kendall, Lancaster, 
for making pill and other small boxes. 
- 21. W. Lister, Paddington, for improve- 
ments in a machine for separating corn or 
seeds from straw and chaff: 

— J. Taylor, Manchester, for improve- 
menis in a loom for weaving. fe 

— W. E. Sheffield, Somers-town, for 
improvemenis in manufacturing copper 
and other metallic substances. 

— J. Dobbs, Birmingham, for improve- 
menis in manufacturing machines for cut- 
ling and gathering in grain. 


BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 


MISS TOMLINS. 

Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins, daughter of 
Thomas Tomlins, Esq., a solicitor of good 
practice in the city of London, and well 
known in political circles at the close of the 
last century, was born on the 27th of Fe- 
bruary, 1763. Her vivacity and tenderness 
of disposition—distinguishing features, of 
her character—were fostered by the correct 
taste of an excellent mother. The poetical 
talent, which entitles her to notice here, 
manifested itself at an early age, in several 
“ Tributes of Affection,”’ published under 
that title, by her brother. a 

Without any particular advantages of si- 
tuation, she soon became acquainted with 
many persons of talent, of that period, who, 
through their intercourse with her father, 
professionally, were introduced to her so- 


ciety, and attracted by her intellectual su- 
periority. In the warm and generous feel- 
ings of youth, she, with many others, hailed 
the dawn, as it was then regarded, of a 
better and more refined age; and, subse- 
quently, she mourned the demolition of her 
hopes, by the mock champions of liberty, in 
numerous miscellaneous effusions, yet extant 
in the periodical publications of the time. 
Turning her attention to the composition of 
tales and noyels, she gave successively, and 
in most instances successfully, several vo- 
lumes to the press. The most popular of 
these performances was, “ The Victim of 
Fancy,”’ founded on the model of Goéthe’s 
“¢ Werther.’’ It evinced much of the pathos 
of the original, without the ‘objectionable 
tendency of its moral. Her original pro- 
ductions consist, further, of “ The Baroness 


1828.] 


D’Alunion ;”’ two other novels ; “ Connell 
and Mary,” a ballad, in Dr. Langhorne’s 
selection; and many fugitive pieces, con- 
tributed to nearly every respectable periodi- 
.cal work, from the year 1780 to the present 
time. Miss Tomlins was also the translator 
of the first History of Napoleon Buonaparte, 
that ever appeared in this country; part of 
the works of Anquetil, &c. 

In the noble spirit of devotion to a father, 
whose severe notions of duty led him to re- 
eeive the sacrifice only as a right, Miss 
Tomlins resigned the advantages attendant 
on beauty and talent. To educate his nu- 
merous family, and to perform the labours 
of his desk, she overcame the fascinations of 
literature; and, amidst the scoffs of the 
vulgar, and the high regards of the noble- 
minded, she actually superintended his pro- 
fessional concerns for scven years previously 
to his death, in 1815. Though anxiously 
and almost incessantly employed, her poeti- 
cal talent was occasionally exercised in the 
production of slight pieces, contributed to 
the periodical press. On her father’s de- 
cease, she retired to an isolated cottage, 
which, for forty years, had been in the occu- 
pation of the family ; and there, in the so- 
ciety of her revered mother and three be- 
loved sisters, she continued to pursue “ the 
peaceful tenor of her way.”’ At the time 
of her premature death, she is understood to 
have had a poem of considerable length in 
preparation. On the 7th of August, Miss 
Tomlins had the misfortune to be thrown 
froma pony. By this accident she received 
bruises, which, though not perceptibly mor- 
tal, proved unexpectedly so on the following 
morning, when, in an apparent fainting fit, 
she expired without a struggle, in the 66th 
year of her age. 


CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON. 

The family of Clapperton is ancient, and 
not without celebrity, in the north of Scot- 
land. The namc has been distinguished in 
the church and in the field; and it has ac- 
quired new fame by the dauntless and perse- 
vering spirit of enterprise with which, at the 
sacrifice of his valuable life, the subject of 
this brief and inadequate notice has pursued 
the track of African discovery. A Bishop 
Clapperton lies buried at Inch Colm, in the 
Frith of Forth; and another individual of 
the name is remembered, in the history of 

Sweden, as a field-marshal in the army. At 
a later date, the family resided in Teviot- 
dale, on the border of Scotland. The grand- 
father of Captain Clapperton studied medi- 
cine in Edinburgh, and at Paris—was an 
antiquary of some note—and collected coins, 
songs, genealogies, &c., illustrating the his- 
tory of the border countries. Having mar- 
ried a cousin of Archibald Campbell, of 
Glenlyon, Perthshire, he settled as a phy- 
sician at Lochmaben, in Dumfrieshire. His 
eliest. son, George, the father of Captain 
Clapperton, was a surgeon in Annan. Hugh 
Clappexton, the African traveller, was the 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


323 


youngest of six sons, by his father’s first 
marriage. The boy’s education was not 
classical ; but, when he could read and write, 
he was placed under the care of a Mr. Bryce 
Downie, under whom he acquired a know- 
ledge of practical mathematics, including 
navigation, trigonometry, &c. 

Born in the year 1788, Hugh Clapperton, 
at an early age, served in different trading 
vessels. In 1806, he went out to Gibraltar 
in a navy transport. There, with some of 
his shipmates, he got on board the Re- 
nommé frigate, commanded by Sir Thomas 
Livingstone. Discovering that his uncle 
was serving as Captain of Royal Marines, 
on board of his Majesty’s ship Saturn, then 
also at Gibraltar, he fortunately succeeded in 
obtaining a midshipman’s berth in the 
same ship. After the Saturn had been paid 
off on her return to England, the youth was 
some time on board his Majesty’s ship St. 
Domingo, with Captain King. Unable to 
procure his discharge in time to sail to the 
East Indies with Captain Briggs, in the 
Clorinde, he followed that gentleman in 
another vessel as a passenger. In a gale of 
wind he risked his life in saving some of the 
crew—a circumstance which strongly recom- 
mended him to notice on his arrival in India. 
There he joined Captain Briggs. 

In 1813, after his return to England, 
Clapperton, and a few other clever midship- 
men, were ordered to Portsmouth dock-yard, 
to receive instructiens in the cutlass exer- 
cise from the celebrated fencing-master, 
Angelo. These young men, when perfect 
in the art, were distributed as teachers 
throughout the fleet. Clapperton’s class- 
room was the deck of the Asia, the flag-ship 
of Vice-Admiral, Sir Alexander Cochrane, 
then lying at Spithead, where she remained 
till the end of January, 1814. Clapperton 
then accompanied Sir Alexander, who was 
appointed to the command of our naval 
force on the coast of North America. His 
manly form—he stood at least six feet high, 
had great breadth of chest, and expansion of 
shoulders—fixed the attention, and tended 
to improve the patriotic spirit of the crew. 
He was an excellent table-companion ; he 
painted scenes for the ship’s theatricals, 
sketched views, drew caricatures, and was 
a universal favourite. The lakes of Canada, 
however, were on the point of becoming the 
scene of important naval operations. Pant- 
ing for distinction, Clepperton, in conse- 
quence, procured a passage to Halifax— 
bade adieu to the flag-ship—proceeded to 
Upper Canada—was made lieutenant—and 
appointed to the Confiance, schooner ; a ves- 
sel which, under his command, soon became 
as proverbial for its excellence, as it had pre- 
viously been for its laxity of discipline. 

In 1817, the British flotilla on the lakes 
having been dismantled, Lieutenant Clap- 
perton returned to Nngland—was placed on 
half-pay—and retired to Lochmaben, where 
he remained three years. ‘Thence he re- 
moved to Edinburgh, and became acquainted 

27T 2 


324 


with Dr: Oudney, by whom his attention 
was first directed towards discoveries in 

' Africa. Dr. Oudney was appointed, in 1821, 
Consul to Bornou. He took Captain Clap- 
perton with him, asa friend and companion. 
As it was intended that researches should be 
made from Bornou, as the fixed residence 
of the Consul, to the east and to the west, 
Lieutenant (now Major) Denham was ad- 
ded to the expedition. Dr. Oudney, in an 
early stage of the journey, caught a severe 
cold, which fell on his lungs, and he died on 
the 12th of January, 1824. Captain Clap- 
perton attended him with fraternal affection 
in his dying moments ; and he saw his re- 
mains decently interred, having himself 
read over them the funeral service of the 
church of England. 

Captain Clapperton and Major Denham 
returned to their native country, and the 
narratives of their expedition were published 
in a handsome quarto volume, which, we 
doubt not, has met the perusal of nearly all 
our readers. To accompany the travellers 
is not within our limits. 

At Sackatoo, the capital of the Fetatah 
empire, Bello, the sultan, was exceedingly 
anxious for the establishment of a friendly 
intercourse with England, and for the ap~ 
pointment of a British consul and physician. 
On the latter point, he addressed a letter to 
the King of England. A reply to the re- 
quest was entrusted to Captain Clapperton, 
who, with his friend, Dr. Dickson, Captain 
Pearce, of the navy, and Dr. Morrison, a 
surgeon in the navy and a skilful naturalist, 
was despatched to Sackatoo. Captain Pearce, 
Dr. Morrison, and an English servant died 
from the effects of the climate. Dr. Dickson 
was sent in another direction; but he has 
not been heard of since the month of No- 
vember, 1825, when he was at Khydah, on 
his way to Dahomey, in company with M. 
De Sousa, a Portuguese, who had lived for 
many years at that court. 

Captain Clapperton died at Sackatoo, on 
the 13th of April, 1827. He had been de- 
tained five months in that capital; the Sul- 
tan Bello not permitting him to proceed, on 
account of his war with Bornou. Hoping to 
obtain leave to go to Timbuctoo, he had 
lived in a small circular clay hut, belonging 
to the sultan’s brother. He was attacked 
with dysentery: in the latter stages of the 
disease, he declined rapidly, and became 
much emaciated. Lander, his faithful ser- 
vant, who, after his death, got permission to 
return to England, states that, two days be- 
fore Captain Clapperton died, he requested 
to be shaved, as he was too weak tosit up. 
After the operation, he asked for a looking. 
glass, remarked that he was ‘‘ doing better,”’ 
and should certainly “get over it.”” The 
morning on which he died, he breathed 
loud, became restless, and shortly after- 
wards expired in Lander’s arms. His re- 
mains were buried by him, at Jungali, a 
village five miles south-cast from Sackatoo. 
The corpse was conveyed by a camel, and 


Buwgraphical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Serr. 


the place of interment was marked by a 
small square house of clay, erected by Lan- 
der, who, with five slaves, followed his 
master to the graye. 

Lander, after encountering many difficul- 
ties and dangers, arrived in England early 
in the spring of the present year; having 
contrived to conceal a watch of his late 
master’s, which had been originally meant 
to be presented by Captain Clapperton to 
Bello, on his taking leave of that prince. 

Major Denham, should he have the good 
fortune to return safe, will be the only sur- 
viving officer of the three expeditions sent 
out by government, since the year 1821, for 
penetrating the interior of Africa: viz. one 
to Bornou, by Oudney, Denham, and Clap- 
perton; one to Timbuctoo, by Major Laing; 
and one to Sackatoo, by Clapperton and his 
companions. A Narrative of Captain Clap- 
perton’s Second Journey is now in the press; 
with the Adventures of Lander, his servant, 
from April, 1827, to January, 1828. 


M. CHORIS. 

M. Choris, painter of natural history, was 
born in Yekaténnoslaff, in Lesser Russia, 
March 22, 1795, of German parents. He 
commenced his studies at the gymnasium of 
Kharkoff, where he early displayed a talent 
for design and painting: he, besides, ac- 
quired an astonishing facility for portrait 
painting ; and his taste for voyages gained 
upon him an influence which he never lost 
sight of, in consequence of a disposition 
which he had for delineating objects of na- 
tural history. This talent procured him the 
advantage of accompanying that celebrated 
botanist, the Marshal Baron Ribertstein, in 
his travels to Mount Caucasus, in which he 
designed the plants which ornament the 
Flora Caucasiana. In 1814, he became a 
member of the Academy of Fine Arts at 
Petersburgh, and the same year he was 
chosen by Count Romanzoff to accompany 
the expedition round the world, on board 
the Rurik, commanded by Captain Otto 
Kotzebue, son of the celebrated dramatic 
writer. In this voyage, he delineated with 
the greatest skill every thing that could give 
an exact idea of the savages of America and 
the Grand Pacific Ocean ; and after passing 
four years in this voyage, he arrived in 
France in 1819, where he was warmly re- 
ceived by the most distinguished savans of 
the capital. It was by their advice he 
learned the art of lithography, on purpose 
that his designs should not lose any of their 
originality. He there published his “ Pic- 
turesque Voyage round the World,” with 
portraits of the savages of America, Asia, 
Africa, and the islands of the Pacific, &c.3 _ 
and numerous other plates descriptive of their 
arms, habiliments, ornaments, utensils, ca- 
noes, boats, houses, dances and amuse- 
ments, music and musical instruments, 
landscapes and maritime views; a variety of 
objects relative to natural history, mamife- 
rous and ornithologic; accompanied with 


1828.] 


descriptions, by Baron Cuvier, and M. Cha- 
misso; with examples and observations on 
craniology, by Dr. Gall; in twenty-two 
livraisons, in folio—which was finally com- 
pleted in 1823. It is generally acknow- 
ledged, that no other traveller has so faith- 
fully expressed the characteristic physiology 
of the natives of the South Sea Islands ; for, 
during the eighteenth century, it was too 
much the mania to represent these children 
of nature (particularly of the island of Ota- 
heite) as so many Apollos, Venuses, Dianas, 
&c. &c. His portrait of the King Tameama 
is alone distinguished among the inhabitants 
of these isles for a character of intelligence, 
finesse, and calm; which is the more to be 
wondered at, as this prince in his youth had 
been remarked for almost ungovernable rage 
and ferocity ; and, in regarding his physi- 
ognomy with the greatest attention, one is 
convinced that this extraordinary man had 
first learned the consummate art of govern- 
ing himself before that of governing his sub- 
jects. In 1826, M. Choris published his 
“€ Views and Landscapes in the Equinoxial 
Regions, collected in his Voyage round the 
World.” It was a supplement to the 
former work, and consisted of twenty-four 
plates, in folio ; in which his principal object 
was to characterize the physiognomy of 
plants and vegetables in the different coun- 
tries he had passed through. 

In 1827 M. Chorisleft France for the pur- 
pose of exploring the vast regions of South 
America; and, after having successively vi- 
sited most of the islands belonging to the 
Archipelago of the Antilles, and Cuba, and 
New Orleans, he finally landed on the coast 
of Mexico, where he unfortunately became 
a victim to the wretched police that governs 
that country. The following extract of a let- 
ter, written by Messrs. Adone et Plante- 
vigne, of Vera Cruz, dated April 5, 1828, to 
Messrs. Eyriés, of Havre-de-Grace, relate 
the melancholy catastrophe :— 

“MM. Choris arrived here the 19th of 
March last, on board the Eclipse, of New 
Orleans: we received him with every atten- 
tion. Two days after his arrival, he left us 
for Jalapa, with a letter to our correspondent 
there. The day after his departure we learnt, 
with the most profound affliction, that M. 
Choris and an English gentleman, his fellow- 
companion, had been assassinated by four 
robbers. M. Choris was killed by a musket- 
ball, and by a sabre-cut; Mr. Henderson 

the Englishman) received a ball in the 

i and another in the lungs. This 
afflicting event took place between Puente- 
Nationel and Plan-del-Rio. Notwithstand- 
ing his wounds, Mr. Henderson continued 
his route to Jalmpa; and, at Plan-del-Rio, 
informed the mayor of the circumstances, 
begging him to make every research for M. 
Choris, as he was then ignorant whether he 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


325 


was alive or dead. Nor was it till the next 
day the mayor was enabled to find his body _ 
in the woods, as the robbers had carefully 
covered it with the branches of trees. It was 
brought to Plan-del-Rio, where it has been 
interred.” 

The loss of M. Choris will not be felt 
solely by his friends and acquaintance ; their 
affliction will be partaken by every friend to 
science, who naturally expected much from 
him*—when it is considered that, at twenty 
years of age, he had been selected to accom- 
pany M. Kotzebue in his voyage round the 
world, and had given the public the relation 
of that voyage, and that he had since em- 
ployed several years in maturing his talents, 
under Messrs. Regnault and Gerard, solely 
for the purpose of exploring and describing 
that America in which he found such an 
unforeseen and melancholy end ! 


LORD FORESTER. 

Cecil Weld Forester, Lord Forester, of 
Willey Park, Shropshire, so created on the 
17th of July 1821, was the descendant of an 
ancient and much-respected family. Sir 
William Forester, of Dothill, Knight, his 
lordship’s great grandfather, born in the 
year 1665, married Lady Mary Cecil, 
daughter of James, third earl of Salisbury, 
by his countess, Margaret Manners, fifth 
daughter of John, eighth earl of Rutland. 
It was through an intermarriage with the 
family of Weld, of Willey Park, that his 
lordship derived the bulk of his property in 
Shropshire. He married, in the year 1800, 
the Right Honourable Lady Katharine 
Mary Manners, daughter of the late, and 
sister of the present, Duke of Rutland ; with 
whose family that of the Foresters appears 
to have been long connected. His lordship 
was in possession of a grant made by Henry 
the Eighth to one of his ancestors—John 
Forester, of Watling-street, in the county 
of Salop, Esq.—to wear his hat in the pre- 
sence of the king. He was created a peer 
on the coronation of his present majesty, 
with whose personal friendship he was ho- 
noured. His lordship had a family of six 
sons and five daughters. After great and 
protracted suffering, from the gout, he ex- 
pired, at his house in Belgrave-square, Pim- 
lico, on the 23d of May. His lordship is 
succeeded in his title and estates by his 
eldest son, John George, by whose acces- 
sion to the peerage a vacancy was caused 
in the representation of the borough of 
Wenlock, for which he was one of the 
members. 


* M. Choris had announced, but which was un- 
fortunately never published,a ‘* Recuvil de Tétes 
et Costumes des Hahitans de la Russie, avec 
des Vues du Mont Caucase et de ses Envi- 
rons.” It was intended to consist of fifty plates. 
We trust this work will some day see the light, 


[ 326 ] [Serr. 


MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 


On the 22d instant, we had a most remarkably heavy storm of wind and rain, indeed 
severe enough to warrant the appellation of an English tornado. The rain descended in 
torrents, the puddles of water bubbling like a boiling pot. This storm, from its violence, 
was, in course, of short duration, and partial throughout the country. It has been followed 
by two beautiful drying harvest days, worth a king’s ransom ; and we may hope will prove 
the efficient cause of dispersing the matériel of rain and storm, and of inducing the atmos- 
pheric balance of a long series of fine weather. ‘This speculation, however rational, is yet 
in the style of ancient weather-wisdom ; which, to the bitter disappointment, and heavy loss 
of us farmers, has, throughout the past and passing season, proved mere fallacy and folly. 
We have, in a former report, excepted the summer of 1799, which will never be out of our 
recollection: with that exception, the present harvest has been the most embarrassing and 
expensive of all the very many that we have known. The difficulty, more especially, in 
distant northern counties, has extended equally to latter haysel, as to the corn harvest. 
The flattering sunshiné of two or three hours, has encouraged and urged the anxious 
farmer to break the cocks of hay, and prepare for carrying to the stack ; when suddenly, 
momentarily, the flood-gates of heaven would open, and a second deluge descend, drenching 
the supposed thorough-made hay, and putting an immediate stop to the expected pleasing 
labour of securing it. Then came the disheartening task of once more spreading and dry- 
ing; and when dry, the farmer’s next comfort was to see his hay dispersed, and blown 
half over his farm, the sport of furious winds! Too many hundreds of farmers know this 
to be no exaggeration ; yet is this nothing, the mere tender mercy of fortune, put in com- 
parison of flooded lands and general havock, destruction, and ruin. 

The corn harvest, some time finished in the southern counties, is now at its height in 
the northern and in Scotland; in the south, considerable breadths of beans haye been cut, 
and should the weather improve, this latter and finishing business of the season, will make 
some amends for its former inauspicious course. The new wheats, our grand national 
object, will fill the bushel ; will have more bulk than weight, and will tell far more for 
quantity than quality. In fact, really fine and dry wheat, from its extreme scarcity, will 
command almost any price. We do not refer to wheat that has been sodden with repeated 
rains in the sheaf, and afterwards bleached and sun-dried ; they who grind for the bakers, 
know too well the difference. Full three-fourths of the crop of wheat has received damage, 
litile or much, from a continually varying temperature, and from excess of humidity ; and 
good old dry wheats, without the admixture with which the new will not grind, must be 
indispensable, even in the spring. With some favourable exceptions, the continental 
harvests have been nearly as unfavourable as our own. It is curious that, in the rainy 
climate of Ireland, the farmers are reported to have been more fortunate; and, as a proof 
of the actual ascendancy of that hitherto degraded and impoverished country, the rural 
labourers have, during the present year, found more employment and better pay at home, 
than in any former season within memory. 

The golden crop, conjoining quantity and quality, and including the whole island, will 
probably fall short of a fair average, by four bushels per acre ; a loss which must chiefly fall 
upon the consumer. The late advance in the price of wheat, may be stated at about nine 
shillings per quarter. In addition to the difficulties of the present harvest, labourers in some 
parts were scarce ; chiefly by the absence of the Irish, comparatively few of whom have 
arrived during the present season. This circumstance, together with a blameable tardiness 
in too many parts, kept much wheat abroad which might have been safe in the stack. When 
once wheat is ripe, in a catching season, it is very hazardous policy to aim at carrying it 
perfectly dry. The fortunate cultivators of good sound, dry, and well sheltered lands, where 
the corn has not been much beaten down, will make a good hand of the present, to others, 
unfortunate season. Wheat, in general, had caught a blight previous to the flowering season, 
before the completion of which, the rains set in. There will assuredly be much black or 
smutied wheat, which is always attended with this ludicrous circumstance—our ultra and 
infallible seed steepers will never allow that they have any smut, restricting their mishaps, 
if any, to mildew, and cautiously avoiding all mention of the monosyllable. Considering the 
quantity of corn beat out and strewed about the land, the harvest of shack for animals, and 
of gleaning, must indeed be a plentiful one. 

Barley, oats, beans, peas, tares, are, at any rate, in the first instance, great in straw, and 
will, doubtless, be found considerably so in quantity of produce ; but with the drawback of 
great injury to the barley particularly, in point of quality. Of that grain, there will be 
plenty of the discoloured, the green, the sprouted, and the mow-burnt ; and old malts are 
likely to be in equal request with old wheats ; all root crops are large, but the turnips are 
too forward, and full of moisture, to stand a rigorous winter (which may well be expected) 5 
and those cattle feeders will act the wisest part, who draw and store the largest portion of 
them. It has been a bad season for saving either turnip or grass seeds. The naked fallows 


ror, 


1828.] Monthly Agricultral Report. 327 


are ina backward and foul state. In the fruit districts, there is an unusual quantity of 
wind-fall apples, and the general quality of that most useful fruit is defective. Sheep, and 
stores generally, indeed both lean and fat stock are in demand, at good prices. Pigs hold 
their price, and it is said that species of stock is short in the country. Horses are of more 
ready sale than usual at this season, and the best at high prices ; importations, for draught, 
continue. A few weeks since, the rot, in sheep, was supposed to have made considerable 
progress, in the fens and low lands, but we have had no late report thereon. 


Smithfield. — Beef, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d.—Mutton, 3s. 8d. to 4s. 8d.—Veal, 4s. 8d. to 5s. 6d. 
—Lamb, 4s. 6d. to 5s. 6d.—Pork, 4s. 8d. to 6s.—Raw fat, 2s. 4d. 


Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 60s. to 84s.—Barley, 29s. to 40s.—Oats, 21s. to 33s. 
—Bread, London loaf of 4 Ib. 10d. — Hay 70s. to 105s.—Clover ditto, 80s. to 120s.— 
Straw 30s. to 42s. 


Coals in the Pool, 29s. 9d. to 37s. 3d. per chaldron. 
Middlesex, 22d August, 1628. 


ess 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 


_ Sugar.—The demand for Muscavadoes has continued general and extensive all the 
week : the prices are gradually improving. At the close of the market this afternoon the 
estimated sales for the week, were 4,500 hogsheads and tierces. The transactions in 
refined goods have not been on such an extensive scale as during the preceding week ; yet 
still the market is firm, and there is a steady demand. We cannot state any alteration in 
prices. 


Coffee.—The public sales this week (plantation coffee) went off heavily, but without 
variation in the prices ; scarcely any Foreign description have lately been sold. 


Rum, Brandy, and Hoilands.—The demand for Rum continues, and the late prices 
are fully maintained : the sales of this week consists of Jamaicas, 34 over proof, 4s. 3d. 
per gallon; 30 ditto 4s. Od.; 27 ditto 3s. 9d., and scme Leewards 7 ditto 2s. 4d. per 
gallon.’ Brandy is held with much firmness; but there are few transactions to report. 
Geneva is unvaried. 


- Hemp, Flax, and Tallow.—The demand for tallow continues improving $ an average of 
6d. to 9d. per cwt. has again taken place ; and the market is firm at the improved prices. 
Hemp is rather heavy here. Flax is unvaried. 


Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 3.—Rotterdam, 12. 3.—Antwerp, 
12. 34.—Hamburg, 13. 14.—Allona, 13. 14}.—Paris, 25. 35.—Bordeaux, 25. 65. — 
Frankfort, 1514. —Petersburgh, 10.—Vienna, 10. 3.—Trieste, 10. 3—Madrid, 36.— 
Cadiz, 364.—Bilboa, 36.— Barcelona, 354.—Seville, 351.—Gibraltar, 46. — Leghorn, 18: 
—Genoa, 25. 40.—Venice, 46.—Naples, 374.—Palermo, 11834.—Lisbon, 45.—Oporto, 
46}3.—Rio Janeiro, 203/.—Bahia, 31/,—Dublin, 17 4.—Cork, 173. 


Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold in Coin, -£0. 0s. 0d.—In Bars, £3. 17s. 6d.—New 
Doubloons, £0. 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 94d.—Silver in Bars, standard, £0. 0s. Od. 


Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
Wo re, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill.—Birmingham Canat, 292/.—Coven- 
try, 1,080/.—ENesmere and Chester, 106/.—Grand Junction, 3067.—Kennet and Avon, 
2931.—Leeds and Liverpool, 407/.—Oxford, 700/.—Regent’s, 261/.—Trent and Mersey, 
G sh.), 805/.— Warwick and Birmingham, 260/.—London Docks (Stock), 87 j2.—West 
India (Stock), 215/.—East London Warrer Works, 117/.—Grand Junction, 561.— 
West Middlesex, 66/.—Alliance British and Foreign INsuRANCE, 941.—Globe, 159/.— 
Guardian, 204/.—Hope Life, 54/.—Imperial Fire, 100/.—Gas-Liant Westminster Char- 
tered Company, 534/.—City, 0/.—British, 8 dis. —Leeds, 195/. 


— 328 J 


(Serr. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 


Announced from the 23d of July to the 23d of August 1828; extracted from the 
London Gazette. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


W. Nailett, Northumberland-street, 
bone, bill-broker 

J. Buckmaster, and W. Buckmaster, Old Bond- 
street, tailors 

J. Spencer, Royton, Lancashire, cotton-spinner 

G. Holbrook, Bristol, plane-maker 

M. W. M’Laughlan, Manchester, publican 

J. Hobbs, Gloucester, corn-dealer 

T. Pike, Paddington-street, stone-mason 

J. Powell, Bishopsgate-street, grocer 

E. Chimley, Nottingham, miller 

S.C. Higgins, Gloucester, upholsterer 

S. Beswick, Kennington, bricklayer 

C, Hobson, Leeds, publican 

Whiteley, R. Salford, Lancashire, grocer. 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 55.] 


Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 


Mary-le- 


Adamson, S. and G. Earnshaw, Thurston, York, 
corn- dealer. [Preston, Tokenhouse - yard ; 
Pickard, Wakefield 

Aston, W. Toll-end and Coseley Iron .Works, 
Salford, iron-master, [Alexander and Son, 
Carey-street ; Corrie, Birmingham 

Abraham, R. New Bond-street, picture-dealer. 

Vallance, Earl-street 

Adams, J. T. P. Brighton, wine-merchant. [Hyde, 
Ely-place 

Briggs, J. Tintern-abbey, iron-master. ({ White, 
Lincolo’s-inn; Eyans, Chepstow; M’Donnel 
and Mostyn, Risk 

Barlow, J. Gainsborough, grocer. 
Leach, Warnford-conrt, 
Spurr, Gainsborough 

Braithwaite, T. Kegworth, Leicester, wine-mer- 
chant. [Long and Co., Gray’s-inn; Snelson, 
Castle Donnington 

Brown, H. Old London-street, malt-factor. [Be- 
verley, Temple 

Beaman, FE. Winnington, Cheshire, cheese-factor, 
[Cole, Serjeant’s-inn ; Saxon, Norwich 

Bowen, W.S. St. Albans, surgeon. [Alexander 
and Son, Carey-street 

Battey, R. Norwich, merchant. 
inn; Nash, Norwich 

Clark, T. Calthwaite, Cumberland, cattle-dealer. 
Beery and Gray, Staple-inn ; Dixon, Nor- 

one, Penrith 
- Cleworth, R. Westleigh, Lancashire, cotton-spin- 
ner. [Adlington and Co., Bedford-row ; Gas- 
kell, Wigan 

Cunningham, C. Bryanstone-street, money-scri- 
vener, [Wills, Ely-place 

Cox, C. St. Martin's-lane, tailor. 
Basinghall street 

Collins, 'T, Avebury-street, Hoxton, victualler. 
[Norton, New-street, Bishopsgate 

Clarke, S. Barlborough, Derby, grocer. [Battye 
and Co.,Chancery-lane; Dixon, Sheffield 

Cayme, R.Yeovil,socking-manufacturer. [ Darke, 
Red-lion-square ; Terrell and Son, Exeter 

Clively, E. Horsham, woollen-draper. [Warne 
and Son, Leadenhall-street 

Crofton, P. Cromer-street, upholsterer. [Nias, 
Prince'’s-street, Bank 

Edgar, R. Hart-street, Crutched-friars, wine- 
merchant. [Osbaldeston and Murray, London- 
street, Fenchurch-street 

Evans, D. Mincing-lane, broker. [Kirkman and 
Co., Cannon-street 

Fowler, D. Euston- square and Camberwell, 
builder, [Sharpe and Field, Bread-street 


(Spurr and 
Throgmorton-street ; 


[Aastin, Gray’ss 


[ Tanner, New 


Ford G. Wells-street, jeweller. [Norton, Jewin- 
street 

Fox, R. Coningsby, Lincoln, grocer. [Sharpe and 
Field, Bread-street 

Harris, J. Gracechurch-street, auctioneer. [Ma- 
hew, Chancery-lane 

Hopkinson, J. Loughborough, liquor-merehant. 
(Woolston, Furnival’s-inn; Toone, Loughbo- 
rough 

Horrccke, G. and R. Martin, Ardwick, Manches- 
ter, dyers. [Potter, Manchester; Milne and 
Parry, Temple 

Humbert, D.J. Foley-street, coal-merchant, [Con- 
stable and Kirk, Symond’s-inn 

Inns, S. Toweester, ironmonger. [Holme and 
Co., New-inn ; Barleet, Birmingham 

Jones, B. Tipton, Stafford, cordwainer, [Col- 
lins, Great-knight Rider-street; Baylis, Kid- 
derminster 

Jenns, G. James-street, Oxford-streef, coach- 
ironmonger. [Hunt, Craven-street 

Jacques, J. B. Bristol, biscuit-baker. [Langley, 
Bristol ; Rosser and Son, Gray’s-inn-place 

Jay, W. Cheltenham, architect. .[White, Lin- 
coln’s-inn ; Goodwin, Cheltenham 

Leach, H. S. Wimbledon, baker. [Binns, Cle- 
ment’s-inn 

Lilley, R, Mile-end-road, victualler. [Argill and 
Maddison, Whitechapel-road 

Moore, J. Macclesfield, silk-manufacturer. [Hard- 
ing and Arlett, Gray’s-inn 

Morris, L. Bristol, tobaecconist. [Smith and 
Bhckeried, Red-lion-square ; Franklyn, Bris- 
to 

Manwaring, W. Birmingham, surgeon. [Adling. 
ton and Co., Bedford-row ; Claye and Thomp- 
son, Manchester 

Neilson, A. Ashford, Kent, draper. [Perkins 
and Co., Gray’s-inu ; Lewtas, Manchester 

Orchard, J. Wilmington-square, money-scrivener- 
[Swan, Doctor’s Commons 

Parkinson, J. Louth, grocer, [Edmunds, Exche- 
quer-office ; Lucas, Louth 

Potter, T. H. and W. Gardner, Manchester, en- 
gravers and calico-printers. [Milne and Parry, 
London; Kay and Darbishine, Manchester 

Perryman, W. Windsor, stationer. [Watson and 
Son, Bouverie-street 

Quick, J. and F. 1. Chown, Stonehouse, Devon. 
[Brutton and Clipperton, New Bond-street ; 
Brutton, Exeter 

Salmon, J. Stoke’s-bottom, Somerset, victualler, 
[Holme andCo., New-inn; Busi and Prideaux, 
Bristol 

Smith, S. Northleach, Gloucester, victualler. 
[Vizard and Blower, Lincoln’s-inn-fields; Pruen 
and Co., Cheltenham 

Smith, B. Birmingham, steel-toy-maker, [Nor- 
ton and Chaplin, Gray’s-inn; Wills, Birming- 
ham ‘ 

Street, S. Liverpool, tailor. [Norris and Co., 
John-street, Bedford-row ; Sileoek, Liverpool 

Thompson, J. New York, America, merchant. 
[Adlington and Co., Bedford-row; Radcliffe 
and Dunean, Liverpool 

Tuck, G. Great Yarmouth, shipwright. [Swain 
and Co., Frederick-place ; Palmer, Yarmouth 

Waldener, J. O. Air-street, victualler, [Vander- 
com and Co., Bush-lane ~ . 

Webb, J. Little Warner-street, cheesemonger. 
(Church, Great James-street 

White, J. Sheffield, table-knife-manufacturer. 
{Dunean, Gray’s-inn; Broombead, Sheffield 

White, T. Manchester, hotel-keeper. [Wood, 
Manchester. 


1828] 


[ 329 J 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


 Rey..S. J. I. Lockhart, to the Cure of Binsted 
and Kingsley, Hauts,—Rey. F. Gottwaltz, to the 
Viearage of Coughton, Warwick.—Rey. H. E. 
Head, to the Rectory of Feniton, Devon.—Rey. 
E. G. Monk, to the Vicarage of Newport, Essex. 
—Rey. T. Corser, to the Vicarage of Norton by 
Dayentry Northampton.—Rey. J. Gordon, to the 
Precentership of Devon Cathedral, and Rectory 
ofsLoughlin Island, vacant by the promotion of 
Rey. J. Alexander, to the Parish of Kellucan, 
Meath.—Rey. B. Scott, to the Vicarage of Prior’s 
Salford and Bidford, Warwick.—Rey. H.C. \; il- 
son, to the Vicarage of Tunstall.—Rey. C. H. 
Hodgson, to the Chaplaincy of the County Gaul, 
Wilts.—Rey. J. L. Crosbie, to be Chaplain to 
H. R. Duke of Cumberland.—Rey. J. Maule, to 
be a Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral.—Rev. A, 
Grenfell, to the Endowed Chapel of Torquay, 
Deyon.—Reyvy. G. F. Arthur, to the Chapel of Pen- 
nycross, Deyon.—Rev. J. Turner, to the Vicarage 
of Hennock, Devon.—Reyv. H. Cholmeley, to the 
Rectory of Troston, Suffolk.—Rev. Dr. Hunt, to 
be Master of St. John’s Hospital, Bedford.—Rev. 
F. Custance, to be Evening Lecturer of St. Mary, 
Worcester.— Rey. M. Dillon, to be Morning 


Preacher to the Asylum, Westminster.—Right 
Rey. Dr. W. Howley, to be Archbishop of Canter- 
bury.—Right Rev. Dr. Blomfield, to be Bishop 
of London.—Rey, R. Messiter, to the Rectory of 
Cerendale Marsh, Dorset.—Rey. H. Steyens, to 
the Vicarage of Buckland, Berks.—Rey. H. Pruen, 
to the Rectory of Child’s Wickham, Gloucester.— 
Rey. W. Williamson, to be Head Master of West- 
minster School.—Rey. R. B. Radcliffe, to the 
Vicarage of Ashby-de-la Zouch, Leicester.—Rey. 
W. Wasse, to the Vicarage of Preston, with Hedon 
annexed, Yorkshire.—Rey. J. Barker, to the Vi- 
carage of Longstock, Hants.—Rev. R. Battersby, 
to be Chaplain to Lord Skelmersdale.—Rey. M. 
Jones, to the Consolidated Livings of St. Marga- 
ret’s and Michael Church, Hereford.—Reyv. J. 
Bush, to the Rectory of South Luffenham, Rut- 
land.—Rey. S. Barker, to be Chaplain tothe Duke 
of Cambridge.—Rey. W. C, Cruttenden, to the 
Prime Curacy of Macclesfield.—Rey. T. Steele, 
Domestic Chaplain to Earl Glasgow.—Rev. G. 
M. Jukes, to be Minister of the English Protestant 
Chapel at Havre-de-Grace.—Rey. C. Cobley, to 
the Vicarage of Winscombe, Somerset. 


Se 


POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS. 


Robert Adair, Esq., sworn of H.M.’s Privy 
Council.—Spencer Perceval, Esq., to be Clerk of 


the Ordnance.—Lord Chesterfield, to be a Lord 
of the Bedchamber. 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


CHRONOLOGY. 

July 23.—A numerous meeting of persons in- 
terested in the silk trade, was held at the London 
Tavern, when it was stated, that the ministry had 
consented to institute an inquiry respecting the 
state of that manufacture ; and it was agreed to 
appoint a committee to communicate with minis- 
ters on that subject. 

24.—House of Lords confirmed the judgment of 
the Court of King’s Bench, that lands formed by 
the retreating of the sea, are the property of the 
owners of the adjoining lands, and not of the 
crown. ad 

28.—Parliament prorogued by commission, after 
the Lord Chancellor had delivered the king’s 
speech. 

' 29.—Earl Amherst, late Governor-General of 
India, arrived at Portsmouth. 

August 4.—Upon the Lord Chancellor’s threat- 
ening totake Mr. Bruce (a suitor) into custody, 
he used the following remarkable answer. “ There 
ie nothing your Lordship can do that I care one 
farthing for. Iam in the pursuit of justice, and 
deliverance from the most grievous oppression and 
injustice inflicted upon myself and family for the 
last fifteen years, and nothing shall deter me in 
the continuance of that pursuit!” 


M.M. New Series.x—Vou.VI. No. 33. 


Aug. 4—London Mechanical Institution visited 
by M. Lemaine, Professor of Practical Geometry at 
Ghent, sent by the government of the Nether- 
lands, to acquire information respecting our me- 
thods of giving instruction to the working classes. 
He stated that the King of the Netherlands is 
deeply interested in the education of his people. 

August 12,—Kensington Canal opened; it runs 
from the Thames, near Battersea bridge, to within 
half amile of Kensington Palace; is 100 feet broad, 
and carries craft of 100 tons burthen; it has 
cost £40,000. " 

— His Roval Highness the Duke of Clarence 
resigned his office of Lord High Admiral. 

— Report of Commissioners for building addi- 
tional churches in populous parishes, states that 
46 new churches and chapels are now building ; 
plans approved for 14 others; and plans for 33 
more aré under consideration. 

13.—The Minister for Foreign Affairs gave no- 
tice to the Chairman at Lloyd’s, that an effective 
blockade of the port of Funchal, Madeira, has 
been declared by the government existing in Por- 
tugal. 

14.—The Duke of Cumberland, and his son 
Prince George, embarked at Woolwich, on board 
the steam-packet, for the continent. 


2U 


330 


Aug. 14.—Despatches arrived at the Colonial 
Office from Demerara ; the colony is in a flourish- 


ing state, 
— The new church at Hammersmith conse- 


crated. 

16.—A deputation from Lloyd’s had an audience 
with Lord Aberdeen, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
relative to the detention and imprisonment of Mr. 
Young, at Lisbon, when his lordship said remon- 
strances had been made already both in the case 
of Mr. Young and Sir John Doyle, without effect, 
but he had notified to the de facto government of 
Portugal, that if the proper steps were not imme- 
diately tuken in respect to those gentlemen, it 
must be prepared for consequences of the most 
serious nature; as ina case like this, where the 
liberty and rights of British subjects are invaded, 
His Majesty’s government were determined that 
they would not be trified with. 

20.—Viscount Strangford left town on a mission 
to the Emperor of Brazil. 


MARRIAGES. 
' The Karl of Chichester to Lady Mary Brude- 
nell, fourth daughter of the Earl of Cardigan.— 
Earl Brownlow to the Lady Emma Edgeumbe, 
daughter of Earl of Mount Edgeumbe,—Captain 
H. Hope to Jane Sophia, daughter of Admiral Sir 
H. Sawyer.—T, M. Goodluke, esq., to Emilia 
Maria, sister to Sir E. Baker, bart., and niece to 
the Duke of Leinster.—J. C. Hobhouse, esq., 
M.P. Westminster, to Lady Julia Hay, sister to 
the Marquis of Tweedale.—Hon. and Rey. E. S. 
Keppel, third son of Earl of Albemarle, to Lady 
Maria Clements, eldest daughter of Earl of Lei- 
trim.—Captain Temple, second son of Sir Gren- 
ville Temple, bart, to Jane Dorothea, daughter of 
J. Marshall, esq., M.P. York.—W. A. Broad- 
head, esq., to Louisa, second daughter of the Hon. 
Sir C. Paget.—Digby Neave, esq., eldest son of 
Sir T. Neave, bart., to the Hon, Mary Arundell, 
daughter to the late Lord Arundell.—R. J, Palk, 
esq., second son of the late Sir Lawrence Palk, 
hart., to Harriette, daughter of G. Hibbert, esq. 
—J, E. Willis, esq., to Sophia Stuart, fourth 


Incidents, Marriages, &c. 


[Serr 


dauzhter of the late Lieut.-General R. Bruce,— 
Rey. W. D. Veitch to Miss Rait, grand-daughter 
of W. Joliffe, esq., M.P.—J. R. Majendie, esq., 
youngest son of the Bishop of Bangor, to Miss 
H. M. Dering.—Hon. J. Shoolbred to Harriet, 
daughter of Sir H. Loud, bart.—T. T. Gurdon, 
esq., to Henrietta, eldest daughter of N. W. R. 
Colburne, esq., M.P. 
DEATHS. 

Sir James Wynne B. de Bathe, bart.—Right 
Hon. Dennis Browne, uncle to the Marquis of 
Sligo.—83, Rev. T. Hillyard ; who was more than 
45 years pastor of the Independent Chureh at Ol- 
ney.—Sir Patrick Macgregor, vice-president of 
the College of Surgeons, serjeant surgeon to the 
King, and to the late Duke of York,—Jacob Bo- 
sanquet, esq., of Broxbourne, many years a Direc- 
tor of the East-India Company.—At Chislehurst, 
Elizabeth, wife of Sir H. Jenner, advocate-gene- 
ral.—Colonel the Hon. E. Acheson, brother to 
Earl of Gosford.—Sir F. T. Morshead, bart.— 
Mr. Horne, of the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, 
the principal coach-proprietor in the kingdom ; 
he employed at one time upwards of 1,200 horses 
in that speculation.—In the Regent’s-park, by a 
fall from his horse, Simon Taylor, esq., one of 
the Bank Directors.—Mrs. Benfield, relict of the 
late Paul Benfield, esq.—Hon. J. C. Parsons, se- 
cond son of the Earl of Ross.—A. Whitehead, 
esq., formerly secretary to the Transport Board, 
—Major-General R. Douglas. 


DEATHS ABROAD. 

At the Hague, 113, Mrs, Tierney; her father 
lived to the age of 105, and her uncle to 113,—At 
Missery (France) a woman aged 100, — At St. 
Omers, G. Allan, esq., M.A., F.S.A., and late 
M.P. for Durham.—At Paris, the Duke de San 
Carlos, ambassador from Spain to France,—At 
Neuille, near Paris, the Duke of Penthievre, son 
of the Duke of Orleans.—Lately, at Sierra Leone, 
the enterprising traveller Major Denham.—On his 
passage from the West Indies, J. C, Mills, esq., 
late president of the island of Nevis. 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES; 
WITH THE MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 

An Act of Parliament has just been passed for 
establishing a new harbour on the north-east 
coast at Seaham, within five miles of Sunderland. 

A fine specimen of the Sphinx Atropos, or 
Death’s-head Hawk Moth, was caught in Old 
Elvet, in Durham, a few days ago. It measures 
between the extremities of the wings 5 inches, 
and the length of the body, is 24 inches, It is 
covered with a kind of down, and on the back is a 
mark resembling a death's head, from which it 
derives its name. 

In removing the old battlement of the Fram- 
wellgate Bridge, at Durham, a few days ago, a 
large living toad was found in the very middle of 
the wall, where it must have been confined for a 
long series of years. The bridge is of a very an- 
cient date; but bow long the late battlement had 
been erected we are unable to state. 


At Durham assizes, Mr. Justice Bayley con- 
gratulated the grand jury on the favourable state 
of the calendar, which was calculated to give 
them little trouble.* The criminal business was 
unusually trifling, there being only 7 prisoners. 

At the Northumberland assizes, 6 prisoners were 
recorded for death; one of them a young woman 
of 17 for house-breaking ; a few transported and 
imprisoned, 

On the 4th of August, a meeting was held in 


* The present summer assizes have presented, 
at the different courts, a considerable diminution 
in the average quantity of crime. There has not 
been for some years a general gaol delivery, at 
which the judges congratulated the grand juries 
so generally on the diminished number of crimi- 
uals, although in some parts of the country the 
proportion has been greater of heinous offences, 
suchas murder, and the most deprayedly atrocious 
assaults upon females of the tenderest age !!!! 


1828.) 


the City of Durham, C. Ellison, Esq., M.P., high 
sheriff, in the chair, at which it was resolved to 
erect a monument in Durham Cathedral to the 
memory of the late Bishop Barrington, 

There were interred, at Hexham, between June 
26th and July 29th, inclusive, 8 persons, the ages 
of seven of whom averaged 80 years each. 

Married.| At Stanhope, E. Hunter, esq., to 
Miss Bainbridge.—At Egglingham, the Rey. H. 
Barker to Miss Howey.—At Billingham, Mr. G. 
Thompson to Miss Dobing—At Monkwearmouth, 
Mr. J. W. Hill to Miss J. Walker; Mr. Robert 
Jewitt, aged 84, to Miss Brown, of Southwick, 
aged 62. 

Died.) At Durham, Mrs. Hudson; 96, Mrs, 
Ibbotson.—At Newcastle, Mr. A. Bone; Miss 
Edgecombe ; Dr. Steavenson.—At West Auckland, 
Mr. G. Addison.—At Brancepeth, the Rev. Wm. 
Nestield.—At Hartlepool, 87, Mr. W. Yeal.—At 
Oswrotherley, the Rev. T. Marshall.—At Bishop- 
wearmouth, J. Robinson, esq. 


CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORELAND. 


The trial against the owners of the long staiths, 
brought by the keelmen of the Tyne, has taken 
place at Carlisle, and its results may be supposed 
a verdict in favour of the plaintiffs as far as the 
staiths themselves are concerned ; but there is a 
clause appended to that part of the verdict which 
would require another verdict to show why it was 
appended at all, and what it means. “ We find 
that the navigation of the channel of the river 
opposite Wallsend has been narrowed, straight- 
ened, lessened, and obstructed by the gears erected 
by the defendants as described in the indictment, 
and that the trade of the town and port of New- 
castle has notwithstanding increased.” Baron 
Hullock said to the jury, “ You mean it as a spe- 
cial verdict, and leave it to the Court above to de- 
cide whether it is a finding guilty or an acquittal 
under this indictment.” To this the jury assented, 
and his Lordship said he would take the verdict 
down in their own words. [t will probably be 
discussed and determined in the Court of King’s 
Bench. 

YORKSHIRE. 


On the 29th of July, the splendid mansion of 
G. L. Fox, esq., at Bramham-park, near Tadcas- 
ter, was destroyed by fire. The fire was dis- 
covered by a servant, between twelye and one 
o’clock in the morning; and of course it was some 
time before any effective assistance could be pro- 
cured; as engines had to be procured from Tad- 
caster, Abberford, Leeds, &c. For nearly two 
hours there was no other engine playing than the 
private one belonging to the house ; and the flames 
gained great ascendency, sweeping nearly over 
the.whole building. The engines from Tadcaster 
and Darlington arrived a little after two o’clock 
(the roof of the grand entrazce hall having fallen 
in just before) ; and about three o’clock three en- 
gines from Leeds arrived. It was six o’clock be- 
fore the flames were got under, The damage 
done is immense—probably between £80,000 and 
£100,000. Mr. Fox was from home. Providen- 
tially no lives were lost. 

A fine gold coin, of the Emperor Honorius, was 
lately found at Thirsk. The letters DN HONO- 
RIVS PF. AVC., are round the head on the ob- 
verse, and are very legible. Ou the reverse is a war- 
yior, with a standard in his right hand, at his 
other a Victory, with a ehaplet in her hand; 


Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire. 


331 


his foot is placed on a fallen foe : underneath are 
the letters COMOD, and around it VICTORIA 
AVE, and M on the right side of the warrior, and 
D onthe left. Its value, as old gold, is 16s. 

On the 3d of August a new church was opened 
at Redcar. 

A new sickle has beeninvented by Mr. Ibbotson, 
of Sheffield, which is far superior to the common 
one for reaping. It is made of the best tempered 
steel, strengthened by a narrow rim of iron, 
riveted, as a back. It is much lighter than the 
common sickle, cuts the stalk of the grain readily, 
instead of sawing it, and keeps longer in goud 
order. 

A Medical Society has been formed at Leeds, 
for the support of the widows and children of de- 
ceased medical men; and also for the assistance 
of poorer members of the profession. 

An ingenious plan for increasing the power of 
the voice has been carried into execution at At- 
tercliffe Church. A concave sounding board is 
erected between the desk and the pulpit, the 
speaker’s voice being near the focus. The ef- 
fect is to increase the power of the voice five 
times beyond its ordinary volume, 

At the assizes for this county, 22 prisoners re- 
ceived sentence of death, a few imprisoned, some 
discharged, and 29 remain in gaol upon their se- 
veral former orders and commitments. 


A meeting bas been held at Knaresborough, 
and a subscription entered into, for the purpose 
of erecting a new prison there, It was acknow- 
ledged by all present that the prison for debtors 
was a scandal to the town, and that no expression 
could be too strong for its reprobation ; let it be 
then proclaimed to the country,this boasted coun- 
try for good laws, decency, and prison discipline, 
that, in this famous era for improvements, Knares- 
borough prison for debtors consists of only one 
apartment, scarcely nine feet square, without 
the smallest yard or outlet for exercise ; that it is 
built over the common sewer of the town, with 
only one opening, grated over the sewer with 
iron bars, for every purpose of nature ; and that 
women weve subject to be confined in this filthy 
place along with the men !!! that during the great- 
est part of last winter there were three inmates in 
it!!! and that at the present moment there was a 
prisoner upwards of 70 years of age in it, who 
had been confined already upwards of eight 
months II!!! 

At the last meeting of the Leeds’ Mechanie In- 
stitution, it was resolved that works of general 
literature should be admitted, in addition to those 
of a mere mechanical or scientific nature, as tend- 
ing to spread a taste for knowledge, would great- 
ly add to the happiness; and improve the moral 
character of the working classes. 

Married.] At Hull, W. G. Todd, esq., to Miss 
Stickney.—At Fulfond, B. Rotch, esq., to Miss 
Judd.—At Leeds, H. Ridsdale, esq., to Miss Hea- 
ton.—At Bramham, J. Allen, esq., to Miss Wha- 
ley.—At Overton, Major Loring to Miss Smith.— 
At Welurck, Captain T. Mead to Miss Marwood, 
—At Ackworth, the Rev. F. F. P. Hawkins to 


Miss Hay.—At Conisbro’, J. Drabwell, esq., to 
Miss E. Wilkinson. 


Died.| At Hull, 93, L. Horner, esq.—At Hol- 
beck, 'l, Jaques, esq.—At Skipton, C. Abbotson, 
esq.—At Brompton, the Dowager Lady Cayley.— 
At Clifford, J. Paddey, esq.—At York, Miss Wol- 
stenholme. 


2U2 


332 


CAMBRIDGE AND HUNTINGDON. 
At Cambridge, 2 culprits imprisoned, and 2 ac- 
quitted, being all the prisoners for trial! 
At Huntingdon, 2 recorded for death. 
At Wisbeach, only7 prisoners for trial. 


NOTTINGHAM AND LINCOLN. 

At Lincoln, judgment of death was recorded 
against a woman (Frances Stephenson, 21) for 
stealing a mare. 

The assizes at Nottingham were not distin- 
guished by any trial of importance; not one pri- 
soner received sentence of death. 


DERBY. 
At the assizes for this county, 7 culprits were 
recorded for death, a few transported and impri- 
soned. 


LANCASHIRE. 

The Bolton and Leigh Railway was opened 
August 21,in a very grand style, at which up- 
wards of 40,000 persons attended. In the proces- 
sion a coach was seen carrying nearly 60 ladies 
and gentlemen, with favours of all colours, ban- 
ners, &e. &c,, 6 waggons laden with coal, 2 tons 
each, were attached to the coach, besides 13 other 
waggons, 6 in front and 7 behind, They started 
at Pendlebury Point, conveyed by the steam car- 
riage to the stationary engine, about a mile and a 
half from Bolton. Several experiments were 
made of the capabilities of the locomotive engine, 
christened The Lancashire Witch, and on one 
occasion it travelled twelve miles an hour, but it 
was unladen at the time. 

The first stone of the new Custom-house at 
Liverpool, has been recently laid by the mayor, 
in the presence of myriads of spectators. When 
completed, it will probably be the noblest custom- 
house in the world, The site on which it is erect- 
ing is that space formerly calledthe Old Dock. It 
will have four splendid fronts; the north and the 
south will be 430 feet each in length, and every 
other part will be eqnal in grandeur and effect. 
Over the centre will rise a beautiful dome 127 
feet high ; the crown of which will be supported 
by a tasteful circle of Corinthian columns, be- 
tween which will be placed a number of perpen- 
dicular windows, admitting a body of light in the 
largest recom in the building. 


CHESHIRE. 

An idea of the violence of the rain and hail in 
the late storms at Chester, may be formed from 
the fact, that an impetuous torrent of water, al- 
most sufficient to float a boat, flowed from the 
High Cross through the East Gate. The river 
yose to an unusual height. The ancient ram- 
parts themselves, that resisted the repeated as- 
saults of the Puritans, have yielded to the “ pelt- 
ing of the pitiless storm ;” a part near the Pho- 
nix Tower (from the summit of which Charles I. 
witnessed the defeat of his army) gave way with 
a tremendous crash, the foundation having been 
undermined by the heavy rains. At Sealand, the 
water rose higher than the great flood in 1795, the 
greatest in the memory of man in this part of the 
kingdom.* 


* Similar accounts have been sent us from all 
parts of the kingdom, but more particularly the 
north and west, where several deaths have hap- 
pened from the dreadful effects of the lightning. 


Provincial Occurrences : Cambridge, Huntingdon, Sc. 


[Sepr.. 


Died.| At the Parsonage, 62, Rev. L. Heapy ; 
he had been Prime Curate of Macclesfield for the 
last 35 years. A melodious organ, a reformed. 
psalmody, extensive accommodation for schools, 
numerous ffee pews for adults, structure of a- 
parsonage, rebuilding of great part of the paro- 
chial chapel, remodelling of the whole beautiful’ 
interior—these be his works, so, that on survey-. 
ing these his works, it may truly be said of him, 
as of a great architect, in justice to his influence, 
his taste, and his devotion * Would you see his 
monument ?—look around!" Yet his parishioners, 
asamark of their esteem, have entered into a 
subscription for the erection of a monument-to 
his memory.—Alacclesfield Couwrier—At Chester, 
Miss Wilson. > 


SALOP AND STAFFORD. 
Staffordshire county rate has been reduced to 
three farthings in the pound. 
At the assizes only one culprit was left for exe- 
cution: it was for forgery. 


The interest usually excited by the fate of or- 
dinary felonshas been wholly absorbed at Shrews- 
bury, in that of the murderers from Drayton and 
Old Bury, by which 6 miserable wretches were 
condemned to death, The former had something 
very remarkable about its history—Pugh, the 
father, was called to convict his son; Ellson to 
convict his own mother, father-in-law, and bro- 
thers-in-law ; his wife corroborated his evidence 
against her father and brothers; and the evi- 
dence of Mary Blakeman, the daughter of Ann 
Harris, tended to confirm the testimony which 
fixed the guilt on her mother! 


Married.) At Wolverhampton, S, Tayler, esq., 
to Mrs. Hartshorn. — At Swinnerton-park, F. 
Fitzherbert, esq., to Miss Maria Teresa Gan- 
dolfi. 

Died.] 70, Mrs. Walter Waring, of Church 
Stretton—At the Iron Bridge, Salop, 91, Mrs. 
Jukes. 

LEICESTER AND RUTLAND. 

Chief Justice Best in his charge to the grand 
jury of Leicestershire, congratulated them on the 
considerable diminution of crime. He said, “he 
was glad that the law with respect to capital 
charges had been altered, and he was certain, 
from his own knowledge, that the alteration had al- 
ready proved very beneficial.” We trust, therefore, 
that our law-menders will proceed, and entirely 
do away the common observation of foreigners, 
that the great fault in the jurisprudence of Eng-' 
land lies in not making it equal to the knowledge 
of the times we live in; ‘‘all the English esta- 
blishments were made in days of ignorance (say 
they); and so true is this, that one of their 
ministers (Peel) has at length dared to enter the 
arena, and boldly annihilated near 200 acts, by 
putting one or two of common sense in their 
place!!!” Nine prisoners were recorded for death, 
and a few transported and imprisoned. 

At Oakham assizes nothing of importance oc- 
curred. 


> 


WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. . 

At Northampton assizes, 6 culprits were re- 
corded for death, 7 transported, and 8 imprisoned. 
Near £900, it appears, were expended in the 
criminal jurisprudence, goals, &c. &e., from Mi- 
chaelmas 1826, to Easter 1828, in the town of 
Northampton alone. 
At Warwick sessions, there were 105 prisoners 


1828.]_ Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Monmouth, Devon, §c. 


for trial; 30 of whom had been tried before, and 
returned to prison for similar offences committed 
since they had been liberated!!! At the Warwick 
assizes, 28 were recorded for death, 17 trans- 
ported, and several imprisoned. : 

The Committee of the Birmingham Society of 
Arts have given notice in their Address (prefixed 
to their Catalogue of Pictures by Ancient Mas- 
ters) that “ their next exhibition, in 1829, will be 
of Modern Pictures; and that they hope for va- 
luable assistance, not merely upon the principle 
of peeuniary recompense, but from the more ele- 
yated consideration of benefit to the community, 
by the wider difusion of works of taste and 
genius,” 

At Coventry assizes, few cases for trial, and 
only one of importance; it was for horse stealing, 
and the sentence transportation for life. 


WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 


At two o’clock this morning, July 26, the col- 
lege of this city, Hereford, was discovered to be 
on fire, and in a few minutes hundreds were 
around the college walls. The building forms a 
quadrangle, the sides of which are nearly one 
hundred feet each. The entire of the south-east 
angle was in a mass of flame. A quarter past 
six o’clock the fire was extinguished. The plate, 
the deeds, and other papers, and the library of 
the college, escaped uninjured ; but the private 
library of the Rev. H. Munday suffered consider- 
able damage, as also the furniture of several 
other members. The cause is involved in mys- 
tery. Thisis the fourth time within these last 
five years that the college has been on fire; but 
this last conflagration has been more destructive 
than the preceding ones. The loss is estimated 
at £1,500. 

At Worcester assizes, 2 culprits recorded for 
death, 3 transported, and a few imprisoned. 

At Hereford, sentence of death was recorded 
against 8 culprits. 

The iron trade appears now rapidly tending to 
that state of extreme depression, which the most 
ordinary foresight might have anticipated as con- 
sequent upon the high prices of 1821.—Hereford 
Journal. 

Married.] At Donnington, Rey. W. Borro- 


daile to Miss A.S. B. Shaw.—At Abberley, T. J. 
Maling, esq.,to Miss Jemima Bromley. 


Died) At Hereford, 44, Mr. J, Constable, but- 
ler to Hereford College, in consequence of the 
injury he sustained at the destructive fire at that 
building.—At Mount Craig, Ross, 89, J. Lloyd, 


esq. 
GLOUCESTER AND MONMOUTH. 

A meeting was held at Bristol (which was ad- 
journed for a second day’s discussion) for the 
establishment of a Reformation Society, when it 
was proposed, “ That the committee should report 
to the next general meeting, whether there still 
remains in the Liturgy of the Church of England 
any relics of Popery, and what are the best means 
of securing the expulsion of such relics.” This 
proposition threw the meeting into a scene of 
uproar and confusion, when it was finally re- 
jected. ; 

Barou Vaughan complimented the grand jury 
at Gloucester assizes, on sceing such a diminution 


333 


of crime (41 prisoners), and said “that the re- 
dundancies and excrescences of the criminal code 
had been cut off, and that the Augsean stable had 
been cleansed by three or four acts, which repeal 
the unintelligible acts of former times II!!!" 
Ten were recorded for death. 


DEVON AND SOMERSET. 


There is nothing recorded in the annals of 
Mineralogy of this kingdom or of Europe, that 
will bear comparison with the extraordinary exu- 
berance of the curious Calcedonies recently dis- 
covered in the Haytor Iron Mine, Devon. From 
this small spot there have been collected of this 
mineral, by Mr.Woolmer, of Exeter, 300 varieties, 
every one of which is entitled to a distinct de- 
scription in colour, formation, or singularity, and 
many of them are of exquisite beauty, elegance, 
and delicaey.—Taunton Journal. : 

The Royal Adelaide, 120 guns, was launched at 
Plymouth July 28, the ceremony of naming having 
been performed by the Duchess of Clarence, in 
the presence of the Lord High Admiral, and many 
thousand spectators’ she is a beautiful ship, and 
has been nine years in building, 

At the assizes for Somerset, the calendar was 
extremely light, the number of prisoners being 
only 30, yet some were of the deepest dye, and 15 
were recorded for death. Mr. Justice Park com- 
plained of the small number of magistrates in at- 
tendance, and their delay in returning the depo- 
sitions, &c. The mayor of Bridgewater was fined 
40s. for non-attendance. 

Four prisoners were recorded for death at 
Devon assizes, 6 transported, and a few impri- 
soned, 

A new market is about to be built at Dart- 
mouth, 

During the performance of morning service at 
Compton Pauncefort, on Sunday last, the rain 
fell in such torrents, and descended from the 
neighbouring hills so rapidly, that the water rose 
in the immediate vicinity of the church to a height 
which prevented the congregation from reaching 
their houses otherwise than in carts, which were 
sent for them. 


Married.) At Exeter, T. T. Gillett, esq., of 
Brussels, to Miss Ann Sparks. 


Died.| At Wells, 88, Mr. J. Evii—At Taun- 
ton, 89,'T. Woo@forde, esq. 


DORSET AND WILTS. 


The Act of Parliament for disfranchising Cran- 
bourne Chase bas passed, and the gradual destruc- 
tion or remoyal of the deer already commenced. 
Their inerease of late years has been so much, 
and the winters so fayuurable, that there are 
12,000 in number. So many fawns have recently 
been shot, that they have been disposed of at the 
low prices of 5s. or 6s. a piece. By the Act, it 
appears that Lord Rivers’s franchise expires on 
the 10th of October, 1830, by which time the deer 
of all ages will be sold. 

Atthe Dorset assizes, 2 recorded for death, and 
2 transported. 

At Wilts, 7 received sevtence of death (2 for 
murder), and a few transported and imprisoned. 


Married.| At Dorchester, J. C, Clive, exq., 
to Miss E, J. Park, 


334 


- Died.} 72, George Bingham, well known for 
his harmless eccentricities at Sherborne. 


OXFORD AND BERKS. 

At the Third Annual Court of the University 
Life Assurance Society, established by royal 
charter, which was lately held, the report iaid be- 
fore the proprietors was of the most satisfactory 
description. The income of the Society already 
exceeds £20,000 a year, whilst the number of 
deaths among the assured, during the whole pe- 
riod of its establishment, is only four. It is re- 
markable that the assurei's from the two Univer- 
sities of Oxford and Cambridge are nearly equal 
both in number and in the amount assured. 


We are sorry that some of the London papers 
give credit and insertion to exaggerated and false 
reports of the destruction of the corn crops in va- 
rious parts of this county, averring that they are 
very light and indifferent. This is not the case, 
for they are generally good, particularly the bar- 
ley.—Oxford Herald. 

The state of the Oxford County Goal furnishes 
amost melancholy proof of the dreadful effects 
produced by the Game Laws on the morals of the 
country. The prisoners confined there under sen- 
tences of last Epiphany Session, are }2 in num 
ber; larceny, 1—assault, 1—poaching, 10! These 
are not the only inmates of the goal whose only 
crime is poaching, These ten persons were sent 
there from one single session ; and there are, be- 
side them, nine others, also imprisoned in this 
gaol for poaching, who were sent there by magis- 
trates, &c. Such a state of things ought never to 
be allowed to exist in a civilized country, and it 
really does behove the ministers to turn their at- 
tention to this dreadful evil, and to bring in a bill 
for the eradication of a system of laws which is 
found to be so very pernicious to the moral state 
of the kingdom; for it has been not only acknow- 
ledged by magistrates, but proved by fact in the 
criminal courts, that imprisonment for poaching 
is the precursor not only of other crimes, but fre- 
quently of murder. 

Married.) G. F. Rich, esq., of Sonning, to 
Miss Agnes Frazer. 


Died.] At Oxford, 66, John Gilpin; for the 
last 25 days, previous to his death, he lay in a pro- 
found sleep, from which he could not be roused 
without much difficulty, and then sank again into 
the same state of torpor. 


BUCKS AND BEDFORDSHIRE. 

The expenses for the county of Bedford for the 
year, from Easter Sessions, 1827, to Easter Ses- 
sions, 1828, amount to £9,366. 4s. 7d. ‘The greater 
part of the charges were for criminal jurispru- 
dence; about .€2,000 were spent in additional 
works, &c. for the Lunatic Asylum. 

Lord Nugent wishing to settle some “ historic 
doubts” respecting the wounds of which the pa- 
triot Hampden died, procured leave of the clergy- 
man of the parish of Hampden fo search for his 
remains in that church, and, July 21, after seve- 
ral coffins had been examined, one was selected, 
and made the object of particular investigation 
by his lordship. It has been since stated, that the 
body examined was not that of John Hampden, 
but of some other person! 

Died.] At Akley, Mrs. Massey, and on the 


following day Mr. Massey; their united ages 
amounted to 185 years, 68 of which they had lived 


Provincial Occurrences : Oxford, Berks, Bucks, Sc. 


(Serr. 


together as man and wife, having been married 
on the coronation day of George IIL. 


NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 

The Society of Artists at Norwich have opened: 
their 22d exhibition in their new gallery. It 
consists of 279 subjects, presenting specimens in 
the different departments of portrait, landscape, 
domestic scenes, still life, architectural compo- 
sitions, and fruit and flower subjects, well calcu- 
lated to gratify the lovers of art. No. 245, “ Dis- 
turbed by the Night Mare,” tending to evince 
knowledge of chiaro oscuro, and fondness for 
Suro, is a little relic of poor Theodore Lane, the 
highly-endowed young man, who so recently lost 
his life by falling through the sky light at the 
Horse Bazaar in Gray’s-inn-lane. 

At Norwich assizes, 12 prisoners were recorded 
for death. 

At the assizes at Bury St. Edmund’s, the public 
attention was solely fixed upon the fate of Wil- 
liam Corder, who was condemned to death for the 
atrocious murder of Maria Marten, whom he had 
previously seduced, and by whom he had a child. 
He inveigled her into Polstead Red barn, and 
there shot, stabbed, and strangled her, and after- 
wards buried her inthe barn! He turned out to 
be one of the advertisers for wives in the public 
newspapers ; and he has left an unfortunate wife 
(whom he obtained by this plan) to lament the 
folly of having attended to such means. The 
monster advertised himself as ‘‘ every way quali- 
fied to render the marriage state desirable!” 

Married.] At Lynn, Rev. G. Numford to Miss 
Edwards.—B. Gurdon, esq., eldest son of T. T. 
Gurdon, esq., of Letton, to Henrietta, eldest 
daughter of N. W. R. Colburne, esq., M.P, 


Died.) At Cromer. Mrs, Tyssen.—At Nor- 
wich, 77, Mr. ©, Elsegood ; and the same day his 
son, W. Elsegood, 51; 83, Rey. Dr. J. Turner, 
Dean of Norwich.—Rey. W. Haward, of Rend- 
ham.—Mr. D. Chamberlayne, of Great Dunham, 
—At Yarmouth, 85, Mr. W. Warden. 


HANTS AND SUSSEX. 

At the assizes at Winchester, Mr. Justice Park 
reprobated the practice of some of the barristers 
there puffing off attornies. ‘‘ Such conduct,” he 
said, “‘ was a most grievous waste of the public 
time ; it was injurious to the parties whose inte- 
rests were concerned in the issue of the proceed- 
ings; and in the gentlemen who so conducted 
themselves, be must say it was a gross prostitu- 
tion of their abilities and character!” 

Marricd.] At Brighton, N. B. F. F, Bean, 
esq., to Frances, eldest daughter of J. Walker, 
esg., M.P.—At Milton, Rey. W. Jones, to Miss 
C. Dampier. 


Died.] At Southampton, 97, the Hon. Helen 
Colt, widow of the late O. Colt, esq., and daugh- 
ter of Lord Blantyre. 

CORNWALL. 

The pilchard fishery has been very successful ; 
the drift boats of St. Ives have brought in from 
6,000 to 10,000 each; one had as many as 25,000. 
The Mount’s Bay boats took from two to eight 
hogsheads of pilechards each. The fish were re- 
markably fine, and were met with about four 
leagues north-west off the head of the bay. They 
sell at St. Ives at 2s. per hundred. $ 

The new church of St. Day, and two new 
chapels, have been consecrated. by the» bishop— 
one at Truro, and the other at Falmouth. 


1828.] 


Mr. Justice Park congratulated the grand jury 
at Bodmin on the calendar being so light; he 
thanked God that the law had lately been altered 
relative to the murder of illegitimate children, 
&e. Death recorded against 3 prisoners. 

Married.| At Marham, Mr. Forester to Miss 


Ann Charter,—At Penryn, Rey. R. Newstead, late 
of Ceylon, to Miss S, M. Richards. 


Died.] At Boyton, 83, H. Spree, esq; he had 
been surveyor to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales for 
upwards of 30 years for Cornwall and Devon.— 
At Larrigan, 82, Mrs. Honor Pascoe. 


WALES. 

The monument erected to the memory of the 
late Genera] Sir Thomas Picton, at Carmarthen, 
was opened to public view July 29, with grand 
cereinony, 60 Waterloo veterans walking in the 
procession, carrying banners, on which were in- 
scribed, Badajoz, Cuidad Rodrigo, Vittoria, Pyre- 
nees, Les Quatre Bras, Picton, and Waterloo. 
The structure in its general design, particularly 
the shaft and entablature, resembles Trajan’s 
Pillar in Rome, and is of block marble. 

A letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the ad- 
ministration of justice in Wales, has been pub- 
lished by Earl Cawdor, in which he displays the 
inconveniences of the local courts of the princi- 
pality in astriking light, shewing that the pre- 
sent system of Welsh judicature is as bad as can 
be. Wecopy from his lordship’s letter a bit of 
Jaw and equity, as practised in the principality ; 
itis a Welsh county court notice to a labouring 
man, to procure payment of one shilling, due for 
the mending of a pair of shoes :—‘.Sir, Having 
been directed by a A. B. to apply to you for 
£0. 1s, 0d. due to him, [I have to request that you 
will pay me that sum, together with my charge of 
5s., on or before Saturday next, as I shall other- 
wise be obliged to commence an action against 
you for the recovery thereof without further no- 
tice. Iam your obedient servant, C. D.” 

Died.] At Aberystwith, 105, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Newman.—In Llandovery, 76, Mrs. Jones, relict 
of the late Theophilus Jones, author of the “ His- 
tory of Brecknockshire.” 


SCOTLAND. 

By the 24th Report of the Commissioners of 
the Caledonian Canal just published, it appears 
that since January 1, 1828, the tonnnage rate has 
been reduced to one farthing per ton per mile. 
The produce of rates for one yearending in May 
last, was £2,870; the expense of keeping up the 
eanal, £4,173! ‘The number of passages made 
by ships through the canal, have been in the last 
three years, 944,766, and 882 respectively. The 
depth of water at present is 15 feet, and the sum 
of £41,000 is required to increase it to 20 feet, as 
originally intended. £977,524 have been ex- 
‘pended on the canal. 

In consequence of the want of employment, 
avising froma redundancy of population, and 
other causes, hundreds of our poorer countrymen 
on the western coast, are now quitting their na- 
tive shores for North America. <A brig went off 
Jately fromthe Isle of Harris, freighted with pas- 
“sengers for Upper Canada ; and two vessels sailed 
from Loch Maddy, in North Uist, with no less 
than 600 souls on board. Another is daily ex- 
pected to sail from Canna; and as fresh exporta- 
tions will follow whenever opportunities occur, 


Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 


335 


a check will be given, for at least some time, to 
the effects of our rapidly increasing population. 

The silk trade continues to make great progress 
in the west of Scotland. The number of looms has 
of late greatly increased in this vicinity; and the 
business, though only of recent introduction, pro- 
Mises svon to be one of the most important trades 
in Seotland. The weavers’ earnings average 
from 15s. to 20s. week. TThetrade has also taken 
firm root in the western country ; in Kilwinning, 
Johnstone, and other places. Besides the ordi+ 
nary description of goods, the manufacture of silk 
velvet has been recently introduced, and avery 
superior article has been produced. The demand 
for tartan manufactures has of late greatly im- 
proved in the neighbourhood of Stirling. Most 
of the manufacturers are employing their full 
number of hands; and in consequence of some 
large orders having been received, the goods are 
sent off as they are finished.—Greenock Adver- 
tiser. 

During the thunder-storm on Monday night, a 
shoal of young whales, of the grampus_ kind, 
which had entered the Dornoch Firth in pursuit 
of herring, made a hideous noise in the water, 
terrified, it is supposed, by the vivid flashes of 
lightning. About 30 of them came on shore during 
the night at Ardjachay Point, and about as many 
more farther up the Firth, also on the Rosshire 
side; and next morning, a considerable number 
came on shore about a mile farther down, near 
Morangie. A number of men and horses were 
employed in dragging them to land, and about 80 
have been secured. They measure from 15 to 21 
feet in length, and from J2 to 18 feet in cireum- 
ference, and the blubber is from 3to 4 inches in 
depth.—Jnverness Journal, 

Married.| AtCalder-house, W. R. Ramsay, 
of Barnton, esq., to the Hon. Mary Sandilands, 
only daughter of Lord Torpichen. 


Died.) At Edinburgh, Samuel Neil, esq., sur- 
geoa in the royal navy, and late of the Hecla dis- 
eovery ship. 

IRELAND. 

The Catholic Association of Ireland have taken 
decided steps for purifying the representation of 
that country, They have determined that all 
candidates for counties, cities, and open boroughs 
in that part of the United Kingdom, shall be ealled 
upon to give solemnly and publicly the following 
pledges :—Ist. Not to support the administration 
of the Duke of Wellington or Mr. Peel, until 
after total, unqualified, and unconditional eman- 
cipation.—2d, To make strenuous exertions to re- 
peal the subletting act.—3d. To support every 
measure having any tendency to promote perfect 
freedom of conscience.—4th. To support every 
measure haying any tendency to promote consti- 
tutional reform of parliament, and in particalar 
to extend the elective franchise, and shorten the 
duration of each parliament.— Resolved, That 
every candidate for representation in Ireland, who 
shall refuse or neglect to give the above pledges 
in the most public and unequivocal manner, shall 
meet with the direct and active opposition of all 
the members of the Catholic Association in Tre- 
land.—Catholic Journal. 

Died.| At Newport-house, Sir Hugh O'Donel, 
bart.—J. Cuff, of Deel-castle, esq.,M.P., governor 
and custos rotulorum of Mayo county, and colonel 
of its militia. ; 


Stock. 


213 
2124134 


2123 
2123 


| 9123133 


913 14 
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Red. |Consols.|Consols. 
86% 874 864 21 — 
87 86 x 
87 86 953 
878 4| 862.87 | 96 
88 87 # | 96h F 
878 883| 863 873! 953 Z 
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87% 88 | 864 973} — 
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874 4 | 862 87| 96 
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874 888] 87 96 
874 88h! 87 96; 
87% 88 | 87 96 
872 88 | 87 96 
88} |} 87h 2 | — 
S/o wash oc 


[ 336 J. 
DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 


From the 26th of July to the 25th of August, 1828. 
BOERS) <p aires ol ES a ee ae ee 
Bank {3 Pr. Ct.|3 Pr. Ct.|34Pr.Ct.|34Pr.Ct.|N 4Pr.C, 


Red. Ann. 


95a | 1012 
96% 


943 954] 1013 
954° § | 101e 
953 101: 
95§ 964 
958° 96 


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1012 
101 

1014 
1014 
1013 
1013 


96g a | 1013 3 


Long India | India 
Annuities. | Stock. | Bonds, 
19% 13-16 243 111 12p 
19} 13-16 — | 110 lap 
19% 15-16 2432 112p 
19 15-16 20} — | 111 1gp 

20 2452 | 111 12p 
19 15-16 20 — 112 14p 
19 15-16 20 244 et 
19 15-16 20 | 2433 4 112p 
19 15-16 20 244 114p 
19 15-16 20 | 24383] 1l2p 
19% 20 is Be 
19 15-16 2433 | 113p 
20 1-16 _ 114p 
20 1-16 —~)-M2t4p 
20 1-16 2433 | 1l4p 
20 1-16 = = 
20 1-16 2432 pS 
20 1-16 == <iathag 
2u _ 113p 
20 1-16 — 113 15p 
20 1-16 212 | 113 15p 
20 1-16 243 112 13p 
20 1-16 — | 112 6p 
19 15-16 20} — | 107 05p 
20 1-16 2492 | 100 03p 
20 1-16 — | 98 103 


Exch. 
Bills. 


7273p 


7173p 
7273p 
7273p 
7273p 


7273p 
7173p 


71 73p 
7273p 
7273p 
7173p 
7172p 
71 72p 


71 72p 
71 72p 
7173p 
7273p 
7172p 
7172p 
7172p 
71 72p 
7172p 
7172p 
7273p 
7273p 


7273p 


Consols 
for Acc. 


Moon. 


E, Eyton, Stock Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street. 
a 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 


From July 20th to August \9th, 1828. 
By Wririiam Harris and Co. 50, High Holborn. 


Therm, 


Barometer, 


Hygro. 


9 A.M. 


10 P.M. 


De Lue’s 


9A.M. 


10 P.M. {9A M.|2P.M. | 10 P.M. 


3 
on 
s 
c 
o 
esta eet 
‘= - 
5 |e 
20 | 98 
21 | 95 
22 0) 
23 9 
24 28 
25 | 14 
26 | 11 
27 6 
28 
29 6 
30 
31 
Aug. 
1 
2 8 
3 52 
4 0 
5 8 
6 | 32 
7 | 4i 
8 
9 6 
10 
ll 21 
12 | 03 
13 2 
14 4 
15 
16 
17 5 
18 
19 


w 


The Quantity of Rain fallen in the Month of July was 5 inches and 36 100ths. 


Rain 


Rain 


Ky 
=A 


Plisliidi 


THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


Nelo Series. 


Vou. VI] OCTOBER, 1828. [No. 34. 


REPORT FROM THE DISSECTION COMMITTEE, 


So revolting is the practice of exhumation—the trade of dragging dead 
bodies from the grave for the purpose of dissection—that a very unusual 
combination of official and private opposition has risen up against it ; 
and the church-yards in and about London are, in consequence, more and 
more effectually blocked up against the depredators. The employer and 
his desperate agent encounter the same degree of popular odium, and the 
craft of both is in imminent danger of utter and speedy extinction. The 
anatomists are driven to their wits’ end: from the lack of subjects, some 
abandon their lectures, and all occasionally suspend them ; students fly 
to other countries ; and the character of the profession itself is at stake. 
The very law is suddenly armed against them ; and the mere possession 
of a dead body for dissection, except that of a murderer, is declared to 
be a misdemeanor. The government, indeed, winked at importations, 
and generously sacrificed its ad valorem duties for the benefit of science ; 
but in vain. The very importations have failed of their purpose ; and 
the legislature itself—the dernier resort—has been appealed to. Peti- 
tions poured in by scores from every point of the medical compass ; and 
a Committee, graciously appointed for the purpose, have summoned 
before them the leading members of the profession, hospital-surgeons, 
lecturers on anatomy, body-snatchers themselves, and Bow-street officers. 
They have inquired, with an ab ovo beginning, into the utility and 
the necessity of anatemy—the indispensableness of a supply of sub- 

_jects—the modes hitherto adopted for obtaining them—the objections to 
those modes—the practice of foreign countries—the numbers demanded 
—and, finally, the practicability of furnishing those numbers, without 
outraging the public feeling by exhumation. The Committee having 

thus collected and reported, the evidence is now before the world; and 

_ we wait but the next session to place the profession at ease, and on a 

__ legitimate basis. - 

r Tn the number for May last, before the appointment of the Committee, 
ect was carefully discussed in this Magazine ; and, so far as 
cts the imperativeness of the case, and the practicability of furnish- 
ing without offence an adequate supply, apparently exhausted. The 
result of the inquiries instituted by the Committee terminated in recom- 
_ mending the uNcLarmep BoprEs of the workhouses, hospitals, prisons, and 


M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 34. eS 


338 Report from the Dissection Committee. - [Ocr. 


penitentiaries of the neighbourhood of London. This was, in fact, our 
own suggestion ; and it is matter of self-gratulation, that this publication, 
which aims at mixing the utile dulci, anticipated this phalanx of profes- 
sional persons, and that the whole body together were utterly unable to 
suggest another expedient. The returns made to the order of the Com- 
mittee by the parishes, though not yet complete, fully realize our anti- 
cipations—from that single source ; our conjectures are completely esta- 
blished, and the supply attainable from the whole of the sources above 
stated is evidently abundant for all occasions, measured by the more 
moderate demands of the most emment of the profession examined before 
the Committee. 

The report contains the evidence of men of the highest reputation, 
and undoubtedly of the best opportunities for gaining information, whose 
sentiments could in no other way have been got at ; the communications 
have been freely and frankly given ; and we now travel, no longer on the 
slippery ground of conjecture and probability, but on the firm footing of 
experience and intelligence. We shall be doing our readers no unwel- 
come service by laying before them the results. 

The study of anatomy, as a general pursuit in the medical profession, 
is comparatively new. To the time of William Hunter, lecturers illus- 
trated their discourses by the exhibition of the bodies of animals, and 
even gave instructions relative to operations in the same way. In his 
memorial to Lord Bute, he describes the students as not exercising them- 
selves in dissecting human bodies, because they had no opportunities ; 
and, indeed, he might have added, the necessity for such dissection was 
not very deeply impressed upon any but himself. His object was to 
obtain the royal protection for the institution of a school of anatomy ; 
but though he undertook himself to build a theatre, and endow it with 
his own museum, and even with a salary for a professor, such were the 
stubborn prejudices existing even in that quarter, that all his efforts 
were useless. But, zealous in his object, and not to be daunted by 
neglect or rebuff, he resolutely pursued his purpose, and, before his 
death, had the satisfaction of leaving behind him, he believed, many 
better anatomists than himself. But the means of procuring bodies for 
the prosecution of this favourite object were all illegal ; he was obliged 
to trust altogether to disinterments. For a time, these were adequate to 
the demand for bodies ; and the numbers yet required were compara- 
tively so few, they were readily obtained without exciting much observa- 
tion. The offence seldom came before the public notice ; and when it 
did, was scarcely regarded as a penal offence; and offenders, when 
caught in the fact, were usually dismissed with impunity, or occasionally 
a ducking. 

The more anatomy was studied, the more important and indispensable 
appeared the study of it. A medical education, even of the lowest 
description, soon came to be considered defective without it: a person 
wholly ignorant, was degraded in the eyes of his brethren, and distrusted 
by his more intelligent patients. Students of anatomy accordingly mul- 
tiplied. Im 1793, Mr. Abernethy states the number at 200; Dr. — 
Macartney computes them, in 1798, at 300; and Mr. Brooks, in 1823, 
at 1,000. The existing number is probably about 800, or below ; the 
diminishing series is accounted for by pupils visiting foreign countries— 
200 are known to be at Paris; and the cause is the increasing difficulty 
of obtaining subjects in England. 


41823. ] Report from the Dissection Commitice. 339 


— 


This difficulty of obtaining subjects sprang not immediately from the 
increasing demand—for people died fast enough—pretty nearly as fast as 
they did before—though, if registers, and returns, and calculations are 
at all to be relied upon, they do die now-a-days a year or two later than 
formerly—but from the greater number of detections, consequent on 
the greater demand—by which detections the facts of disinterments 
became more notorious—the public feeling was kindled—the sympathy 
spread—and greater vigilance was every where employed. The body- 
snatchers were regarded and treated as criminals; and, despicable as 
they were before, they degenerated—for even that was possible—till they 
became desperate. They grew careless of appearances; and greater 
publicity and greater indignation followed. To force a rise of prices, 
they voluntarily augmented the peril of their own hazardous trade ; they 
contested in the very graves the possession of the spoil—left those graves 
exposed—and gave information to magistrates, and to the friends of the 
disinterred, against their rivals. To extort gratuities, and to crush com- 
petition, they proceeded to still farther acts of violence, and excited the 
populace against the professors of anatomy. On one occasion, Mr. 
Brooks says, three subjects, for which he gave sixteen guineas each, 
were taken from him, in consequence of information by the very man 
who sold them; and once, on refusing a douceur of five guineas at the 
commencement of the season, “ some of them came in the dusk of the 
evening with two subjects, in a high state of decomposition, in a chaise- 
cart; one of which they dropped at the Poland-street end of Marl- 
borough-street, and the other at the end of Blenheim-street ; and, shortly 
afterwards, two young ladies, nicely dressed, stumbled over one of these 
horrible subjects, which raised such a commotion, that, had it not been’ 
for the prompt assistance of Sir Robert Baker and the police establish- 
ment, he might have been sacrificed to popular fury.’ These things 
tended still farther to bring resurrection-deeds to light, and exasperate 
the public prejudices against snatcher and anatomist alike. The diffi- 
culty is again augmented by the apprehensions of the friends of the 
deceased, who keep watch over the grave, and, in numerous instances, 
have taken the law into their own hands, and fired upon the desperadoes. 
In Glasgow, the students themselves dug up the bodies. Every teacher 
had what was called his “private party,” consisting generally of eight ; 
these were the dissecting students—none others dissected ; and these 
had no other resource than plundering the graves with their own hands. 
They were frequentiy shot at; and now that this miserable course is 
abandoned, the state of the Glasgow school is deplorable. Not more than 
two or three in the course of a season are obtained by exhumation, and 
these are obliged to be salted and dried. It short, it has at last become 
positively impracticable to obtain an adequate supply from this source. 

In this scarcity and perplexity, the resurrection-men, not disposed of 

_ course to stick at any thing, broke into the houses of undertakers, and 
stole bodies before burial ; while others personated the relatives, and 
_ applied to workhouses and hospitals for possession, which of course could 

aeceed now and then. Expedients of better promise were fallen 
cially importations from Paris and Dublin; but even this 
t dwindled to nothing—the bodies for the most part did not 
come in an useable state, and antiseptics have hitherto done little. “ The 
Secretary of State,” says Dr. Somerville, “ gave permission to the Cus- 
tom-house to allow bodies to be imported; and one of the conditions 

2X2 


340 Report from the Dissection Committee. [Ocr. 


with the Custom-house was, that I should personally superintend, in 
order to prevent the privilege from being converted into a means of 
smuggling. Accordingly, when a vessel arrived, having packages with 
certain marks, they were claimed by me, and delivered on my responsi- 
bility. Every facility was afforded by the Secretary of State and the 
Custom-house officers; yet the experiment, though tried very exten- 
sively, was a complete failure.” But the main cause of failure in this 
case appears to have been the interference of the police ; and marvellous 
it must surely seem, that the Secretary of State should silence the autho- 
rities at the Custom-house, and not give the Police a hint—the most piti- 
ful sort of half-measure that ever was heard of ! 

There is good reason to believe, that of the bodies used in London 
and Scotland for the last two years, a considerable portion came from 
Dublin ; but the extent, or the carelessness, with which exportation has 
been conducted, has stirred up the popular feeling even there, and sub- 
jects are obtained with difficulty now for the native schools. A report 
spread, that children were kidnapped for the purpose of dissection ; and 
so currently credited was this report, that it was necessary to protect 
one of the anatomical schools for nearly a week, by means of the police. 
The notion was, they were to be sent to Scotland or England by the 
steam vessels. The winter dissections could not be completed.. “ The 
people frequently of late,’’ says Dr. Macartney, “assault the resurrection- 
men; one of them died in consequence of the rough handling he met 
with, and another from being whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails made of 
wire, and others were thrown into the water. I may add,” he continues, 
‘« that lately also, even medical men and medical students were assailed 
by the people; and that at present, the resurrection-men go to a great 
number of grave-yards, some distance from Dublin, provided with fire- 
arms, and are accompanied frequently by several students armed in the 
same manner.” In France, too, the law expressly forbids exportation, 
and of course none can come but such as are smuggled ; and fresh 
obstacles are continually thrown in the way—not to say that subjects, 
even for native professors at Paris, are diminishing every day, from the 
activity of the priests, who are as hostile to dissections as they were in 
days of yore. 

Such, then, is the actual state of things—that, though in spite of all 
difficulties, bodies are still obtained by exhumation, the hazard increases 
daily —the public exasperation still embitters, and the supply must con- 
sequently grow less and less. For the remedy of this growing defi- 
ciency, notwithstanding, some would have us simply retrace our steps— 
only be quiet, and prejudices must subside again. It is suggested, that, 
as the government has already interfered so far as to remove obstruc- 
tions at the ports, so the magistrates, with or without authority, might 
repress officiousness, and leave the anatomists, and the persons they 
employ, to conflict with the public odium as well as they can. A great 
part of the general indignation, it is said, has been drawn to the matter 
by bringing the body-snatchers before the police offices, and thus 
making a needless noise and parade. But this would be, im fact, an 
attempt to sanction the system of exhumation, which is in itself a dis- 
gusting act, and one which it is much too late to think of reviving. 
The general feelings of nature rise against it: and to oppose the course 
of them is perfectly useless. The practice will never again be tolerated. 

Nor have we any great faith in Dr. Macartney’s prescription. This 
is to remove all existing prejudices by dint of a little example, by the 


: 


1 


1828.] Report from the Dissection Committee. 341 


repeal of one law—that for dissecting murderers—and the enactment of 
another. He himself drew up an engagement, binding the friends of 
the subscribers to surrender their bodies, after death, for the benefit of 
anatomy, to which he fixed his own signature, and in about a fortnight 
98 other names were added, not only of the medical profession, but 
of clergymen, lawyers, country gentlemen, and titled persons. This 
bequest is to be sanctioned by law ; but even then, the enforcing, con- 
trary to the wishes of friends, and those wishes will be sure to be 
adverse, will be as invidious and as odious as the very act of exhuma- 
tion. The anatomists would not get one out of fifty. 

The fact of inadequate supply being thus unquestionable, and every 
remedy, hitherto adopted or suggested, vague or ineffectual, we may 
turn our attention to that sole source, which the Committee, like our- 
selves, after the fullest investigation, concur in recommending, as at 
once practicable, and liable to the fewest objections of a serious kind— 
the unclaimed bodies of our public institutions; and by unclaimed 
bodies, we mean—not those who have none to bury them at their own 
expense—but such as are absolutely in that forlorn condition as to have 
none who claim affinity with them—none who appear to accompany 
their remains to the grave. 

With respect to this source of supply, then, is it, in the first place, 
adequate ? for if it be not, it will be useless to argue on the fitness or 
the justifiableness. 

What, then, is the average demand for bodies? The students, we 
see, amount to about 800 ; but out of these, it seems, for one reason or 
another, not more than 500 ever dissect. The leading surgeons, and 
lecturers on anatomy, though universally they allow the period assigned 
for anatomical and surgical education is much too short, consider three 
bodies for each pupil as competent on the present system for all pur- 
poses, for the two seasons, consisting of sixteen months. Those who 
have been accustomed to foreign schools speak of a larger number, and 
even think, apparently with some reason, ten or twelve not too many 
for dissection and operation. The students of America often dissect 
thirty. The rest are more practical men, that is, they are more disposed 
to look at the average of what is usually demanded, and usually accom- 
plished, than at what ought, or what would be desirable to be done. 
The majority of students are of very humble origin, of very humble 
fortunes, and are destined, by inevitable circumstances, to very humble 
stations in society—one-half of them never dreaming of making 3001. a 
year in country towns and villages. Three bodies, then, may be 
assigned to each, which amounts to 1,500 for the two seasons—the period 
of anatomical education. 

- To meet this demand, the only legalized source is the bodies of 
-murderers—producing, fortunately, not half-a-dozen in the year, in the 
environs of London—which may, therefore, very safely be thrown out 
of consideration—the number is not worth the enumeration. About a 
hundred, it has been suggested, might be obtained from the hulks, by 
the authority of the Secretary of State, if they were to be seized indis- 
ceigately ; but this would be to proceed in the spirit of penalty, and 
cutting up is no part of their sentence—they have most of them friends 

too. About as many more might be obtained from suicides—but suicides 

also have friends—and to take them indiscriminately is equally objec- 
tionable. The unclaimed, of either class, could not be very numerous. 

Not an hundred could be reckoned upon from the whole of these sources, 


a 


342 Report from the Dissection Commitice. [Ocr. 


supposing the seizure of the unclaimed portion to be legalized ; and for 
the rest there can be no reasonable pretence, while other means less 
objectionable are left. 

No—the main supply of unclaimed bodies will come from the parish 
poor-houses. Returns have been made from 127 parishes of London, West- 
minster, and Southwark, or their immediate vicinity, by which it appears, 
that out of 3,744, who died in the work-houses alone, 3,103 were buried 
at the parish expense, and that of these 1,108 were unclaimed, that is, 
were utterly without connexions to inquire about them. Were the 
returns complete, the probability is that 2,000 may be calculated on, 
or not much short of 3,000 for the two seasons. But contenting our- 
selves with what is actually ascertained, here are at the very least 1,500 
bodies, or three for each of 500 students, without looking to any other 
source whatever. 

But is this source of supply, after all, less objectionable than the rest ? 
Why, what are the objections to it? No private feelings, it is obvious, 
can be outraged, for no relatives are known to exist; and such is the 
general interest taken by relatives in consigning the’ bodies of their 
friends to the grave, that, for the most part, we may safely conclude, if 
none present themselves, none exist, or none are within a knowledge of 
the case. No one, therefore, can complain that his feelings are disre- 
garded, for if he appears, the body ceases to fall within the class of the 
unclaimed ; and the dead, we suppose, in the absence of better evidence, 
know nothing about the matter. 

If the case be taken up on more general grounds—if it be supposed 
that people’s sympathies extend to absolute strangers—that a general 
and abstract repugnance exists to the very act of dissection, we venture 
to express our entire conviction that no such repugnance exists—that, on 
the contrary, generally, people, in this respect, care little what becomes 
of others, so that they do not belong to themselves—the common feeling 
with respect to others is, what matters what becomes of the senseless 
body? The practice of examining the dead is very general in -the hos- 
pitals—is known to be so—is rarely even objected to—nay is often soli- 
cited by friends, and witnessed by them—they are anxious to know the 
cause, and are sensible that can frequently be discovered only by actual 
inspection. And even among the higher classes, if prejudices did exist, 
they are fast wearing away. Sir Henry Halford, the great aristocrat 

doctor of the day, assures the Committee he should not be deterred from 
soliciting permission to examine, from any fear now of wounding the 
delicate feelings of the very nicest of the nobility. 

That the existing prejudices are directed not against dissection, but 
against exhumation and publicity, is manifest from a multitude of facts. 
The hospitals, which have dissecting schools connected with them, are 
not the less frequented since the erection of them ; on the contrary, those 
very hospitals are of the highest repute. The Irish, whose prejudices 
are conceived to be strongest, seem, after waking the dead, in reality, to 
care little what becomes of them. No horror is expressed at the intro- 
duction of dead bodies in Windmill-street, for instance, or anywhere in 
the neighbourhood of anatomical schools, where the people are accus- 
tomed to the sight. There is no evidence, in short, that any body cares 
about dissection, except in the case of relatives ; and as to relatives even, 
they do not object to examination, nor would they to dissection, if they 
knew better what was meant, or were convinced of the advantage to be 
derived from it to the living. At Dublin, in particular, Mr. Crompton, 


1828.) Report from the Dissection Committee. 343 


the surgeon-general of Ireland, carried on his anatomical pursuits with 
open doors—every one was at liberty to go in and look at his dissec- 
tions, and attend his lectures. The consequence was, that a great num- 
ber of porters, and ostlers, and the poorer people, came into his lec- 
tures, and when they were finished, he took the opportunity of pointing 
out to them the structure of the body, and the importance of such know- 
ledge, till they became so interested, and so favourably disposed to dis- 
section, that they brought him bodies themselves, and, in several instances, 
where bodies had been exhumed, the relations on discovering it, came 
with the greatest calmness, and said, they believed he had the body of a 
wife or child, but they did not wish to make any disturbance, and 
removed it without the slightest commotion. And ethers speak on their 
own knowledge, when delivering popular lectures on anatomy, of the 
prejudices of the lower classes being at once removed. 

But then—as to funeral rites-—why in God’s name let them be per- 
formed. But the bodies must be buried, and if you then exhume, you 
do the very thing which is obviously a thousand times more revolting 
than the act of dissection. Well, but cannot these rites be performed, in the 
house, and over the body, while in the coffin—as is the case every where 
with Catholics—and the remains, when examined and done with, con- 
signed to the earth? But even this is disturbing after the solemnities 
of religion, Still the case is not irremediable. The bodies may be 
buried with the usual solemnities, after dissection ; and security be taken 
from the anatomist for the due execution of them. The student, more- 
over, might pay the expences, and thus relieve the parishes. These 
expences seldom exceed a pound, and two would not be grudgingly 
given; and neglect might be punishable by a very severe fine. This 
good effect, also, might be worked upon the student—he would be made 
more careful—he would treat the remains with less indifference—and the 
wanton and hardening practices, which now prevail in the anatomical 
schools, would be usefully checked. 

But bodies, in dissection, are separated limb from limb—every muscle 
stripped, and every bone bared. No matter ; the parts are still easily 
collectable—few, comparatively, are required to be retained; and 
whether the parts are thus collected at the end ofa week, or of two, or 
of ten, seems of little importance, provided the remains are finally con- 
signed to the earth, in obedience to the demands of public decency, and 
in satisfaction of our cold but perhaps common sympathies. 

Still it may be said, that this exclusive usage of the bodies of the 
forlorn and forsaken, is fixing another stain upon poverty. Dissection 
is a part of the legal punishment for murder, and you thus confound the 
unfortunate with the criminal. Then put an end to it, as a penalty, 
altogether. Execution alone, will do as much in the way of deterring, 
as execution coupled with dissection. Does any one imagine the mur- 
derer thinks of his own dissection ?—that any one contemplating such 
an act is deterred by any earthly consequence but that of detection and 

his own consequent execution? For the service of the anatomists, the 
numbers from this source, it appears, is insignificant ; and it is, de- 
cidedly, of more importance to them to remove the prejudices which 
spring from this degrading cause, than to retain and vindicate their 
claims upon the bodies of murderers. 
But some superfine advocate for justice will interpose, and say, you 
are inflicting an evil exclusively on the poor ; whereas, if the object of 
dissection be calculated for the benefit of all, the rich should take their 


344 Report from the Dissection Committee. [Ocr. 


chance, or their share. The objection is not only nonsensical, but inap- 
plicable. The bodies are unclaimed ones, and the rich are never in that 
forlorn and lonely condition. Besides, the rich, by the inevitable course 
and destiny of circumstances, are the persons who are entitled, or at least 
alone enabled, to secure to themselves the exemptions and privileges of 
society. Privations and hardships are the inevitable lot of the poorest ; 
and it seems, indeed, a small additional affliction, to suffer that, which 
while alive would probably trouble them little—which they know not 
would certainly befall them—and of which, when dead, they must be 
insensible. 

An all the recent exhumations, which have justly excited so much dis- 
gust, it is the poor that have been the disinterred parties. They are 
buried nearer the surface ; the rich are commonly bricked up, or monu- 
mented over, or placed in securer coffins, or too deep in the earth to be 
accessible to the body-snatcher. 

Moreover, the poor are, after all, the very persons who are most in- 
terested in the cultivation and spread of anatomical knowledge. Always 
there will be some skilful men, and their services the rich will command. 
But the more medical men are made effective anatomists, the more will 
the utilities from this source come down to the poor. The rich now 
have the benefit of the skilful, and the poor, except in hospitals, have 
not ; but if the race of practitioners generally improve, the poor must 
share the advantage. 

Objections are not yet exhausted—it will be recollected by some, that 
with this facility for obtaining bodies, the students who are now gone to 
Paris, and Dublin, and Germany, will all rush back to London, and 
besiege the schools; instead of 500 dissectors, there will probably be 
speedily a thousand—and how are these to be supplied? If there be a 
probability that the students will multiply to a thousand—the unclaimed 
bodies will, as probably amount to 3,000, which at once removes the 
embarrassment. 

Still some may on this ground be seriously alarmed at the augmenta- 
tion of numbers in the medical schools, and the consequent inadequacy 
of the unclaimed funds, and therefore we will venture to suggest, that 
these students need not all flock to London—that nothing but a senseless 
regulation of the College of Surgeons makes attendance in London 
imperative. The only schools the college chooses to recognise are those 
of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen ; and among 
other qualifications required, is attendance, for one year, at St. Bar- 
tholomew’s, St. Thomas’s, the Westminster, Guy’s, St. George’s, the 
London, and the Middlesex, in London; the Richmond, Stevens’s, and 
the Meath, in Dublin; and the Royal Infirmaries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
and Aberdeen ; or four years at a recognised provincial hospital, and six 
months at least at one of the before-mentioned schools of anatomy. The 
experience to be gained at many of the country hospitals far exceeds that 
of some London ones. Westminster makes up only 82 beds, while many 
provincial institutions have 300. 

Remove these restrictions, and many of those who are now, by neces- 
sity, and little to their convenience, and not much to their advantage, 
forced up to London, would remain in the provinces. Manchester, 
Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, would become effective medical 
schools, and the number of town students would thus be kept down, and 
the supply of subjects of course undrained. A greater number might 
then also be granted to superior and ardent students, and the benefit, in. 


1828.] Report from the Dissection Committee. 345 


the long run, be felt, in the growth and produce of the science, and the 
improved skill of all. 

The advantages, direct and indirect, ought not to be lost sight of. The 
‘extinction of the resurrection-trade is sure and certain. Society will get 
rid of a most disgusting and degrading employment, and one door of 
depravity be closed. The agents of this deplorable occupation, with the 
exception of three or four, who are spoken of as conducting their business 
with some decorum, are, all of them, to the amount of 200, of the very 
worst description of rogues which fertile London can produce. They 
are all of them thieves, more or less—making body-snatching the screen 
of other enormities, and employing their carts in the conveyance of the 
spoils of burglaries. 
~*~ The anatomists themselves will be shielded from the necessity of 

_ bargaining with these filthy wretches—of violating, personally, and by 
subornation, one law, to enable them to avoid incurring the penalties of 
another—of exposing themselves to upbraidings and insults—the perils 
of popular odium—the indignation of an excited and ignorant multitude— 
protected from the impositions and extortions of the most worthless of 
men—from informations—from the visits of the officers of the law—from 
prosecutions—from indemnities. 

Lecturers will gain a fairer remuneration for their labours. Never 
‘overpaid, under the existing system, they have been obliged to purchase 
subjects, at a high price, and sell them to the students at a low one—buy- 
ing them at fourteen guineas, for instance, and selling at eight, and the cost 
of indemnities falling wholly upon them. Mr. Granger states he incurred 
an expense of 50/. for allowances to one resurrection man, who was two 
years in prison; and during the present season he has expended several 

} ‘guineas in supporting another man’s family while he was in prison. 
‘Private lecturers may also resume, and students who have no time to 
lose, may pursue their studies through the summer as well as winter— 
‘which, by the difficulties thrown in the way of supply, they have been, 
for some time, prevented from doing. The students too—few of whom 
can bear expences—will be relieved ; and instead of eight guineas for a 
subject, the utmost need be but two—even if it be thought expedient, 
which we think it would, to impose upon them the expense of burial. 

The country will quickly share the benefit in the increased skill of 

the profession. Of the kind of improvement, we may judge from a reply 
‘of Sir Astley Cooper’s, to a question from the Committee :— 


. © A man, when I was first at St. Thomas’s hospital, which was in the year 
1784, used to exhibit himself, and receive money from the students for the 
exhibition, because he was one of those remarkable persons who had re- 
‘covered from an operation for what surgeons call popliteal aneurism, which 
‘disease arises from the giving way of an artery in the ham, and for which it is 
required that the artery of the thigh should be tied; this man had the artery 
tied, and recovered. ~At the present moment, there is not an individual 
who is educated in London, who would not be ashamed of himself if he 
could not perform that operation, or tie any of the accessible arteries in the 
body. Surgery is also improved in the diminution of operations ; for at the 
time at which I first entered the profession, I should say there were at least 
three operations for one at the present moment. At that time, a man who 
had an injury to his head, was very generally trephined ; but now that opera- 
‘tion is rarely performed. At that time, limbs were amputated for compound 
_ dislocations, but now very rarely.” 


MEM. New Serian<aV ov. VI. Nov34. 2Y 


346 Report from the Dissection Committee. [Ocr. 


Supposing, then, that the unclaimed bodies of our public institutions 
are consigned to the purposes of dissection, how will the matter be best 
arranged? Must all be left to the parish-officers, to grant or refuse at 
discretion? We should be little disposed to leave any thing to the dis- 
cretion of individuals, who are never likely to concur, and who are 
changing every year. No, let all be done openly and definitely. Little 
as we are disposed to add to laws, a legislative act is the only remed 
—one that shall make the unclaimed dead disposable and distributable 
to the public hospitals, and acknowledged private schools, according to 
their exigencies; not compulsorily, like a penalty, but as they are 
required, because there will be periods when few comparatively are 
wanted, and then the unrequired bodies must be buried in the usual 
course of things. This must be done under the direction of officers 
appointed by the College of Surgeons. The schools will give them 
notice of their wants; the parishes of their dead; and the officers will 
immediately direct where the body is to be taken, or if it be not 
required, will give an order for the burial. But once legalize the supply, 
and regulations will soon be effectively framed. 

The state of the laws relative to these matters will then soon bear a 
consistent appearance. At present, the dissection of the murderer is 
alone legalized. The act of robbing the grave, and the possession of a 
body, are forbidden by no statute law, nor by the common law speci- 
fically. The former has been gradually brought under the head of 
offences contra bonos mores; the mere possession of a dead body, is 
obviously not easily forced within the pale of contra bones mores ; but by an 
astute sort of inference, with the discovery of which lawyers and judges 
are usually delighted, it is stigmatized as an offence, on the ground that 
none can be legally dissected but a murderer ; the onus, therefore, is laid 
upon the possessor to prove it the body of a murderer; and if he be 
unable, the possession is an illegal act, and punishable like other deeds 
contra bonos mores. In short, neither lecturer nor student is now safe— 
possession of a body for dissection is an illegal act ; and safety can only be 
secured by shutting up the lecture-room, and abandoning the profession. 

And yet in the teeth of these sanctions and this practice of the law, 
the courts are ready to give compensation to patients, for what a jury 
shall determine to be injudicious or unskilful management of surgical 
cases, though impediments are thrown in the way, on all sides, of a 
successful prosecution of their profession, And even the very College 
of Surgeons, who might be expected to have some consideration for their 
brethren, however humble the station, and who must know the difficul- 
ties and obstructions attending the study of anatomy, insist rigorously 
upon certificates of attendance on dissection, and even personal dissection 
and operation, before they will empower a student of medicine to practise. 
Considerable numbers are positively rejected, not for want of abilities, 
or diligence, but literally for want of opportunity. ' 

The necessity for some legislative arrangement is imperative. The 
question can no longer be blinked. To secure a competent degree of 
skill, the necessary means must be sanctioned and protected, and legal 
obstructions removed. Exhumation the public indignation will itself 
suppress—it can no longer be borne with. Ignorance, also, that same 
public will as little tolerate—foreigners will be patronized—or the legis- 
lature must sanction the provision which circumstances, scarcely to be 
calculated on, fortunately furnish, at the least possible expence of painful 
feeling—the UNCLAIMED BODIES OF PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 


1828.J 347 


THE SMUGGLERS OF ALGESIRAS, 


« SHALL we weather the Point on this tack, captain ?” 
«« Why, she lies well up, doesn’t she, in spite of this heavy swell ?— 
Orsa! you there at the helm, keep her close—there now, steady’s the 
word.” 
_ And steady was the progress of the Buena Ventura as she glided by 
the southern extremity of the rock of Gibraltar, known by the name of 
Europa Point, so closely as almost to graze the sharp ledges of land 
that stand out from it to westward. The speakers were two mariners, 
on the deck of a stout felucca, bearing up against a heavy Gregale, which 
had blown in their teeth ever since they had left the African coast. They 
watched their slow advance in silence, measuring it by the gradual dis- 
appearance of particular well known objects, just rendered discernible 
by the unsteady light of a moonless sky. Presently one of the voices 
was again heard, uttering these words, but in a hushed and cautious 
tone :— 
« Shall we escape the guarda-costas, think you, captain ?” 
*?Tis hard to say.” 
_ © But had we not better lie-to for a few hours, and so get in with 
security ?” 
© Hold your babble, Diego ; have we not always escaped them ?” 
_ © No one knows how,” said the other; “ good luck’s no perpetuity. 
Old Serafin is a lynx now-a-days ; but he used, they say, to drive another 
trade. Hang those reclaimed felons! they are your true white-livered, 
straight-laced, awkward rogues, who haven’t in them one grain of 
Christian charity ;—I dread him and his myrmidons. We may land 
our cargo cleanly or not—but, at this early time o’ night, the odds are 
against us.” ; 
* Once more, Diego, I tell you there is no hazard.” 
~ © Once more, then, Captain Saavedra, I tell you frankly, I think you 
have no foundation for what you say. The tobacc ase 
' & Drown the tobacco!” cried the petulant commander ; “ drown it, 
bale by bale, rather than hear that endless tongue of thine! Go—bestir 
yourself ; we must about ship.” 
’ The mate, not being in his master’s secrets, turned on his heels, much 
discomfited and growling. In another minute the vessel was standing in 
towards Algesiras, keeping her head a little to the northward of the 
anchorage-ground. 
At the period of this conversation, Don Francisco Serafin was cobo 
- principal de rentas, or Preserver of the rights of coast, in the service of 
King Ferdinand. He was a man of some fifty years of age, pompous 
in office, active and circumspect. It was well known by what means he 
had obtained a post of such respectability, and requiring so much skill. 
Not through the regular changes and promotions, from one step in the 
police department to another ;—not by money, or the interference of 
ee, in his behalf ;—his own peculiar qualifications ‘purchased it for 

im, at a time when no other man in the kingdom was so well adapted 
to the employment. For the information of some who are strangers to 
these matters, it may be well to state that the harbour of Gibraltar is 
one of those which by charter is possessed of rights of exception from all 
_ port-dues, taxes, customs, and other ordinary levies. The merchants 


2¥ 2 


—— > —— = 


348 The Smugglers of Algesiras. [Ocr, ; 


who reside here have consequently the power of introducing all the 

productions of other countries at little or nothing beyond their cost 

price. The market, therefore, is supplied with luxuries collected from 

all parts of the globe: the rarest works of the most distant factories are 

displayed here for sale; and the silks and the perfumes which we only. 
know as the representatives or the barters of wealth, are here exhibited 

on a moveable stall. or huddled up under the old handkerchief of a 

Moorish pedlar. The close neighbourhood of this great depot to the 

main land has encouraged a system of smuggling with all the surround- 

ing sea-ports ; and the contraband trade is a fertile source of riches, as 

well to many of our less conscientious countrymen, as to the thousand 

petty pirates, who laugh at the preventive efforts of their own govern- 

ment officers. Riding at anchor under the protection of the English 

guns, no cargo, however suspected, could be seized or scrutinized by 

the employés of the Spanish king; and, benefiting by a favourable 

moment of absence or forgetfulness, nothing is easier than to effect a 

landing for these illicit goods on some unprotected point of coast, whence 

they may be transferred to their destination, or some covert place of 
sale. It would require a greater man than Don Francisco Serafin to haye 

prevented this traffic. But he was one who knew the nature and cha- 

racter, better perhaps than any man, of the professed smugglers of the 

day. In his youth, and for many years, he had been engaged in transac- 

+ = of this very kind, but with greater success than most of his com- 

peers, and to a larger extent than any one on record in those seas. It 

was then a profession of more risk, and he had few competitors to rob 

him of his gains. After amassing a large fortune, the fear of dying as a 

disgraced man, or the weariness of a life so turbulent and uncertain, 
led him to abandon the black flag, and tender his services to his country, 

to crush the trade which had been his sole support. His name, and the 

appearance of sincerity in his offer, secured to him the appointment 

which he now held. He migrated from Gibraltar to the town of Alge- 

siras, just across the bay, and prosecuted his measures for the capture of: 
piratical vessels with a diligence and cunning which only his long fami- 

liarity with their plans and system could have imparted to him. It was- 
natural that he should now be a man feared, but not respected ; his exe- 

cution of his office with so much promptitude was in itself unpopular ; 

people whispered that the old hobby was not. thrown away, but that 

Don Francisco could still defraud his sovereign, as he used to do, and, 
sin beneath all his saintship. But this suspicion, which seemed to origi- 

nate in the malice of those to whom he was so formidable, was backed 
by the enmity of some of the local authorities, and particularly of the. 
governor of the land forces, to whom Don Francisco was above all things 

obnoxious for the privilege which he held of calling out the military 

whensoever, and in as great a body as he chose. If, then, the dark 

rumours that went abroad respecting his concealed practices were con- 

stant and stoutly affirmed, it should be inquired how much these acci-. 
dental causes might have contributed to the circulation of them. We shall 

hear more of this as onr narrative proceeds. , 

The Buena Ventura glided gently over the waters of the bay, no longer 
ruffled by the strong breeze, which was now screened from them by the 
heights of the rock. In a few minutes all hands were busy in taking in, «_ 
sail, and throwing out her anchor ;—in a few minutes the whole of the 


1828.] The Smugglers of Algesiras. 349 - 


unlawful cargo was removed in silence, and with the most exact order, 
from the hold of the felucca to the open strand. Thence, one by one, 
the casks and bales were carried off by accomplices, between whom and 
the crew not a syllable of intercourse was exchanged ; so that no one 
but perhaps their leaders, and the subordinates employed in transporting 
these burthens, could say whither they were destined. A few small 
packages now only lay by the sea-side, awaiting the return of some of 
the sturdy Andalusians to clear off the last articles of the cargo. The men 
had not yet returned to their vessel, but, with their captain, still were 
grouped on the beach to watch the remaining goods. It was dark and 
lonely. Presently the sound of approaching footsteps, sinking scarce 
audibly in the sand; gave promise of a quick termination to their night’s 
duty. The others drew near, and were saluted as they came up, but 
without answering the challenge. There was a pause; but the succes- 
sion of wonder, distrust, and fear was too rapid to be distinctly noted, 
before the foremost of the new party, rushing on the captain, grasped 
his collar with surprising strength, and raising a lantern, hitherto con- 
cealed, illuminated each feature of his face with a full, level, and dazzling 
glare. A moment had not gone by before the light was again withdrawn, 
and some words of strange import whispered in: the smuggler’s ear— 
“ We shall meet again; I know you now!” This was all that passed. 
The leader, cheering on his associates, hurried away to a different landing- 
place ; their hushed voices were heard in close consultation, until lost 
in the distance, or drowned by the silvery sounds of their oars as they 
rowed off to a vessel lying about a hundred yards off. 
To explain this occurrence, it will be necessary to state that Captain 
osé Fernandez was the officer next in command to Don Francisco Serafin 
in the preventive service, as we term it in England. He was a fine, 
spirited young man, rapidly advanced to his present responsible post, for 
which his qualifications were to be found in many a hard action with 
foreign foes, and a system of admirable precaution against the trans- 
gressors of the coast-laws. Almost idolized by his cwn men for the 
indifference with which he encountered danger—honoured by his govern- 
ment with especial marks of favour—respected even by the illicit traders, 
whom he baflled with bravery, and circumvented without injustice—the 
only man to whom Fernandez was personally obnoxious was his superior 
officer, Don Francisco Serafin. Whether from jealousy of the young 
man’s spirit and enterprise, or from other secret and family reasons, the 
old Cobo had manifested towards him, from the day of his appointment, a 
cold, hard demeanour, which went far to counteract their common good 
designs for the advantage of their country’s commerce. This disaffection 
had been long fomented, and at last brought to a terrible consummation, 
by the gradual attachment which had sprung up between the young 
officer and his only child, a girl of about seventeen years old. J ulia, the 
girl of her father’s heart, but perhaps still more the darling of his pride 
than of his affection, was graced with a large share of those rich bounties 
which are showered upon the daughters of Spain by a sky pure, cloud- 
less, and glowing. I remember her years ago, ere her father had aban- 
doned his wandering profession, and his home on the opposite rock ;— 
Iremember her black, quick eye, and the graceful lineaments that pro- 
mised to be once expanded into perfect beauty. She grew up as a flower 
beside her Arab mother, and you might see the traces of a fiery blood. 


| 


350. The Smugglers of Algesiras. [Ocr. 


mingled with the gentler impulses that moved her feminine spirit. Her 
mother died at Algesiras, before the rigid education was perfected which 
would have fettered the girl’s wild character, and straightened it down to 
the tame mechanism devised by systems and false prejudice. As it was, 
Julia felt the strong incitements which gave a channel to her actions and 
sentiments: she was directed by thoughts not as yet curbed ; and, year 
by year, the strong natural independence of her soul warmed with fresh 
ardour, and burst forth more and more uncontrolled. It was no wonder 
then that the chivalrous young Fernandez, whose duties brought him 
frequently to the house, should seem to her fancy an object more glorious 
and fit for her affections than the homely interests provided for her by 
her course of education, or the usual gallants who followed in her father’s 
train. It was no wonder either that the passion, once formed, should 
strengthen and be obeyed. She was not skilled, or not willing, to exercise 
the arts of coquetry and dissimulation ; the tale graven on her heart 
might be read legibly on her cheek ;—and who would read the charac- 
ters so clearly, who would interpret them so justly, as he who had 
inspired the language and dictated the very words? They became 
affianced in heart; but the forms of love were prohibited by her austere 
father, whose influence, had it availed, would have interposed an eternal 
chasm between them. 

It was this young officer who, upon returning to his ship on the night 
in question, chanced to encounter a large party of men, evidently 
employed in the smuggling trade, just outside the town of Algesiras. 
His own party was very small; but he did not hesitate to challenge the 
marauders. ‘These, on the other hand, speedily disengaged themselves 
from their burthens, and, at the orders of their chief, charged the 
assailants with such alacrity and superior force, as to drive them off with 
great peril of life. Chagrined at his failure, but satisfied that he was too 
weak to attempt any thing farther, Fernandez hurried on towards the 
shore, in the hope of strengthening his detachment in time to surprise 
the others on their return. On the road, as we have seen, he was’ 
accosted by Captain Saavedra, who unwittingly so far disclosed his 
occupation as to assure Fernandez of the connexion between the two par- 
ties. He just managed to note the countenance of the captain for future 
recognition, and, afraid of losing his object, passed on to his boat without 
farther operations. But the commander of the Buena Ventura was too 
wily a man to give him a farther chance. Without loss of time, he too 
retreated with his companions, and was soon on board the nimble felucea. 
In a few minutes the vessel shot off from her moorings, and was lost in 
the forest of masts and hulks that lie at anchor at the New Mole, on the 
Gibraltar side of the bay. 

On the following morning, Fernandez appeared on duty at the house 
of Don Francisco Serafin. A meeting was reluctantly allowed. He 
stated the occurrence of the previous evening, and requested either 
advice how to act in the present emergency, or fuller powers and resources 
to trace this mysterious transaction to its source. His superior would 
indulge him with neither. He persisted “ that his visitor had not come 
officially, but to steal an interview with his daughter. He was astonished 
at his making this frivolous occasion the ground of so much affected 
anxiety. A mere ordinary case of the landing of contraband goods, and 
a glimpse at the owners !—What of that? Why did he not secure the 


1828.] The Smugglers of Algesiras. 351 


weaker detachment, instead of going on to his own vessel for fresh sup- 
plies? And what could be done now, at any rate? He confessed that 
he could see no more of these fellows, and that the ship itself had disap- 
peared. What chance had he of discovering the offenders ?—No, no ; 
he had his own designs ; but he would discomfit him, by listening no 
longer to such pitiful trash !’—And, therefore, he quietly indicated that 
the door was open, and his retirement much to be desired. 

But Fernandez, though he left his commander without farther remon- 
strance, was not deterred from the prosecution of his search. Piqued at 
this ill-treatment, he now sought to avenge himself by an exhibition of 
superior skill in detecting these covert enemies. The world would know 
that he had succeeded when Serafin had despaired; and succeeded, too, 
without assistance, without encouragement. Another motive, less acknow- 
ledged even by himself, may have excited him in this situation of affairs: 
—he may have looked suspiciously at the unusual reluctance of Don 
Francisco to follow up a search to which some clue had been given. 
It was unlike the general alacrity of the old man, and he was determined 
to sift this matter as far as his cunning would assist him. He called in 
to his aid a very powerful accessory. 

At the corners of the streets, and under the porchways of the large 
houses, in the town of Gibraltar, may often be seen swarthy, bearded 
men, in the Moorish attire, with one or two articles for sale displayed on 
a basket at their feet, or suspended round their neck, in the more usual 
manner of pedlars. A quick eye gazing round on the passmg crowd, 
and a certain expression, residing in no definite feature, but to be col- 
lected from the tout ensemble of the face, give to the European an idea of 
fraud and dissimulation, or of subtilty, in vain tempered by a hypocrital 
vacancy. Under the cover of a handkerchief, or some of the commodi- 
ties for sale, are more carefully deposited certain precious articles—such 
as bottles of Turkish otto of rose, eau de cologne, purses and ornaments 
of seraglio paste, silks, &c. The superstructure will be a layer of 
morocco slippers, and perhaps little richly-worked footstools, which may 

_ be exposed without caution. Before one of these venders of foreign 
rarities, a Moor named Hadoud, Captain Fernandez suddenly stopped 
short on the evening of the day of this disappointing interview with the 
Cobo principal. A glance of recognition was interchanged ; and the 
African, bustling his hand over the surface of his little pack, contrived 
to disguise from the other its contents, without appearing to be so 
engaged. 

«« Never mind, Hadoud,” said Fernandez; “ you are safe here, you 
know, and I want to speak with you on other matters. Follow me to 
_ the neutral ground; I will make it worth your while.” 
| The Moor hesitated for a moment; but the ingenuous tone of the 
young officer overcame his doubts. He fitted up his stock into a portable 
form, and slinging it at his back, trudged at some distance behind the 
other, who led the way through the principal street and over the lines, 
_ till they reached that flat isthmus which lies between the possessions 
of the English and the mother country. Here Fernandez awaited his 

follower, and being at last overtaken, here he communicated to him such 
of the preceding incidents as were necessary for his purpose, and made 
certain proposals, which, if accepted by the Moor, would possibly lead 
to the discovery he so much desired. Hadoud was a trader between 
the two continents—sometimes affluent, sometimes without resources— 


352 The Smugglers of Algesiras. [Ocr. 


but always alike enterprising, clever, and true to his trust. His character 
and mode of life were well known to Fernandez, and they had more than 
once come in Collision on the open sea. Former acts of kindness had 
rendered him bound in gratitude to the Spaniard, and this, added to a 
knowledge of his character, caused the present expedient to be adopted, 
with what success will be presently seen. Fernandez described accu- 
rately and minutely the appearance of the man upon whom he had fallen 
on the preceding night. He desired Hadoud, if possible, to hunt him 
out, and employ any means he might gain possession of to detect his 
employer, and the true state of these latter occurrences. He gave, 
moreover, a promise that, beyond the payment of any expenses which 
might be incurred, and with which of course he should stand charged, 
there would also be provided for the Moor a remuneration sufficiently 
generous to act as a present inducement for vigilance and exertion. 
This was the outline of the scheme, and it commenced favourably. Hadoud, 
as was expected by the officer, had no difficulty in identifying the person 
described ;—a long course of traffic in the same line had brought him in 
contact with most of the principals—and with Captain Saavedra, of the 
Buena Ventura, amongst the number. He could not clearly see his way at 
that time ; but if Captain Fernandez would rely on him, and give him time 
and means, he had no doubt his plans would be successfully prosecuted. 
The two men parted from each other, sanguine as to the issue of their 
scheme. 

We must now pass over toa later period of time, and suppose that the 
space of a month has intervened between this event and that which we 
are about to narrate. 

Towards sunset of a fine calm evening, a shore-boat was seen plying 
alongside our old friend, the Buena Ventura, as she lay attached to a 
buoy before the pleasant little town of Catalan. She had lately been a 
voyage, the exact particulars of which have not been handed down to us, 
and had arrived that very afternoon in the roads of Catalan—a town, as 
every one knows, placed on the eastern side of the rock, and just above 
Europa Point. A man in Moorish dress, who might speedily have been 
recognized as Hadoud of Gibraltar, descended from the gangway of the 
felucca, and was soon quietly seated in the boat, which, without other 
burthen, then put off, and, in the uncouth fashion of the place, was rowed 
onwards till the eye of the spectator might lose it amongst the thousands 
that flock about the landing-places and vessels moored near the port of 
Gibraltar. We also shall lose sight of the Moor for a few hours, leaving 
to the reader that mode of employing them which his fancy shall supply 
as the most appropriate to the occasion. 

This interval having elapsed, Hadoud might again be seen on the same 
spot of the neutral ground, where a few weeks before he had been 
engaged in that conversation with Fernandez which led to his subsequent 
voyage and the present events. His former companion was again with 
him, and the animated looks of either party proved that they were 
employed in considerations which interested them deeply, though we 
have nothing beyond the concluding words of their discourse to furnish 
any ampler indications of the true case. The young captain was pacing 
to and fro on the low ground, at times putting some short question to 
the Moor, who, in a more stationary attitude, shewed, by a quick accent 
and subtle look, that his own part in the matter was neither feigned nor 
trivial. Fernandez paused for a moment, and looking full into his com- 


1828.] The Smugglers of Algesiras. 35 


panion’s face, asked with more than common earnestness, whether the 
other would on his oath declare that he had failed in finding out the prin- 
cipal to whom Captain Saavedra had been playing in the character of 
subordinate ? 

* As I trust in the Prophet,” he replied, “all my exertions have 
proved fruitless. I have told you what I know ; if you choose to benefit 
by it, well. You may defraud me of my compensation by rejecting 
what I counsel ; but, as sure as there is wisdom in experience, you will 
find it sufficient for our purpose.” 

« What, you feel assured, then, that we may trace the rogues from 
their landing-place to-night to the very warehouse in which their goods 
will be deposited ?” 

“ T do.” 

« And you are confident as to the hour and place ?” 

« T have it from the lips of the captain himself; he informed me of it, 
that I might be on the spot to effect any small purchase I might desire, 
not being willing to disturb his cargo till unshipped.” 

*« You do not think that confession could be extorted from him?” 

< T have tried better means than force, without effect.” 

* And you would recommend a reconnoitering party to follow the 
warehousemen or receivers to their place of concealment, and then burst 
upon them ?” 

« You have it exactly ; and my reward may depend upon the success- 
ful issue of the scheme.” 

A few words of preliminary arrangement farther were exchanged, and 
the men separated. 

The scene is now once more shifted, and will represent the same spot, 
and nearly the same actors, as were introduced in the commencement of 
our narrative. The crew of the Buena Ventura were busied under a 
midnight sky in transferring the cargo of their vessel from one to another, 
until the hold was completely cleared, and the beach lined with bales of 
various illicit wares. As before, they were received by different lands- 
men, employed by the owner to convey them in secrecy to the place of 
destination. Not a word, nor any sound, broke the silence of that 
hour beyond the rippling of the water over the sands, and the occasional 
noise made by some blunderer in his vocation, The huge masses of 
goods were gradually carried off, and the last packages were just com- 
mitted to the hands of a porter, when Captain Saavedra taking our old 
friend, Diego, aside, informed him, in a low tone, that he must confide 
to him the rule of the vessel for a few hours, as he had business on shore, 
and must for that time be absent. Honest Diego, always a pompous 
man, was too delighted with this momentary power to stay for any dis< 
cussion about its administration or limits. Wishing good morrow to his 

commander, he turned off towards the men, and collected them with a 
word of command both ludicrous and unseasonable. The crew re-em- 
barked in merry mood, under the auspices of their sot-disant Cesar ; but 
the jealous echoes of the quiet shore nearly punished him for his vain- 
; plory by an instant development of their transactions. He was soon, 

owever, beyond reach of harm; for the gib and topsails of the felueca 
were now filling with the breeze, and the Buena Ventura almost 
_ instantly was lost in the haze of night. 

Captain Saavedra followed up the rear of his servants, occasionally 
putting to them some inaudible question, or directing their line of 

M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 34. 2Z 


354 The Smugglers of Algesiras. [Ocr. 


advance. There was little or no light from heaven to guide them as’ 
they went, and they had consequently to trust to a dark lantern, which 
from time to time was allowed to throw out a single suspicious gleam in 
their front, and then was closed again. But the road seemed familiar to 
them, and they had no fears of lengthening it by unnecessary circuits. 
It now ascended a little from the beach, and, winding round some angu-’ 
lar rocks, lay for a while in the bosom of two banks, from which again 
it emerged, and traversed the open moor in a direction at right angles 
to the line of coast. They passed, at a distance, one or two rustic 
buildings, with here and there a feeble lamp, displayed in honour of the 
tutelar saint ; and this object, whenever it occurred, served at the same 
time to assist them in their route, and to caution them against the least 
noise on their progress. A larger structure, as of an opulent farmer, 
at last stood before them, and it seemed that this was the end of their 
journey ; for although from its windows gleamed more and brighter 
lights than they had yet seen, they deviated not a whit to avcid them, 
but advanced boldly and even hurriedly up to the gateway of the house. 
The foremost of the troop halted, and called out in some low patois to 
the inmates. The door was instantly opened, and one attired in their 
out-dress, and apparently a member of the same class, welcomed them 
upon their return. Having passed the threshold, Captain Saavedra stood 
forward, and inquired if the secretary could be seen. A lean, suspicious- 
looking rogue answered the inquiry in person, and demanded the wants 
of the interrogator. Saavedra looked at him significantly, and having 
briefly explained his present employment and circumstances, added, that 
he wished to have a personal interview with the master. 

«The master?” exclaimed the other; “he’s at St. Rocque, you 
know :”—and a grim smile sharpened the angles of his countenance. 

« No, no!” replied the captain—“ I am better informed than that ; 
*tis no use hesitating with me ; I have a passport.’”—And he exhibited a 
card, on which were drawn sundry figures in masonic hieroglyphics, 
and which, when recognized by the other, produced an instant change 
of visage. 

« I beg pardon, Sir,” said he, more meekly ; “ I was mistaken in my 
appreciation of your merit and qualifications. Come forward, Sir ; 
mind the step, Sir—here, to the right.” 

And the two important gentlemen retired through the secretary’s door, 
and soon to an inner room, in which the great personage, the zrnominato, 
the master himself, was to be found. Without at present describing this 
mysterious character, or the exact particulars of their secret conversation 
—important as must be the conversation of three such men, in such a 
place, at such a time, and with such strange characters round and about 
them—it will be enough to observe, that a sudden pause was, after a 
time, created in it by a tumult in the outer apartments, and the clashing 
of weapons, as of many men in contest. Fierce and loud exclamations 
were tossed to the skies—horrid cries of rage and agony, clamorque 
virum clangorque ! The countenances of the triumvirate fell; the secre- 
tary’s face was as a parchment, on which nature had long ago written 
some features in bad ink—the captain seemed to smell bilgewater—the 
master was conquered. Still, but with less riot, the commotion continued. 
The sounds came nearer as they diminished in violence ; and all had 
subsided, save a dying oath, or the moan as of a suffering man—when 
the sanctuary of the invisible three was burst open by a troop of Spanish 


1828. ] The Smugglers of Algesiras. 335 


soldiers. At their heard was Fernandez, covered with dust and blood. 
By his side, or just after him, came up Hadoud the Moor, with a drawn 
scimitar in his hand, and glancing fire as he went from beneath his 
dark eyebrows. They advanced to the table—and a word, a single 
word, bursting from the lips of the young leader, stopped the head- 
long career of the troops. 

« Serafin !” exclaimed Fernandez, as he gazed on the haggard coun- 
tenance of the man who sate like death between his two speechless 
accomplices 

« Serafin!” he exclaimed; and the flash of rage was clouded over 
by a sad and pensive expression, that indicated deep inward sorrow and 
unutterable meditations. 

« Ha! bloodhound!” cried the furious Moor, “is it you who have 
sunken my ships, and despoiled me of my property? Is it you who have 
branded me with disgrace, and made me homeless? Is it you who cursed 
the true believer, and smote so grievously his helpless little ones ?—Ha! 
is it not the Prophet who has blessed me in seeing this sight?” 

But his words passed across the unhappy man he addressed like whis- 
pers at midnight in the ear of a dreamer ;—his eye was glazed in idiotcy, 
and the half-opened mouth could not disclose the unmeaning syllables 
that he seemed on the eve of uttering. 

« Despatch him at once!” cried the Moor. 

« Hold! fool!” interrupted Fernandez ; “ you know not what you 
say. The laws ” 

« He has transgressed every one of them !” replied the other. 

« Ay, ay—true ; it may be so ;—but he is the father——Oh! God, 
have mercy !” 

The eye of the young soldier was filled with the tears of womanhood, 
and he did not recover from this overpowered state till another impreca- 
tion from Hadoud urged him to be on his guard. Composing himself as 

he might, he ordered his men to lead off the culprits to the town of Alge- 
siras, where they were to abide the course of the law. Taking his sta- 
‘tion at their head, he himself led the way to the gates, and gave all the 
necessary orders for his prisoners’ confinement. They were lodged 
together for the night, and, on the following morning, were brought 
before the municipal authorities for examination and commitment. Pre- 
sumptive proof of guilt was so strong, that no time was lost in sending 
them on to Madrid, to take their trial there for the alleged crimes and 
misdemeanors. In the mean time, Fernandez betook himself, disconso- 
late but not despairing, to the former house of Don Francisco Serafin. 
He was admitted to his daughter. He narrated the past circumstances, 
and begged that he might be allowed to investigate the secret chambers 
of the old Cobo, to ascertain his exact connexion with the illicit traffic 
which he was appointed to destroy. There he discovered several series 
of correspondence, and. other documents, demonstrating most fully the 
_ existence of most extensive dealings with the smugglers themselves. He 
collected these papers, and reserved them for subsequent use. He next 
proceeded to the offices and lower rooms, and beneath the ground- 
floor he found deposited several casks of powder, and other articles of 
suspicion, which he had also removed, and placed so as to be instantly 
disposable. Having done this by the assistance of the family servants 
and some of his own men, whom he secretly employed ander the cover of 
night, his next measure was to procure an interview with Julia as speedily 
2Z2 


356 The Smugglers of Algesiras. [Ocr: 


as possible. Having effected this, he told her in few words what he pro- 
posed to do. He said he should remove every thing that could criminate 
her father ; he had cleared the house, and before daylight the heavy com- 
modities would be at the bottom of the ocean, and the lighter ones burnt, 
or otherwise destroyed. He had no doubt but that he might succeed in 
gaining over Hadoud, and all those who had been actors in the scenes of 
that night ; and if this desirable object could be attained, his plan was to 
disappear with them in his own vessel for some foreign port, until the 
trial of her father had come on, that by their refusal to attest his guilt, 
nothing could be substantiated against him. He should be informed of 
their proceedings, and act as they pointed out to him for the wisest. As 
for himself, he was most unhappy to have been the instrument of the old 
man’s peril; but if his wishes and efforts could now be of any avail, the 
terrible fate which hung over him should be averted. He claimed 
nothing at her hands, but the privilege of having the hope of her remem- 
brance, and perhaps gratitude, when the object for which he was now 
about to expatriate himself should have been achieved. 
They parted in the dead of night, and to this hour have not met again. 
Fernandez had influence enough with his followers, not excepting 
Hadoud, to induce them to acquiesce in his plan. The delinquent Serafin 
was conducted to Madrid, butall testimony against him had disappeared. 
A few whispers and some circuitous evidence were alone left to affix on 
“him the disgrace he so well merited. To complete the romance of this 
story, it would be well to anticipate the verdict of acquittal, which the 
court will have to pronounce on him ere long. But these events and 
characters not being built on fable, it is more exact to state that he is still 
awaiting this probable termination to his trial, and a happy return to his 
daughter. It should be added, that Fernandez and his companions at 
first crossed over to Tetuan, whence they issued at different times, and 
appeared in the streets of Gibraltar whenever and wherever this might 
be done with safety. He will probably remain there until the last 
accomplishment of his wishes, now no longer delayed by the hostility of 
Don Serafin, but by the wish of his daughter that her father may be 

present and sanction the nuptials with a paternal benediction. 

FEVAH. 


1826.) . [ 357 J 


METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS: N° II. . 


In the midst of all that real or apparent prosperity which distinguished 
the year 1824, and which ended in the panic at the latter part of 1825, 


_ projects of improvement in the interior of our country, and for the embel- 


lishment of our metropolis, kept pace with those for digging the bowels 
of the peaceful earth in Mexico, and other parts of the world, in search of 
gold and diamonds. New canals were excavated—new rail-roads laid 
down in the country—and new streets planned in town. One projected 
an opening from Blackfriars’ Bridge into the North Road, to the utter 
demolition of that assemblage of sweets collected for a century in Fleet 
Market, and of the pickpockets in Saffron Hill. A second projector 
planned a street—certainly very much wanted—to lead from Waterloo 
Bridge to the same point ; and a third proposed another, equal in width 
and magnificence to Regent Street, to lead from Charing Cross to the 
British Museum. This last has likewise been taken into the considera- 
tion of Mr. Nash, and is now partly in progress—an act of parliament 
having been obtained to carry it into execution as far as Chandos Street. 
Two new bridges, in addition to those which have been built, and the 
one which is now building, were among the different projects ; while 
others, not contented with going over the water (the general path, by- 
the-by, of most projectors), determined to go under it ; and the Thames 
and its finny tribe, not being sufficiently annoyed by the gas, was con- 
demned to be bored with a tunnel—at which attempt it appears to have 
been so indignant, that it has completely revenged itself upon the vio- 
lators of its peaceful bed, by stopping the project in the midst of its 
execution. That this was a bold undertaking, conceived in the true 
spirit of scientific speculation, and a work of art that, had it been com- 
pleted, would have remained to posterity a noble example of the science, 
and industry, and perseverance of the present day, and a wonder the 
more for the lion-hunters of the metropolis, nobody can doubt. But a 
sober consideration of the subject (and where water is alone concerned, 
we ought to give it no other) must convince any dispassionate person 
that it was only fit to be admired as a work of art, and could never have 
realized either utility or profit at all commensurate with the immense 
expense of the undertaking. This was, however, a circumstance which 
only concerned the subscribers ; it did not deteriorate from the nobleness 
of the project itself, or the ingenuity of the scientific projector ; and we 
are among those who are exceedingly sorry that the want of money has 
condemned us to be contented with only half a tunnel. 

While Mr. Brunel was working under the Thames, Colonel Trench, 
with his usually active mind, was labouring to adorn the north bank of 
the river with terraces and quays—which, certainly, could his plan have 
been accomplished, would have ranked among the greatest and the 
grandest improvements of the metropolis. : 

Colonel Trench, sanguine as to the realization of his plan, came into 
the field of projection backed by the support of royalty. Dukes and 
duchesses, peers and M.P.s, graced the meeting at which he proposed 
and described his magnificent intentions ; and, that every thing might go 
on swimmingly, this first meeting was held on the water, in the state- 
barge of the Merchant Tailors’ Company. 

A direction, containing some of the first names in the country, was 
speedily formed, and bankers, architects, and engineers appointed—the 
first of which appointments was certainly rendered a sinecure, by the 
want of subscribers, 


358 Metropolitan Improvements. [Ocr. 


Mr. Rennie’s favourable report was read—tasteful designs of Messrs. 
B. and P. Wyatt were produced—the late Duchess of Rutland, of unques- 
tionable architectural taste, had given these designs the sanction of her 
approbation—and the late Duke of York presided at the meeting. But, 
alas! thus supported by noble and royal patronage—thus surrounded by 
peers, and legislators, and the rulers of the country—Colonel Trench 
forgot one thing—he forgot the coal-merchants!! The occupiers of the 
wharfs—the persons principally interested—even more so, perhaps, than 
the proprietors, since their trade depended upon their premises—were 
never consulted until the whole plan had been digested by directors, 
architects, and engineers, who, with all the beauty of their designs and 
science of their constructions, could not convince these obstinate wharf- 
ingers that the approach to their present open premises through arches 
built by Messrs. Wyatt and Rennie, would be an improvement. This 
formidable body, supported in their opposition by the Marquis of Salis- 
bury, a great proprietor—and the late Dr. Kitchiner, a little proprietor 
—overturned the project. 

What an abominable country this must be, in which the interests of a 
few obscure wharfingers, and timber and coal-merchants, can weigh 
down the interests and wishes of half the nobility of the country! Yet 
so it was ; and the project ended in the display of Colonel Trench’s elo- 
quence, and the exhibition of the really elegant designs of Mr. Philip 
Wyatt—for to the taste of this gentleman we attribute the seductive 
drawings (we can call them nothing else) that induced so many to 
patronize Colonel Trench’s plan. 

This project at the time made a great, and perhaps more stir, than 
many which were actually carried into execution. The “ gentlemen of 
the press” took up the subject. Argument after argument was bandied 
about in the newspapers and periodicals ; and it is really curious to look 
back at the different opinions and views which different writers took of 
the same subject. _ One called it a “brilliant proposal held out of embel- 
lishing in so magnificent a manner this part of the metropolis”—that the 
designs “ marked a judgment and good taste, which afforded the greatest 
promise for the accomplishment of this national object ;” while another 
pronounced it to be a plan “ good for nothing, but to put money into 
the pockets of the projector and his architects, and to empty those of the 
subscribers ; threatening great physical injury ; worthless as to all pur- 
poses of public pleasure or advantage, as it is hazardous to mary import- 
ant public and private interests.” 

Another writer calls it “a plan, than which one more pregnant with 
mischief, and more replete with absurdity, I will venture to say was 
never submitted to public consideration ;” the projector “ appears to be 
more qualified to draw beautiful plans than accurate conclusions.” 

Some asserted that it would stop the passage of the river ; others, that 
it would shut out all air from the Strand and its adjacent streets. San- 
guine people pronounced that it was beautiful, and that it promised the 
good citizens of London and Westminster a magnificent promenade, with 
distant views of the Surry Hills; while those of a saturnine tempera- 
ment declared that it would only be a space in which the smoke of the 
city and the fogs of the river might congregate with greater facility. In 
short, praise and abuse, reason and absurdity, defences and accusations, 
were bandied about on all sides; and the projectors were ridiculed or 
applauded, according to the temper or the interests of those by whom 
the question was discussed. i 

But this abuse and this opposition was not the only circumstance 


1828.] Metropolitan Improvements. 359 


Colonel Trench had to contend with. A Sunday paper set up a claim 
of Mr. Nash, as the originator of the plan of the Thames Quay, and 
very nearly accused the colonel of stealing his ideas from the architect 
in no very handsome manner. This, however, is denied by Mr. Nash, 
in a very polite letter—which still, however, left the matter in doubt as 
to which had to claim the honour of first originating the scheme ; neither 
of them acknowledging, what it is but fair to presume that they must 
very well have known, that the plan had been long ago projected, and. 
even reported upon; and a similar one was likewise suggested by Sir 
Christopher Wren, in his plan for rebuilding the city of London after 
the fire in 1666. 

The advantage of narrowing and deepening the River Thames had 
been very generally admitted ; and the late Mr. Jessop, the engineer, pre- 
sented a plan to the House of Commons, illustrative of the subject, 
which was published in the Report of the Select Committee for improv- 
ing the Port of London, in 1800. The late Mr. Mylne’s opinion had 
also been obtained upon the subject. An act of parliament was likewise 
actually passed (22 Chas. II. c. 2.) to set out a quay from London Bridge 
to the Temple. 

All claims, therefore, to originality must be given up both by Mr. Nash 
and Colonel Trench ; but, although this must be confessed to be the case, 
the colonel has certainly the credit—and no little one it is—of having 
reduced these general plans into detail, of having investigated the 
minutiz of its possible accomplishment, and of having exhibited some 
very tasteful designs as to its architectural execution. 

In any view which we may take of the subject, all commercial or 
private interests must be quite out of the question. We do not look on 
the project with the eye of a speculator, or with our hands in our 
pockets—but as artists; we consider it.only as a work of art—and as 
such, it is impossible not to pronounce the plan as one which would tend 
more to the embellishment of our metropolis than any other that has 
been projected. 

Petersburgh and Paris have their magnificent quays and boulevards— 
nay, even Dublin has graced the shores of its narrow Liffey with quays 
and buildings, of which the metropolis of the greatest country in the 
world might be proud; and the Thames—the magnificent Thames— 
seems alone condemned to roll its waters through coal, timber, and lime- 
wharfs, and to be used for nothing but a filthy sewage pouring into its 
streams, through mud-banks which are really a disgrace to London. 

Setting aside, therefore, all considerations of calculation, we cannot, as 
artists, but pronounce the plan of Colonel Trench as a magnificent 
embellishment to our national river and city, and, as such, regret that 
the rights of the citizens in 1825 should have had the same effect upon 
his plan, as their cupidity had on that of Sir Christopher Wren in 1666. 
Ina commercial country, however, profit must be the principal consider- 
ation ; and, ina free government, the rights of private individuals can 
very seldom be voted away for public benefit. 

Finding that there was so much opposition to the quay and terrace of 
Colonel Trench, other projectors issued a prospectus and plans for a rival 
construction of the same sort, on the Surry side of the river ; but as the 
gallant colonel’s exertions were paralyzed by the energetic opposition of 
the coal-merchants and proprietors, headed by his Grace of Norfolk, 
and the Marquis of Salisbury, so did the plan of the Surry Terrace die 
a natural death for the want of support. Judging from the lithograph 


oe 


360. Metropolitan Improvements. [Ocr. 


drawings of Mr. Philip Wyatt, it is impossible not to acknowledge the 
elegance of the design, and the apparent magnificence of the project. 
The feasibility of the scheme—the ultimate pecuniary profit attached to 
it-—the result as to its effect on the river—may all, be matters of doubt, 
and were of course open to dispute. But in the varied and general abuse 
which many in the violence of their opposition, cast upon the architec- 
tural designs for its execution, the writers were more influenced by their 
prejudices than by their judgments. i yw 

Determined, we suppose, to preserve a history of his exertions to 
accomplish his project, and that posterity might be aware of his indus- 
try—as well, perhaps, to prevent any future projector calling the future 
project of a Thames quay his own—Colonel Trerich has published 2 
quarto volume, purporting to be “ A Collection of Papers relating to the 
Thames Quay, with Hints for some farther Improvements of the Metro- 
polis.” It is this book which is now laying before us ; and, in addition 
to the complete detail of Colonel Trench’s plan, which it contains, it is 
certainly the most curious collection of various and opposite opinions upon 
the same subject that has ever appeared. It is, indeed, a series of broad 
assertions on matters, almost of fact, completely contradictory, and con- 
tains the opinions of some of our first scientific men on the subject, which 
may be of service in some future day. The book is; however, defective, 
inasmuch as it does not contain the lithographic architectural represen- 
tation of the plan ; and we wonder much at this omission, as the work 
contains seventeen plates of other plans projected by thecolonel. The inser- 
tion of these drawings would have rendered the work much more valuable. 

In concluding his history, for we must call it such, of this project, the 
colonel thus mentions the person from whose suggestions seem to have 
originated all the late improvements of the metropolis, though his name 
has never been mentioned, nor his plans adverted to, by any of the pro- 
jectors. Speaking of a portion of the plan, Colonel Trench says, “ that 
the individual who made this suggestion knew no more of Gwyn than I 
myself did: but it is singular, that in Nos. 75 and 76 of the explanation of 
his first plate, these very ideas are clearly and distinctly stated. Indeed, 
that wonderful man seems to have anticipated my (every, we presume) 
plan of improvement that has been contemplated or carried into effect, 
from 1766 to the present day.” The fact is, that almost all the late 
improvements have been suggested by, or copied from Gwyn’s book 
though few have had the honesty to acknowledge it, and give to this 
departed person the credit due to his genius. 

We now come to Colonel Trench’s “ Hints for some farther Improve. 
ments in the Metropolis.” The houses of parliament, and the courts of 
law, and the parts contiguous, are the first to which the colonel directs 
the attention of the reader ; and here he is quite as magnificent in his ideas 
as he had been in his quay. He speaks of sweeping down one side of 
Parliament Street, and constructing “a grand terrace, raised to the 
height of twelve or fourteen feet above the level of the street,” upon 
which he would erect a new Westminster Hall, new courts of justice 
a new House of Lords, and a new House of Commons.” Why, all bie 
architects of the kingdom ought to unite their talents to design a monu- 
ment in honour of Colonel Trench, for thus cutting out so much employ- 
ment for their genius; or, rather, the three attached architects of the 
Board of Works should have done this, since, had these projects been - 
carried into effect, they would have divided the employment, and the 
profit and the fame, all among themselves. 


1828. ] Metropolitan Improvements. 361 


The colonel then imagines “ an area of 1,000 by 500 feet, occupied by 
these buildings and surrounding streets, on terraces so far above the 
spring-tides, as to combine salubrity with grandeur ;”—“ the Houses of 
Lords and Commons, distinct yet adjacent, and so disposed that the 
apartment between them should be a central station for the throne, from 
which, on great and solemn occasions, the King might address the as- 
sembled Peers and Commons, each occupying their own house.” Cer- 
tainly very comfortable for them ; but, we fear, the King must have the 
lungs of a Stentor, or deliver the speech concocted by his ministers 
through a speaking-trumpet. “ Such an arrangement,” the colonel con- 
tinues, “ would get rid of that tumultuous and disgraceful scramble, in 
which, after struggling through narrow passages, rendered more dan- 
gerous by ascending and descending stairs, his Majesty’s faithful Com- 
mons rush into the royal presence, breathless and exhausted.” 

Our author then, quitting the imaginary, proceeds, in some very sen- 
sible and artist-like observations, on what has been done in this part of 
the town—induced, as he says, by “a strong personal feeling that the 
beauty, grandeur, and propriety of public buildings are really of great 
importance to national character.—I do not wish,” he continues, 
* for any thing of finery or extravagance: effect does not depend upon 
expensive decoration: a cheap building may be very beautiful from its 
symmetry, its just proportions, and its judicious position ; while a most 
expensive edifice, decorated with all the enrichment that art can execute, 
may fail to please, or may excite a feeling of regret at the waste of so 
much ornament.” 

Let professors read this unanswerable observation of an amateur, and 
blush for much that they have done. 

The colonel next illustrates his observations by various designs of his 
own, or rather designs of Mr. Philip Wyatt, made under his directions, 
shewing how he would have disposed of the buildings, and contrasting 
his plans of the alterations of the courts of law with those which have 
lately been carried into execution. Here the colonel is no longer utopian. 
His designs are in good taste and keeping with what was already there ; 
and we cordially confess them so far superior to those which are effected, 
that we sincerely regret his suggestions were not attended to. The 
designs in Plates vi and VII, being Views of the North and West 
Fronts of the Courts of Law and Parliament House, shew a good and 
well-digested knowledge of the /ocale and its capabilities, united with 
great architectural taste and judgment—a very rare union in the present 
day. 
We must conclude our observations on this part of the work before 
us with the following curious description, which the author gives us, of 
the manner in which buildings are ordered and executed under the com- 
mands of the Lords and Commons, and which is very well illustrated in 
the late Report made by the Select Committee upon Public Buildings. 

« Almost every thing,” the colonel says, “ that is now doing, or has 
lately been done, about the Houses of Parliament, bears the mark of 
haste and temporary expedient. The Committee of the Lords directs 
a certain number of rooms to be erected by a CERTAIN DAY, just as a 
general officer would order buildings to be erected in a cantonment for 
the temporary accommodation of his troops. ‘The Committee of the 
Commons adopts precisely the same course ; and some of its members dis- 
tinctly say, “ Let the House of Lords build what they please without 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 34. 3A 


362 Metropolitan Improvements. [Ocr. 


reference to us; let us build what we want without reference to 
them.” ; 

While such is the case, what unanimity of design can be expected in 
the improvements? What chance hasan architect of doing justice to his 
art or to himself? 

After bestowing a few pages and plates upon York House—which 
we congratulate the public has been constructed after the present 
design, said to be that of the late Duchess of Rutland, instead of 
after those upon which it was first began, and which would really have 
been a disgrace to the Park—the Colonel proceeds to the subject of a 
royal palace ; and here again he allows the magnificence of his imagina- 
tion to take the lead. The palace is placed near the Serpentine, in Hyde 
Park—the river and Kensington Gardens are made available as park 
and grounds—and a street is projected, leading in one unbroken line 
from the entrance to the Park at Grosvenor Gate to St. Paul’s cathedral, 
which is intended to form the magnificent termination of what would 
certainly be the finest street in the world. 

We have little hesitation in stating our opinion, that this is decidedly 
the best plan that we have seen for a radical improvement of the metro- 
polis. A street of such length, terminating at one end by an elegant 
triumphal arch, forming an entrance to the palace of the sovereign, and 
bounded at the other by such a metropolitan cathedral as that of St. 
Paul’s, would indeed have formed an architectural vista, which we 
imagine would have been perfectly unequalled not only by any thing 
that has hitherto been executed, but by any thing that has hitherto been 
imagined. 

_ The colonel finishes his book with some observations upon Gwyn’s 
« London and Westminster improved,” which he accompanies by a litho- 
graphic copy of one ofthe plans from the work, by way of illustration of 
his remark, that there is scarcely one of the late speculations of improve- 
ment in the metropolis that is not to be found in this work, published in 
1766. 

_ In this work may be seen all the improvements about Westminster, at 
Whitehall Place—Charing Cross—at the King’s Mews—in Pall Mall— 
Regent Street—in the Strand—Waterloo Bridge—quays on both sides 
the river—two situations for a royal palace—the improvements at Hyde 
Park Corner, with the splendid addition of a triumphal arch—burial- 
grounds—cattle-market—and abattoirs. “ In a word, the enlarged and 
intelligent mind of this man seems to have embraced and anticipated 
every thing, and has left us little to do but to read and consider his 
invaluable work, and, as far as circumstances will allow, to carry his 
views into effect.” 

Such is the just tribute which Colonel Trench pays to the genius of 
Gwyn—a tribute which he ought certainly to have received from other 
quarters, where his work has been of so much, though unacknowledged 
service. 

The colonel’s own book and plans form valuable additions to the sub- 
ject ; and it is with regret that we turn from his fairy visions of archi- 
tectural embellishment to the dull recollection of the pounds, shillings, 
and pence, which renders his magnificent projects utopian. Could ano- 
ther Columbus discover another new world, to pour inexhaustible mines 
of gold and silver into our country’s lap, we know no way in which it 
might be more beneficially expended than in realizing some of the 
plans of Colonel Trench. ' a 


1828.] [ 363 ] 


MODERN PICTURES. 


Ir is too much the fashion, among certain popular periodical writers 
of the day, to cry up the “old masters,” at the expense not merely of 
the moderns generally, but of those of our own country and our own 
day in particular. The praise of “old pictures” is a fertile subject ; 
and the writers in question seem to need no other motive for adopting it 
into their list, and recurring to it whenever occasion serves. And 
assuredly we shall not be the persons to contend that too much praise 
and admiration can be bestowed, on such painters as the best of the 
Italian and Flemish schools of the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies. But still 
we must insist, that to compare these painters and their works with those 
of our own day and country, to the disparagement of the latter, is a very 
suspicious mode of proving our love for art and its productions, or even 
of shewing our judgment in regard to them. If comparisons are pro- 
verbially “ odious,” it is because they are for the most part manifestly 
unjust ; and the one to which we are now referring is more unjust, and 
consequently more “ odious,” than almost any other that we are in the 
habit of meeting with, even in this age of comparisons : because the point 
in question is one on which the nature of our information (or rather the 
want of it) prevents us from instituting any just comparison whatever. 
Our attention is directed to a certain exhibition of “ old pictures” (the 
National Gallery, for example, or the annual selection at the British 
Institution)—every individual production forming which exhibition is 
there to claim, not our judgment, but our admiration—since the joint 
suffrages of half-a-dozen generations have already definitively pro- 
nounced it to be excellent in its kind: and we are bid to compare this 
exhibition with one not merely by modern, but by living artists, every 
production forming which is placed there to claim our judgment merely, 
in the first instance, and nol to exact our admiration, unless the latter 
feeling necessarily follows the award of our critical examination. 
—Now what possible conclusions can be drawn as to the relative 
condition of art at two distinct periods, by means of two dif- 
ferent exhibitions coming before us under these circumstances? It 
may be fairly stated, that every distinguished exhibition of pictures 
by the old masters, consists of works selected, on the ground of their 
merits (or supposed merits) merely ; and selected, too, from the best 
works of the best painters of the best ages of painting thatthe world ever 
knew ;—not the best age, but ages ;—and not of’one country, but of all: 
—whereas the collections of modern works with which it pleases our 
would-be critics to compare the above, are the productions of the artists 
of one country and of one year, and are scarcely selected at all, but are, 
in fact, presented to us with an express view to their after selection and 
appreciation. Let the exclusive lauders of “ old pictures,” and the pre- 
tended despisers of our modern Royal Academy Exhibitions, prove to us 
(if they can), that the old masters of any one country ever did or could 
have collected together, on any one spot, a set of productions, all painted 
during the previous year, which were equal in their aggregate of merit 
to any one Royal Academy Exhibition for the last four or five years ; and 
then (but not till then) we may possibly admit the policy, but will never 
admit the justice, of instituting comparisons between se-lections from the 
works of the dead, and col-lections of works of the living. But, in the mean 
time, we must beg to be of opinion that living English artists are very 


i. ~ 


364 Modern Piclures. [ Ocr. 


far from being the contemptible set of persons that a certain class of 
living English critics would persuade us ; and _ still more convinced are 
we,.that, whatever their pretensions may be, the way to make those 
pretensions higher than they are is not to hold them out as lower. 

We would not have it supposed, from the above observations, that we 
are inclined to deny the supremacy of the old masters: on the contrary, 
we are disposed to admit that supremacy, not merely over all living 
ones, but over all who have lived since their time. We are of opinion 
that, since the days of Titian, no one has lived possessing such an eye for 
colour, and such a perception of individual character, as indicated by the 
human face ;—that no one since Raphael has combined such an intense 
feeling of expression, of all kinds, with such a miraculous power of 
embodying it ;—that no one since Correggio has enjoyed so penetrating 
and absorbing a sentiment of female grace and loveliness, added to so 
unequalled a skill in working out that sentiment into visible images, for 
the delight and benefit of others ;—that no one since Rembrandt has even 
imagined, much less achieved, such brilliant pictorial triumphs, by. such 
seemingly inadequate means as mere light and shade ;—and, finally, that 
no one since Claude has seemed to feel and understand, still less been 
able (as he was) to make others feel at least, if not understand, the myste- 
rious correspondence and sympathy that exists between the objects of 
external nature and the heart of man. All this, and more to the same 
effect, do we 


** Most powerfully and potently believe ;” 


and what is more, we “ hold it honest to have it so set down.” But 
we do not hold it either honest, or reasonable, or politic, to have it set 
down in a form, and witha view, to the disparagement, or what is still 
worse, the discouragement, of other things and persons—which latter 
have more than enough to discourage them, in that absolute want of a 
national feeling for their art, and consequently a national patronage of it, 
against which they have to contend. 

Among the multiplicity of moral maxims, each contending with its 
fellows for the palm of folly, which every nation possesses, and calls 
them its “ wisdom,” perhaps that which deserves to carry off the said 
palm is the one which bids us “ never speak ill of the dead.” If the 
word “ living” were substituted for “ dead,’ the maxim would have 
some merit. Of the dead nothing should be spoken but the truth; and 
whatever is true should be spoken. But in regard to the living, we are 
half-inclined to admit the soundness of the modern law dictum, which 
lays down that “ the greater the truth the greater the libel.” At any 
rate, we would contend that, if there were no other reason or motive for 
so doing, social policy would teach us to “never speak ill of the’ 
living, except in very extreme cases indeed. Not that we would have 
any thing but ¢he truth spoken of any person or thing, at any time, or 
for any purpose whatsoever. But there is nothing, either in reason or in 
justice, which requires that “ the whole truth” should be spoken at all 
times ; and every thing, both in reason and in justice, forbids that it 
should be so spoken in a tone and temper calculated to make it an instru- 
ment of unmingled mischief to some, without the possibility of good to 
any. 
We would apply the foregoing remarks to the art of painting in Eng- - 
land at the present day. Its condition is: strong and flourishing enough 
to give it claims to great and constant encouragement, but not enough so 


1828-] Modern Pictures. 365 


to enable it to do without these, at least with any prospect of progressing, 
or even of maintaining its present station. We have (to say nothing of 
“ two, or one” great painters) many good ones, who may become great by 
proper treatment. But we have none—not even one—who (like many 
of the great ones of other times) must and will become great by the 
mere force of their genius alone, and in spite of all things that can 
oppose or hold themback. And the reason of this is to be found, not in 
the different natural constitution of men’s minds, but in the different 
circumstances under which those minds are nowadays subject to be bred 
up and moulded. In a highly refined state of society, it is next to impos- 
sible that a genius, strongly marked by nature, should retain those marks 
long after its possessor quits his cradle. This is at present as little to be 
looked for, as that a piece of money should retain the sharpness of its 
stamp for any great length of time, while forming part of the “ circu- 
lating medium” of a great commercial country. As little is it to be 
expected, that minds of the finest natural perceptions (and such the mind 
of a great painter must necessarily be) should consent to run the risks, 
and undergo the consequences, almost certainly attendant on the early 
pursuit of a profession like painting, in an age and country where we 
acknowledge but one unpardonable crime—that of poverty ; and but 
one unfailing source of real personal distinction—that of wealth. 

But our limits warn us that we must turn at once to the more imme- 
diate object of this paper,—which is, not so much to argue the impolicy 
of withholding the encouragement of enlightened and judicious public 
praise from the painters of our day, as to shew its manifest injustice, by 
a reference to their actual merits and pretensions. And with this view, 
it is our intention simply to describe a few of the latest novelties that 
have been presented to the British public in this department of Fine Art, 
and which are still before it for proof and illustration of our remarks. 
We shall commence with Mr. Martin’s Fall of Nineveh. 

If it were necessary to adduce proof that the actual condition of Art 
among us is any thing but contemptible, and its prospects far from dis- 
couraging, this picture alone would answer the purpose in view. It is 
not only a production of real genius, but it is one which could not have 
been produced except under circumstances highly favourable to the- 
future development of talent and genius of a similar kind. What we 
mean is, that this picture cannot be looked upon as a single and distinct 
result of the art of painting merely—a result which might have been 
produced at any given time, or by any person gifted with mental quali- 
ties and habits similar to those possessed by its author. It supposes, in addi- 
tion to mere genius and great pictorial acquirement, a high state of mental 
refinement, not only in the artist, but in the general public to whom 
his work is addressed. Without meaning to place it above, or even on a 
level with, some of the productions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries in Italy, we will venture to assert that no painter living in those 
centuries could have produced it ; and if for no other reason, simply for 
this—that at that time the public taste was not in a condition to receive 
and appreciate it. Let us not be mistaken. The public taste of that day 
was of a higher and rarer cast than any which has prevailed since ; and 
the productions of Art which were offered to it were of a higher quality 
in proportion ; each acting reciprocally upon the other, as these are 
always found todo. The chief productions of the time of which we 
speak, were more highly endowed with those highest of all endowments in 
works of Fine Art, individual passion and character ;--as, indeed, the 


366 Modern Piclures. [Ocr. 


productions of Art in an early stage of society are always found to be, as 
compared with those of a more cultivated and advanced stage. They 
differed from the best which have followed them, much in the same man- 
ner that the [liad differs from the Aineid ; and from much the same 
causes. But the fine production of which we are now to speak. if upon 
the whole inferior in general character, because inferior in intensity of 
moral effect, to many early efforts of Art that might be pointed out, is 
equally original and specific in its character with them, and, we venture 
to think, indicates as high and as rare a degree of mingled genius and 
acquirement as any one among them which could be named. Perhaps 
we shall best attain our end by at once proceeding to describe in detail 
“The Fall of Nineveh ;” and in doing this, we shall endeavour (as the 
artist has done) to attract and concentrate the interest upon the chief 
moral point of the subject, by referring to all the merely mechanical 
details first. ‘To make any previous reference to the traditional story on 
which the picture is constructed, seems unnecessary. 
In the upper portion of the extreme left of a space which is almost 
entirely covered with the buildings forming a vast and splendid city, is 
seen a mass of raging flames, devouring all before them, and casting a 
lurid light over all surrounding objects. Immediately beneath: this 
portion of the scene lies a great river, traversed by a superb bridge, and 
covered with a cloud of vessels, bearing myriads of the besieging army 
which has been for years lying before Nineveh without being able to 
make any impression on it. At the moment, however, which is chosen 
for the point of time represented in the picture, the hand of Omnipotence 
seems to have interposed for the destruction of the devoted city ; as the 
enormous walls, which have hitherto rendered the space within them 
impregnable, are now crumbling beneath the united power of lightnings 
from above, and the rising river from below ; and various breaches are 
visible in them, through which the living flood of the enemy is pouring. 
The whole space above alluded to, together with a considerable portion 
of space on this side the city walls—which is covered with myriads of 
the besieging and defending armies, engaging each other at all points—is 
to be considered as the distance of the picture ; and there is not a single 
point of that distance which is not peopled with a separate and distinct 
human interest, in addition to that which it includes as a grand and gene- 
ral whole. The other distances, on the right, are occupied by the 
remote buildings of the vast city ; and, beyond them, by a dark obscure, 
through which the mighty tomb of Ninus rises like a huge “ exhalation,” 
—which would be almost indistinguishable from the clouds into which it 
rises, but for the sacrificial fires that are seen glimmering upon its sides. 
We now reach the fore-ground, the extremities of which are occupied, 
that on the right by the massy towers, terraces, and hanging-gardens of 
the royal palace, and that on the left by the gorgeous funeral pile which 
has been prepared by order of the king, Sardanapalus, and on which has 
been heaped all the wealth of the palace, to be destroyed, in case of 
extremity, together with its proud owner, and his host of beautiful con- 
cubines. These latter, together with the queen herself, and all the chief 
persons of the court, are collected into a variety of distinct but united 
groups, on a terrace in front of the palace, overlooking the principal 
scene of the combat below, and including the point at which the specta- 
tor is supposed to be placed: and at this point it is that the chief human 
interest of the picture is sought to be concentrated. The time is con- 
siderably after sunset ; and the lights by. which the various objects are 


1828. ] Modern Pictures. 367 


rendered visible consist‘of a lurid and stormy moon—the fires of the 
burning city—and, finally, a tremendous flash of lightning, which wraps 
the whole of the fore-ground and its figures in a blaze of brightness. 

In looking upon this splendid combination of imagery, our first and 
chief attention is attracted to where unquestionably it ought to be, in a 
work of this nature, but where it as unquestionably has not been always 
attracted in Mr. Martin’s previous works—namely, to the central groups 
forming the chief point of human interest, in virtue of the human passion 
and character which they are made instrumental in developing. We 
have no hesitation in asserting, that, whatever may have been the case in 
former instances, in this before us Mr. Martin has given the due atten- 
tion, and neither more nor less than was due, to this human portion of 
his subject ; and that, in fact, he has balanced this portion of it against 
the other, with consummate skill, and with perfect success. Farther, we 
will assert that all is attempted, in this department of the work, of which 
the subject was fairly susceptible ; and that in scarcely any of all the 
various points has the artist failed, or even fallen short of what may be 
_ supposed to have been his own conceptions of the matter in hand. In 
fact, as it must not be concealed that, in his previous productions, Mr. 
Martin had shewn very considerable deficiencies in the practical skill con- 
nected with this most important department of his art, so let it not now 
be denied that a most striking improvement is observable even on the 
very first glance at the work befcre us ; and that the more its details are 
examined, the more manifest this improvement becomes. We have, here, 
no deficient or contradictory expression—no awkward, extravagant, or 
theatrical attitudes—and very little, if any, defective drawing. And, on 
the other hand, we find a very considerable portion of real pathos and 
passion; much elegance, dignity, and spirit of design; great truth, 
united with extraordinary brilliance of colouring ; and a skill in compo- 
sition and arrangement in all respects corresponding with these. It gives 
us great and unqualified pleasure to be able to say this ; and Mr. Martin 
may be assured that those who, in noticing his work, neglect to say as 
much, have been accustomed to point out his real or supposed defects 
in this particular, less from a love of art and of justice, than from that 
feeling of envy which is incompatible with either a real love for art or a 
sound judgment concerning it. In truth, we can scarcely anticipate what 
fault even the class of persons in question will find, in Mr. Martin’s treat- 
ment of the human face and figure in this picture. 

The point of time supposed to be depicted is thatat which Sardanapalus, 
perceiving the inevitable fate of his city, and consequently of his throne 
and person, points to the funeral pile which he has ordered to be pre- 
pared for himself and his favourite concubines, and is proceeding to take 
possession of it ; while his queen and all his court are about him, each 
and all variously affected, according to their various characters and cir- 
cumstances. The principal group—that including Sardanapalus and his 
loying and beloved Azubah—is (as a group) at once grand, simple, and 
touching, in a very high degree ; and, in regard to the details of it, the 
unaffected majesty of the royal lover is in all things answerable to the 
surpassing loveliness of his self-devoting slave and mistress. 

The group second in importance is little, if at all, inferior in merit and 
interest to the one just described. It is that of the queen, who is led 
reluctantly away by her maidens from the horrors of the scene, which 
her lingering love for the king will scarcely allow her to quit. There is 
a modest and tender sweetness in the character of her beauty, which 


368 Modern Pictures. [Ocr. 


greatly adds to her effect upon the scene of passion of which she forms 
so conspicuous a part. Many other of the female figures in this portion 
of the picture merit particular commendation, no less fer the passion 
and pathos that are educed from them, than for the manner in which 
they are made to balance and bear out the composition, so as to render it 
an effective and consistent whole. The female figures undoubtedly bear 
away the palm, both of merit and of interest, from those of the males ; but 
these latter are by no means deficient in either spirit or appropriateness ; 
though, in point of distinctiveness, as well as of variety, perhaps they are 
a little deficient. But, among all the figures forming this great central 
department of the work, the only one to which we decidedly object is 
that of the gigantic warrior a little to the left of the centre, who is lifting 
his sword to punish some slaves, who, in the confusion of the moment, 
are drinking and carousing to the health of the king. We conceive this 
figure to be at best out of place; and that, if it were not so, it would 
still be out of character, and out of drawing too. We point this out, 
however, simply because it is the only serious objection we have to make 
of this nature. 

Still continuing among the points of human interest, we must notice 
with entire commendation the figure, in the distance below, of Belesis; 
the rebel warrior and priest, at whose instigation the revolt against Sar- 
danapalus has been organized and chiefly supported, and who is leading 
the right wing of the besieging army. Farther, we must add, that the 
whole of this middle distance is managed with infinite practical skill, 
directed by a consummate knowledge of the principles of pictorial 
effect : for not only is an impression of vastness, as well as of distance, 
produced by means of inconceivably minute and elaborate distinct 
details ; but there is every where an appearance of order and arrange- 
ment, seeming to grow out of what, when examined closely, can only be 
looked upon as a sort of studied confusion. We do not know that we 
explain this point very satisfactorily ; but to ourselves it is one of great 
interest and curiosity in this picture. It is an artifice, however, which 
has been employed in most of Mr. Martin’s previous works of this class ; 
but in noné so successfully as in the present: and we may add, that it 
has never been employed with equal success by any other artist, living or 
dead. 

It only remains for us to speak of the architectural portion of this pic- 
ture—that portion on the effects of which Mr. Martin seems to have 
hitherto placed so much dependence, and which is, from its nature, cal- 
culated to excite so much attention in the merely superficial observer. 
For our own parts, we will frankly confess (because our motive in doing 
so cannot be mistaken) that we attach comparatively little value to this 
portion of Mr. Martin’s peculiar skill, and to the uses to which he applies 
it. On the contrary, we are of opinion, that if he had placed less depend- 
ance on this portion of his art, and used it less profusely than he has 
hitherto done, he would have deserved at least, if he had not gained, 
even more reputation than he at present possesses: and, in proof of the 
soundness of this opinion, we would adduce the present work, which is 
incomparably the best production of the artist’s pencil, and in which, if 
our memory serves us rightly, the knowledge and skill now in question 
have béen more sparingly used than in any of those previous productions 
of the same hand which can be brought into comparison with this ; such 
as “ The Fall of Babylon,” “The Feast of Belshazzar,” &c. The truth 
is, that the effect now referred to, if it cannot exactly be called a trick, 


— 


1828.] Modern Pictures. 369 


‘depends almost entirely on an optical illusion : as such, it is altogether of 


a mechanical nature, and does not appeal to, or in the remotest degree 
spring from, any one of those mental qualities or attributes to which 
the results of high Art should and do address themselves, and on their 
more or less perfect accordance with which the merits and value of those 
results depend. Thinking thus, we are pleased to observe that Mr. 
Martin has, in the work before us, placed less dependance on the effect 
in question than we had feared that he would ; and still more pleased are 


‘we to be able to state that he has succeeded better in proportion. The 


architectural details of this fine picture are sufficiently elaborate and 


extensive to convey a grand and gorgeous impression of the scene in 


which the events depicted take place ; but they are not made to overlay 
and extinguish any of the more important points of the subject. 

Perhaps something similar to the above may be said, in reference to 
the extraordinary effects of light, in this picture. There is nothing 
attempted of the super-natural ; and there is nothing produced that is 
either un-natural, or that falls strikingly short of the natural effects 
resulting from the extraordinary circumstances of the case. And per- 
haps this arises from the just and judicious manner in which the various 
lights that prevail in different parts of the scene are preserved separate 
and distinct from each other, and are thus made each to produce its own 
effect, without attempting the physical impossibility of uniting and 
blending them all into one, and preserving them all separate, at one and 
the same time. 

We must now take leave of this fine work, by stating our opinion, that 
it is one which would not have been deemed unworthy the very finest 
ages of Art—to which ages it would, in fact, have added a kind of lustre, 
which at present they are without ;—and, moreover, that the day which 
has given it birth is one which cannot in fairness be treated with disrespect, 
if it be but in virtue of this one picture alone. 

It will perhaps be thought that we have chosen an unlucky moment 
at which to illustrate our introductory observations, by critical references 
to works actually before the public eye. But the truth is, that if we had 
chosen that particular period of the year when the annual produce of 
British Art is open to public inspection, we should have had no.chance of 


- getting through our task within any ordinary limits, or of doing any 


thing like justice to the claimants upon our attention. Indeed, we are 
by no means sure of being able to do this even now ; though the objects 
demanding particular mention are but two more—one of which, by-the- 
by, does not come very strictly within the scope of our subject. We 
allude now to the great picture of Mr. Lane ; which is so entirely beyond 
all reasonable limits, in point of size, that it can scarcely be looked upon 
as a picture at all, but rather as a scene; and it will assuredly not long 
remain a picture ; nor would it even if it possessed ten times the merit 
that it does: because no gallery could receive it ; nor can it be used with 
any good effect even as the altar-piece of the largest church in the metro- 
polis. The truth is, that several of the most promising artists cf our day 
—and Mr. Lane among them—have fallen into the fatal mistake of sup- 
posing that greatness of size has some necessary connexion with grandeur 
of effect; whereas it might almost be stated that directly the opposite 
is the case. We do not of course mean that smallness of size is calculated 
to produce grandeur of effect: though it is by no means incompatible 
with it—as has been satisfactorily shewn by the example adduced in the 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 34. 3 iB 


370 Modern Pictures. [Ocr. 


“paper on “ Oxp Picrurss,”* to which the present paper is offered, if 
not exactly as a reply, at least as a set-off. What we mean is, that great- 
ness of size, if carried beyond a certain point, is positively destructive 
of the particular effect sought to be produced by it: to say nothing of 
the certain and quick mechanical destruction which it entails upon itself. 
The work in question—the Vision of Joseph—has (together with some 
glaring defects) very great and striking merits: but if the latter were 
tenfold more in amount than they are, and the former were altogether 
removed, the picture itself could not hope to live for half a century, nor 
the painter to be remembered by it during half that period. In fact, 
those who paint for immortality have more chance of attaining their 
object, even by painting miniatures in rings, than by the opposite extreme, 
of covering acres of canvass. Mr. Haydon seems at last to have disco- 
vered this truth, though twenty years too late for his own fame, no less 
than for the future character of British Art ; and we sincerely hope that 
Mr. Lane will not be blind to it, even fora single day. If he should be, 
and should determine to paint two more such pictures as the Vision of 
Joseph, the hopes that his friends and the public have a right to conceive 
in regard to him will be worse than dissipated—they will be contradicted. 

Without entering into a minute detail of the various points of this 
striking work, we will say, generally and without qualification, that all 
the merely natural portions of it merit commendation, and that all 
the super-natural portions merit, if not absolute condemnation, a most 
limited portion of praise indeed. The group on the mattrass on the right 
—of Joseph, the Madonna, and the infant Jesus—are executed in a 
masterly manner; and the characters of the two former (but par- 
ticularly that of the Virgin) are conceived with great feeling and truth. 
We cannot, however, approve of the new manner of treating the principal 
figure, Joseph ; who is represented, not as receiving the holy dream into 
the recesses of his mind while asleep, but as literally awakened by it, and 
gazing upon it with his bodily senses. We do not see that, by this mode 
of treating the subject, sufficient is gained to excuse the incongruity: for 
all the other novel portion of the picture might have been introduced 
just as appropriately, in the ordinary and (so to speak) natural mode of 
treatment. The portion to which we allude is that which represents not 
merely the angel who comes to bid Joseph take flight into Egypt to 
avoid the massacre of Herod, but that massacre itself. Now, so far from 
there being any thing objectionable in this latter, it is not only the most 
poetical mode of treatment, but it increases the subject matter in a vast - 
degree, and ina most effective manner. But by making Joseph literally 
see all this, instead of dream it, the artist has changed into a miracle that 
which need not be regarded as such, and which claims and receives our 
human sympathy in the exact proportion that it is mot so regarded. There 
is another portion of this work, the conception of which we can. as little 
approve as that to which we have just alluded. We mean the introduc- 
tion of the gigantic figure, who has been struck to the ground by divine 
influence, just as he was about to fulfil the (not yet existing) mandate 
of Herod, by destroying the Holy Child. There can be little doubt 
that all this exceptionable matter, together with the host of supernatural 
objects which occupy the whole upper portion of the canvass, was intro- 
duced chiefly, if not entirely, on account of the enormous scale on which 
the artist had determined to execute his work. But, notwithstanding 
the scope which all this has given to the display of design and execution, 


* Vide MontuLy MaGazine, yol. vi., page 26. 


1828. ] Modern Pictures. 371 


we cannot but grieve for the loss which has consequently been sustained, 
in the want of that unity and simplicity for which even the old masters 
themselves had too little respect, but the occasional absence of which 
was rendered more excusable in them, on account of the miraculous 
powers of execution which they for the most part displayed. We will 
gladly admit, too, in the present instance, that much has been gained, on 
the score of mere execution, by the mode of treatment of which we com- 
plain: for, in fact, the fallen figure to which we have just alluded, and 
the action and expression of Joseph, are among the finest parts of the 
picture. 

The other picture to which we would direct attention, as illustrative of 
the present condition of Art, is from the pencil of a foreigner ; but should 
not, on that account, be passed over by us. On the contrary, it may be 
adduced as a new and striking evidence of the progress which a love for 
the art is making among us, since it was painted with an express view 
to exhibition and sale in this country. The Death of Virginia, by M. 
Le Thiere, is, upon the whole, the very best work we have yet seen 
from a French hand ; and, putting all national comparisons out of the 
question, it is, in point of mere composition and execution, a fine and 
striking production. What it fails in are those points in which the 
French have hitherto always failed, and in every department of Fine Art, 
whether Painting, Sculpture, Poetry, or Music—namely, those points 
which depend for their success on a due blending together of the sensi- 
bilities and the imagination. The French have little of either of these, 
and what little they have lies exclusively on the surface ; and the conse- 
quence is, that all which they have is displayed on every occasion equally, 
and that there is no such thing to be found, in any of their productions, 
as a striking concentration of these to any one particular point. The 
groupings of this work are composed and arranged with great skill and 
judgment ; each separate figure is designed (generally speaking) with 
force, truth, and spirit ; the colourings of the various parts have sufficient 
correspondence, each with the other, to produce an harmonious and con- 
sistent general effect ; and the composition of the whole, as a whole, is at 
once simple and comprehensive. In short, there wants but one thing to 
make this a fine and admirable work of Art; but that one thing is not 
only the most important of all, but is more important than all others 
united, since it may compensate in a great degree for the absence of 
them, while they can never do as much for the absence of it:—we mean 
truth, depth, force, and variety of individual expression. In a word, the 
Death of Virginia is a masterly production, in all which depends upon 
the mechanism of Art; and if that vital flame of expression is wanting, the 
presence of which is the sure, and the only sure, indication of high genius, 
it must be conceded that this divine quality, or rather condition, of the 
human mind, is not to be looked for now as it once was, when every thing 
connected with human society was as favourable to its development as it is 
now unfavourable. For this fact alone, if for nothing else, it would be 
no less unreasonable than unjust to institute any direct comparisons 
between collections of “ Old Pictures,” and modern ones. 

It was our intention to have concluded this paper by a brief estimate 
of the merits of our principal Living Painters; as a set-off, no less against 
the fulsome panegyrics of their pretended admirers, than against the 
unmeaning but mischievous sneers of those who equally pretend to 
despise them. But our limits warn us that we must defer the fulfilment. 
of our intention till a future opportunity. 


« 


pa 372.69 fOcr. 


COURT OF CHANCERY: 
No. Ill. 


To those who have followed us through our two former articles on 
this subject, it can scarcely fail to have become apparent that the grand 
evil of the Court—its original sin—is the narrowness of its capacities 
relatively to the matters requiring its attention. To some extent this 
disproportionate supply undoubtedly originates in that excess which, 
by driving parties into litigation for its construction, the confused and 
obscure state of the law gives to demand. Still let the law become as 
simplified as the complication of society will admit, while the Court of 
Chancery continues to retain its functions, we think we have shown 
enough to prove that, under its existing organization, it never can be 
adequate to their appropriate discharge. 

It is, however, no easy matter to define wherein adequacy consists ; 
good laws and able administrators being given, it is true it might be 
propounded to be comprised in the combination of the greatest economy 
with the greatest despatch. But economy and despatch are branches of 
the definitions which require to be defined themselves, and it is difficult 
to lay down any general scale by which to determine either. Costs will, 
in all probability, be more affected than time by variations in the subject 
of litigation, and the utmost that can be effected for the attainment of 
economy, would seem to be the establishment of the subordinate machi- 
nery of the court upon the simplest models, and the arrangement of the 
wages of all employed in its working, not upon a patronage and mono- 
poly, but upon a competition price.* Delay, asthe more tangible, has 
been the general subject of attack; but, as to the point at which delay 
commences, there seems to be but one common vagueness of idea. The 
Chancery Commissioners interrogate the witnesses, on the one hand, 
about the capability of the court under its present constitution for getting 
through the business with sufficient dispatch; the witnesses, on the 
other, talk about the impossibility of keeping the business within mode- 
rate limits; but neither the one nor the other condescend to inform us 
wherein that sufficiency and those limits consist ; and parliamentary 
orators seem as little to have settled the terms of their contest. With 
our legislature, indeed, time would seem to admit of very nice attenuation 
before it is spun out into delay. When, in 1813, the House of Lords met, 
in grave deliberation, to devise means for expediting their appellate 
business, they thought they had done wonders when they provided mea- 
sures by which the disposal of the existing arrears would be accelerated 
from eleven to four years,t though they forgot, at the same time, to make 
any additional provision for the appeals intermediately to be presented. 
In like manner, though causes are seldom set down for hearing, in the 
Court of Chancery, until a twelvemonth after the first commencement of 


* Tn the contest'in the Six Clerks’ Office, which happened about the year 1693, between 
the Six Clerks and the Sworn Clerks, it was vehemently contended by the latter, that they 
could do the business of the office much cheaper and more eapeditiously without their 
superiors; and, indeed, the charge of causing the records to be taken away from the 
office to be copied at under-rates, was doubtless much more grievous than the others made 
against them of using “‘ unmannerly and abusive language,”’ “ breaking of windows,” 
“ cutting desks,’’ “ breaking down seats,” &c.—Parke’s History of the Court.of Chan 
cery, be 255, We leave our readers to apply the moral. 

+ Cooper’s Parliamentary Proceedings as to the Court of Chanccry, p. 177. 


1828. ] Court of Chancery. 373 


proceedings, and generally then have to await their turn on the list for 
full two years before they are heard, and after that, perhaps, only to 
receive an interlocutory judgment, without obtaining their final decision 
until four or five years from the period of their first institution; yet our 
legislators (if they are to be judged by their actions) seem to think this 
all in exceeding good time. We suspect, however, there are few indi- 
viduals awaiting the decision of their causes to obtain possession of their 
property who would like to adopt this legislative notion of dispatch ; and, 
we apprehend, we should not be charged with urging on proceedings 
with untimely haste, if we were to affix a twelvemonth from the com- 
mencement as the average period within which ordinary causes ought to 
receive their determination. The causes tried in the courts of common 
law are frequently of equal importance with those litigated in Chancery ; 
yet the average there certainly does not exceed six months, and even this 
we conceive to be higher than necessity demands. Now, in order to 
estimate the additional force necessary to infuse into the court for approxi- 
mating its dispatch of business to this average standard, we have instituted 
a comparison over a period of three years, for which we happen to have 
the materials, between the causes requiring its judgment, and the extent 
to which it is enabled to give it. The return refers to cases of pure equity 
alone, and will stand thus :— 


Dismissions| Result of Aggregate | Proposition of 


a aoe position 

bees Bilis for Causes 3 rg of Adjudication 

eas | filed want of requiring Sig Gs: eo Causes to Causes 
Prosecution.| Adjudieation. | A = 


adjudicated.} requiring it. 


‘ NN ee ee ee ee 


It is true, the returns of bills filed do not distinguish between 
original bills and those of revivor and supplement; and, as the 
two latter are the mere continuous steps in the same cause, taken for 
the purpose either of reviving a suit against the representatives of a 
deceased party, or adding new parties to it, the apparent amount of 
cases requiring adjudication is to all the extent of those swelled beyond 
its actual one. It is certain, however, that bills of revivor and supple- 
ment form a very insignificant proportion to original bills; and we 
believe we should be speaking prodigiously within the mark, if we fixed 
‘it at one-fourth. Taking it, however, at this very low estimate, the 
apparent proportion of causes disposed of in the space of a twelvemonth 
to those requiring a decision, will, in the two most favourable years, 
have been little more than a third, and in the other vastly below it 380 
that, at the very lowest possible estimate, it would require the effective 
force of the court to be tripled, in order to accomplish the decision of its 
present average quantity of causes within the somewhat protracted period 
of twelve months—and this, be it remembered, in equity alone—without 
saying one word of either bankruptcy or lunacy matters. But the pre- 
sent amount of business pending is by no means that from which the 
estimate ought to be drawn. It is beyond all doubt, that the delay and 


374 Court of Chancery. [Ocr. 


costliness of the court effectually shut its doors upon crowds, who would 
otherwise rush to it for justice. ‘‘ Not a day passes,” says Mr. Cooper, 
« that the Chancery barrister, in the honest discharge of his duty, does 
not advise his client to sacrifice hundreds rather than embark in an equity 
suit—a vessel in which few have sailed long without being wrecked.” 
Indeed, if proof were required, it would be found in the disproportionate 
increase of that specie of business—injunction cases—which, if any thing 
in that court can be called urgent, wears most the semblance of urgency, 
relatively to business of all other descriptions. ; 

The methods for giving effective strength to the court will, for the 
most part, be found either in a better distribution of the subjects of its 
jurisdiction, an amelioration of its internal organization, or in securing 
additional power in its functionaries. 

In the front of the first is the separation of bankruptcy from the great 
seal. We approach to the consideration of this measure with one striking 
presumption in its favour—the utter imbecility with which the jurisdic- 
tion has been administered during the period of its union. The whole 
bankrupt jurisdiction originated with a statute of Henry the Eighth, 
which gave to the Chancellor, together with certain other state and judi- 
cial dignitaries, the power of seizure over the persons and property of 
debtors, “ suddenly fleeing to parts unknown, or keeping their houses 
and not minding to pay their debts.” This was followed by the 13th of 
Elizabeth, which introduced such considerable alterations in the former, 
as virtually to supersede it ; and the latter may now accordingly be con- 
sidered as the foundation of the present bankrupt code. It was under 
this that the power given to the dignitaries pointed out in the statute of 
Henry became vested in such “ wise, honest, and discreet” commissioners 
as it might please the Chancellor to direct such commission to ; and, as 
the office of assignee was unknown until the reign of Anne, the whole 
ministerial as well as judicial department was at first administered by 
the commissioners. Saving a discretionary power in their selection, the 
Chancellor appears, for a long time, to have had no other control over 
their actions. They constituted a supreme court in themselves, though 
in the habit of obtaining the advice of the common law judges, when 
embarrassed in the exercise of their functions ; neither were they at first 
accustomed to pay the Chancellor the compliment of consulting him; nor 
did he, until repeatedly pressed for his interference in their proceedings, 
at length reluctantly consent, in particular emergencies, to extend it ; so 
that his present jurisdiction is the mere growth of disjointed legislative 
enactments and gradual encroachments. Originally, the number of 
commissioners varied with the importance of the commission ; and their 
selection was, in almost every instance, made in obedience to the nomina-~ 
tion of the creditors. With the view, however, of a better regulation of 
the London commissioners, Lord Harcourt first established the London 
lists ; but as the ministers who compose these were in their origin, so 
they still continue removable at the Chancellor’s pleasure, and their 
numbers have varied at different times according to his caprice. Indeed, 
standing commissioners, after the fashion of the London lists, have at 
times been appointed for some of the more populous of the provincial 
districts ; but, with Lord Eldon’s dynasty, these have fallen into disuse; 
and the nomination of the country commissioners still rests with the par- 
ties making application for the commission. 

The London commissioners constitute a body of seventy individuals, 


' 1828. ] Court of Chancery. 375 


distributed among fourteen lists, of five commissioners each, of which 
three only sit at a time ; and in the same manner, though each country 
commission always contains the names of five persons, but three of the 
commissioners ever act under it. 'The meetings of country commission- 
ers are held in private ; those of the London ones, in rooms appropriated 
to the purpose, but amid a din, a bustle, and a confusion which is more 
like the riot of a bear-garden, than the dignified solemnity of a court of 
justice. 

Barring the “ Great Unpaid,” the judicial organization of England 
can boast few functionaries less imbued with aptitude for the discharge 
of their functions than are the Commissioners of Bankrupts, both town 
and country. In most of the parliamentary debates on this subjects, the 
tub thrown out has been the danger of committing the adjudication of 
the complicated circumstances arising out of a commission of bankruptcy 
to any less competent individual than the Chancellor himself. “ As to the 
particular jurisdiction of the bankruptcy business,” said Lord Castlereagh, 
in one of them, “none required greater attention, on account of its 
difficulty and intricacy. It was so particularly important in a commer- 
cial country, that it would be highly dangerous to trust the decision, in 
business of such weight, to any authority subordinate to that of the 
Lord Chancellor.” Yet, with respect to country commissioners, of the 
three individuals who in this “ commercial’ country are selected for the 
primary administration of a business of such “ difficulty” and “intricacy,” 
one is generally a mere provincial counsel, who, in the multiplicity of 
the branches of the profession he has to exercise, can scarcely be sup 
posed to have his head overstocked with bankrupt law ; and the remain- 
der are attornies—a class of practitioners who do not profess a knowledge 
of any thing higher than the mere practical department of the law, and 
who, it is notorious, seldom even attempt the study of its principles. 
From either, we apprehend, that sound adjudication, except on the most 
straightforward matters, may be looked for in vain ; and for both, we 
have the evidence ofa Mr. Spurrier, a country solicitor himself, and one 
of the witnesses examined before the Committee of 1817. “It is well known 
that commissioners are sometimes appointed by the solicitor himself-—not 
because they are the fittest persons, but because they are most likety to suit 
the solicitor’s or the bankrupt’s.purposes.—(Page 75, first Report). It is 
true the London commissioners are not chosen to suit the purposes of 
either the solicitor or bankrupt. As little are those of the creditors con- 
sulted in their choice. The purposes their selection has to suit are those 
of the aristocracy and the government. They wear on their foreheads 
“ the mark of the beast.” They are the living evidence of that whole- 
sale corruption—that agency of bribery—which, with the revolution; 
became the improved substitute for the more clumsy agency of physical 
force on which governments had theretofore rested their power. Judicial 
aptitude forming but a small consideration in the exercise of judicial 
patronage, sometimes the commissioners chosen are young lawyers, desti- 
tute of either learning, experience, or judgment; at others, they are 
those whose long and briefless standing only served to shew their inca~ 
pacity for offices of importance ; while the instances in which it has hap- 
pened that the acquirements of individuals would otherwise have afforded 
a guarantee for the ability of their administration, instead of the tribunal 
receiving their undivided attention, more lucrative professional avoca- 
tions in other quarters have left these to look upon their commissioner- 


376 , Court of Chancery. [Ocr. 


ship as a mere subsidiary employment. Indeed, the Court of Basing- 
hall-street seems pretty much considered as an agreeable morning lounge, 
where sinecurists may resort just pour passer le tems, and to fill the 
pocket with sovereigns. Fortescue, speaking of the Judges of the King’s 
Bench in ancient times, says that “they did not sit more than three 
hours in the day, and that, when they had taken their refreshments, they 
spent the rest of the day in the study of the laws, read the Holy Scrip- 
tures, and other innocent amusements at their pleasure. Indeed,’ he 
adds, “ it seems rather a life of contemplation than of much exertion.’ 
We never heard that our Commissioners of Bankrupts were particularly 
addicted either to the reading of the Scriptures, or the study of the laws ; 
but, undoubtedly, in the shortness of their sitting, and their leisure for 
‘contemplation, they might almost be mistaken for these judges of the 
olden time. Be this as it may, Mr. Harvey, the member for Colchester, 
who may be supposed to have some knowledge of the subject, stated, in 
one of the debates on this subject, it to be “his firm belief, that, what 
between capacity with inexperience on the one hand, and experience with 
incapacity on the other, there were not more than five or six commission- 
ers, out of the seventy-two, who were able to discharge their duty as 
they ought.” 

But were the commissioners, deprived of these trifling drawbacks, to 
become ever so sedulous in their office, the system itself, in London, at 
least, has effectually precluded the possibility of the complete and un- 
divided attention of its judges being given to the various matters which 
come before them. Sitting at their various meetings by rotation, the 
same cause becomes liable to an eternal variety of judges in all its various 
stages, and this not only from one meeting to another, but even in the 
same meetings. ‘ We assemble,” says Mr. Cullen, one of them, in his 
evidence before the Committee, “ under a number, sometimes a great 
number, of different commissions at once: our attention is solicited at 
one and the same moment by many suitors, all equally pressing, and 
entitled to despatch and decision upon their respective cases ; and_ these 
often involving many nice questions of fact andj considerations of law. 
One party gains the attention of a commissioner ; he is instantly broken 
in upon bysanother party, perhaps by another commissioner ; the half- 
heard case must be repeated ; and the second judge soon, in like manner, 
gives way to a third; and so the case taken up by one after another 
returns, perhaps, upon its steps, till, after having, as it were, circulated 
through the list amid the eternal interruption of one commission by other 
business—of each other by each other—and of all by the public, it 
remains finally undetermined, unless the suitor, or his counsel or solicitor, 
undertakes the inviduous task of asserting his right to the combined 
attention of three commissioners (if three fortunately happen to be pre- 
sent), or of breaking up the meeting for want of a quorum; in either of 
which cases the functions of the list in all the commissions are imme- 
diately suspended.” The absence of the requisite quantity of commis- 
sioners become not unfrequently a trifling impediment to the constitution 
of any court at all. Pa: ; 

Moreover, the spectacle of judges being paid by fees at the hands of 
the suitors, is an indecency of which this court has the honour of a daily 
exhibition, and while keeping a sharp look out for them occupies no 
inconsiderable part of the attention of the commissioners, the amount 
becomes a subject of eternal squabbling. Indeed, however little may be 


1828. - Court of Chancery. 377 


thought of mal-administration in its other departments, dexterity in this 
appears held in no slight estimation among the commissioners. Mr. 
Cooper states, “ Some of the commissioners plume themselves on pos- 
sessing in greater perfection than their brethren, the faculty of gaining a 
very large amount of fees in a very small space of time. One of them 
has boasted of having received thirty sovereigns one Saturday morning — 
Thirty meetings in a few hours!!! I had this from an acting commis- 
sioner ; and who did not scruple, five minutes afterwards, to assure me, 
that no branch of our law was better administered than that which falls 
under the superintendence of the London commissioners of bankrupt.” 

These fees are dependent upon the number of meetings held in each 
bankruptcy, and the time for sitting not exceeding, upon an average, two 
hours in the morning, it has given birth to the suspicion, that meetings 
have been unnecessarily multiplied for the purpose of bringing with 
them a multiplication of fees. Of course we, who are such staunch 
believers in the universal disinterestedness of human nature, would not 
for a moment indulge in so improbable a conjecture. It certainly, how- 
ever, strikes us as a little strange, that between the Ist of April 1824, 
and the Ist of April 1827, “there have been held in London alone, 
fifteen thousand public meetings of the commissioners of bankrupt, and 
six thousand one hundred and thirty-two private ones.”* From the 
petition of exparte Grimstead, in the bankruptcy of Howard and Gibbs; 
it appeared that up to a certain stage in the proceedings there had been 
literally twenty-three private meetings, the expence of which, to the 
petitioner alone, amounted at the least to the sum of 500/. 

In addition to this the greatest fluctuation pervades all the decisions 
of the court. Each different list of conmissioners has its own little code 
of laws—its own little formulary of practice. The proceedings of the 
whole exhibit a motley record of contradictory decisions ; and the lawyer 
who is consulted by a suitor as to the bearing of the law on his case, has 
no other criterion on which to form his judgment, than a knowledge of 
the list before which the case is to be heard. 

To crown the whole, this system which, be it remembered ought, from 
its peculiar nature, to exhibit the extreme of economy, is arranged upon 
a scale somewhere about the acme of extravagance. Nor does the cost 
rest with the positive sums lavished on its support. The losses to the 
estate, from the nature of its management, are to be taken into the 
account ; and when it is considered that this is committed to individuals 
who have frequently an interest in delaying a distribution of the estate, 
or whose share in the produce is relatively too small to secure its prudent 
administration—that there are brokers and managers who, doing very 
little, must, upon all the sound principles of the court, receive very 
much—and that the whole is conducted under the superintendence of a 
body constituted like the commissioners, themselves forming no incon- 
siderable item in the account, it may be readily conceived that Mr. 
Montague does not exaggerate (indeed he has solid data for much of his 
calculation) when in estimating 


* Parkes’ History of the Court of Chancery, p. 422. 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 34. 3 ¢ 


378 Court of Chancery. [Ocr. 


Commissioners and solicitor............+++ sijaustdadacer bes abt coo 
Messengers. «, <p sed ds enera que e+ pres nae sive dpe ativinn bai Ospasis 24,000 
Increase of litigation from the nature of the tribunal... 24,000 
Non-Seizure 
Losses from _..... parca dtidgt ba we Non-discovery 60,000 
Improvident sales 
Expences attendant upon assignees..........66-.eseeseeeee 21,700 
Interest of money at bankers. ............ssesceeeeeeeneeaee 24,000 
Losses from failure of assignees, unclaimed dividends, \ 14.400 
and undivided residues............00..sseeeeeeeeeeneeen ees 3 


He sets the whole down at the annual cost of ..............- £224,100 
With a court thus constituted for his assistance, it is in the nature of 
things impossible but that the jurisdiction in bankruptcy should make 
the tremendous inroads it does on the time of the Chancellor. That 
there are, however, materials in existence for the establishment of a court 
of bankruptcy, adequate to relieve him of the whole of this burthen, will 
be obvious to any one who does not believe all the legal learning and 
judicial competency of the country to be confined under the wig of each 
passing Chancellor. With respect to the cost, there is little doubt that it 
would be found a measure of economy, but if there were the slightest 
doubt of its exceeding the two hundred and twenty-four thousand odd 
pounds at which Mr. Montague estimates the annual expences of thepresent 
system, the deficiency might easily be made up by throwing in the seven 
to ten thousand per annum which is now paid in the sinecure office of 
patentee of bankrupts, and the five to ten thousand to which the Chan- 
cellor, ceasing to continue the labour, would cease to become entitled. 
What would be the precise construction of such a court—what the 
number of its judges—what the time of their sitting—it is without our 
urpose now to attempt to define. The Scotch law of debtor and creditor 
is on the whole very superior to our own, and even if we could not 
borrow a leaf out of their book of bankrupt administration, at all events 
we here take leave to recommend its perusal. With them, as with us, 
the ministerial administration is vested in a trustee chosen by the body 
of the creditors ; but, unlike that of the English assignee, his trust is a 
judicial trust ; and, in his character of distributor of the estate, he acts 
as a judge in the first instance, and in his management is assisted by 
three commissioners, elected by the creditors from their own body, as a 
committee of management. Their proceedings are subject to the constant 
superintendence of the creditors, and the whole to the review of the 
Court of Session.*, On this, however, we cannot enlarge. All we have 
to say is, that the fewer the judges, consistent with the purposes of 
promptitude, and the nearer the approximation of their sitting to per- 
manency, the nearer would be the approach of the court to perfection, 
Certain we are, that for London, half-a-dozen efficient judges would get 
through the business much better than the seventy who now enact the 
farce of administrating bankruptcy law at Basinghall-street. _Un- 
doubtedly to every inferior court there should. somewhere reside an 
appellate jurisdiction, and the court of appeal to the tribunal we propose, 


* Bell’s Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland, fifth edition, p. 17. 


1828. ] Court of Chancery. 379 


might either be to a superior court in bankruptcy, or some other court of 
appeal, in which the Chancellor, alone or associated with other judicial 
dignitaries, was made to preside. Be this as it may, the original juris- 
diction ought undoubtedly to be wrested from him, and provided for in 
some such court as that we have alluded to. Nor are we, in doing this, 
enforcing a mere visionary speculation of our own. The measure has 
been urged by the highest philosophical and practical authorities. Among 
the former it may be sufficient to mention the names of Sir S. Romilly 
and Sir W. Evans. Among the latter, Mr. Montague, Mr. Cooke, the 
Vice Chancellor, and Mr. Roupel. The objections by which it has been 
met do not deserve the name of arguments. The specious absurdity, 
that the Chancellor is the only individual in the state to be trusted with 
the decision of difficult and important matters, would heap upon him 
about one-half the business of the twelve judges. .The “most grave 
and insurmountable objections” of the present Chief Justice of the Court 
of Common Pleas, were, that “if the bankruptcy jurisdiction were 
withdrawn, no greater innovation could be introduced: that bankruptcy 
proceeded from the great seal, and therefore to change it, would be to 
introduce a change in the original jurisdiction.” That “ to change,” is 
“ to introduce a change,” is certainly not exactly a novelty ; but when on 
a recent occasion the salary of that learned judge was raised from its old 
to a higher amount, he would have been puzzled to call the variation by 
any other name than an innovation ; and we do not imagine the change 
produced very “ grave and insurmountable objections” to his profiting 
by the increase. 

- With the separation of bankruptcy must come the separation of lunacy 
from the ordinary and original jurisdiction of the court, with both a 
better distribution of the original and appellate functions of its judges ; 
and in all it should be borne perpetually in mind, that the high powers 
of the great depository of the law, as the Chancellor has been aptly 
termed, ought to be reserved only for cases, in which their previous 
investigation in the inferior tribunals had exhibited them possessed of 
doubt or difficulty. Any thing short of this is a pure waste of the time 
of the suitors and the money of the people. 

With respect to the internal organization of the court, one of the 
greatest of its present grievances is its almost unlimited power of appeal. 
Undoubtedly, the greater the number and variety of minds successively 
brought to the examination of the same subject, the greater is the pro- 
bability that sound conclusion will be the result. There is, however, 
no conceivable number of appellate ‘tribunals, to the establishment of 
which this principle, if admitted to all its consequences, might not give 
sanction ; and it is obvious that the powers and nature of legislation 
require some limit to be affixed to its operation. Now, with proper 
securities for the average abilities of a set of subordinate equity judges, 
we should imagine that one or two appeals, at the outside, might safely 
be rendered conclusive. Yet, under the present constitution of the 

ourt, one cause may become scarcely any thing else than a succession 
erent. After awaiting about two years and a half, from the time 
of its institution, for some adjudication or other, nothing is more com- 
mon, than that the preliminary order in a suit should befor its reference to 
the master, for the ascertainment of certain matters of fact. Upon this 
reference, the master, in due time (to wit, perhaps a twelvmonth) makes 
his report. Against this an appeal may be lodged with the Vice-Chan- 

3C2 


380 Court of Chancery. [Ocr. 


‘cellor, whose decision may be again appealed against to the Chancellor, 
and from the Chancellor in Lincoln’s-inn-hall, an appeal lies against 
this judgment to the Chancellor on the woolsack. Nor is this any thing 
like all—each successive adjudication in the cause is exposed to the 
same process; so that with the spirit of litigation abroad in either party; 
and the requsite funds to carry it through, there is scarce any degree of 
vexation, distraction, and perhaps ruin, which the court does not afford 
the means of visiting on the other. Of the character of the appellate 
tribunal of final resort—that to the House of Lords—it is impossible to 
speak in terms of reprobation sufficiently strong. The least to be said 
for it is, that it is a pompous mockery of justice. Indeed, their own 
incapacity seems to have been so well appreciated by some of them- 
selves, that Lord Erskine, in one of the debates on the subject, with a 
view of securing the presence of an individual or two who would not 
necessarily disgrace it by his ignorance, could see no other remedy for. 
the evil than impounding Lord Eldon and Lord Redesdale in the House: 
To have given efficiency to the tribunal, his lordship should at. the 
time have secured their immortality. Lord Holland was exceedingly 
indignant, that the lords who knew nothing about the law sheuld not 
be treated as participators in its administration‘ This is the first 
time,” said his lordship,. “that the House had been laid prostrate at the 
feet of learned lords, and the first time it had been announced that all 
the other peers were mere cyphers.” As to the position of the House 


with reference to learning (having hitherto heard little about its learn- 


ing) we do not venture to speak ; but we can tell Lord Holland, that, 
however una¢customed to the hearing of wholesome truths may be the 
House he was addressing, that night was very far from being the first time 
on which its own judicial incompetency had been published to the world. 


The conviction is, indeed, too universal to require our enlargement on; 


it, and it is manifest that such a tribunal ought not to continue its exist- 
ence, only to add to the already overgrown appellate processes to which 
all suits in equity are exposed. The dignity of the peerage appears to 
be the the principal obstacle to this improvement; but the time will 
come when peers will no longer have to meet questions of public utility, 
with the opposition of their dignity. 


The propriety of affixing a limitation to the number of counsel to be - 


heard in each cause, rests on the same principles as that of affixing a 
limit to the power of appeal; and we do not hesitate to say, that the 
number frequently employed at present, operates as a serious detriment. 
upon those who have to await their exhaustion for the adjudication of 
their causes. The Chancery Commissioners proposed to restrict the 


number to two in each interest; and if two lawyers cannot be found 


between them, to put the court in possession of all the facts ef the case, 
and the bearings of the law upon it, we should have little left to say 
for the talent, learning, and industry of the English bar. In justice, 
however, to its junior members, and for the interest of the suitors_of the 
court, the whole class of advocates ought to be placed on an equal foot- 
ing. Privileges and immunities seldom bespeak any thing else than, 


injustice to the unprivileged ; and the mischievous privilege enjoyed by. - 


king’s counsel of having all the motions with which they are intrusted 
heard before a single stuff gownsman can open his mouth, is pretty mechs 
ef the same description as most other immunities. 

. There is something in the arrangement of causes for hearmg very. 


Oe 


1828.] Court of Chaneery. 381 


similar to that which we have seen operating so injuriously in the bank- 
rupt tribunals—namely, that as the plaintiff has the selection of the 
judge for any hearing which he wishes to obtain, the same cause is 
exposed to the chance of being heard in its different stages before dif- 
ferent judges, and in the Court of Chancery, no more than in those of 
bankruptcy, has it ever yet been found that one mind could inhabit 
three bodies at once. Perhaps even the prodigal expenditure of time 
caused by this privilege is the least of the evil. It is rarely that a cause 
can be investigated at all, even in its preliminary stages, without some 
indication of the judge’s opinion on the whole matter escaping ; and of 
course these indications will not be lost upon a party who has the liberty 
of bringing it on for further hearing before the same or another judge, 
according to his option. 

But of all the existing practices of the court, perhaps the most objec- 
tionable is that which relates to its mode of obtaining testimony. Now 
it has become no less a popular truth than an axiom in jurisprudence, 
that the only efficient security for the soundness of testimony is to be 
found in the publicity of its delivery, and under the ordeal of an inte- 
rested examination. ‘ Si jamais un législateur,” says M. Bellot, a 
foreign jurist, “‘se propose le probleme du mode le plus sir de ne point 
atteindre la vérité, le code de procédure Frangais lui en fournira la solu- 
tion au titre de linterrogatoire sur fuits et articles. Pour éviter a la 
partie l’ennui de la publicité, ’embarras d’un contradicteur, pour 
affaiblir les conséquences de ses tergiversations et la honte du mensonge, 
pour lui fournir les moyens, de méditer a téte reposée, de calculer ses 
réponses, ce code exige qu’elle interroge en secret, par un seul juge, 
hors de la présence de son adversaire, et que les faits sur lesquels ’inter- 
rogation a été requises lui soient communiqués au moins vingt-quatre 
heures d’avance.”* The description here, however, given of the code 
de procedure, is a pretty accurate resemblance of the proceedings in the 
English Court of Chancery. The testimony obtained from the parties 
to a suit, is comprised either in affidavits, or in the answers of the 
defendants to the plaintiff’s bill.. In neither are the parties confronted 
with each other. The swearing is a mere ceremony before an officer of . 
the court, and the answer ‘is strictly confined to the formal string of 
allegations which the bill exhibits, and is delivered with such guarded 
caution, that its preparation is actually intrusted ‘to an advocate of the 
court. All other evidence is obtained through a set of written interro- 
gatories administered to the witnesses, not in open court, but in the 
privacy of the examiner’s apartment. All the interrogatories for the 
various witnesses in the suit are strung together. The party, or his 
agent, points out the different facts to which he wishes each to be 
examined ; but there is no power whatever, either of cross-examining 
the witness—leading him out of the formal track which is marked out 
for him, or taking advantage of his answers to found upon them new 
questions. The objections of the commissioners to the substitution for 


382 - Court of Chancery. ‘[Ocr. 


objection only under that existing harmony of evil which pervades the 
whole Court of Chancery, and, consequently, that it is capable of being 
removed by a thorough reform. But even under the present state of 
that court, the argument is more specious than sound. The court only 
decides upon written depositions, but so under the system we are advo- 
cating it might still continue to do. The evidence might originally be 
taken viva voce, with the proper securities, and the depositions be 
reduced to writing, in order to enable the judge to form upon them his 
decision. Indeed, this very reduction into writing of all testimony, is 
‘one of the securities which Mr. Bentham has propounded as necessary 
to its perfection. With respect to the objection about cost, we appre 
hend the commissioners had no data for their calculation, and we take 
leave to mistrust it altogether. Throughout every stage of a cause, the 
existing system adds prodigious lengthiness to its proceedings. The 
long rigmarole of testimony runs the gauntlet of office-copies—coun- 
sels’ briefs, et omne hoc genus rerum, while a considerable portion has to 
be waded through by the judge before he can pronounce a decision in 
the case. In every successive instance it increases the cost of each, and 
has, moreover, the additional property of consuming the time of the 
court. Mr. Parkes, in his history of the court, has a calculation of the 
mass of writing contained in the affidavits alone of fifteen causes, the 
aggregate of which amounted to the enormous quantity of six thousand 
one hundred and ninety-four folios, p. 433. Still, though so lamentably 
deficient in the greater part of its system of evidence, it has one redeem- 
ing feature, and rather than part with which, we would willingly forego 
all for which we have been contending—Thank God! there is at least 
one court in the country where a defendant cannot shelter himself from 
withholding from a fellow-citizen his right or his property, under the 
shallow absurdity that no man can be heard in his own cause. “ Vile 
maxim of technical jurisprudence,” might Mr. Bentham well exclaim, 
in reference to this atrocious absurdity, “ there is not a man, there is 
not even a judge, who. has the least regard to it, in what passes in the 
bosom of his family.”* This is, indeed, the bright feature of the court ; 
but it only serves to make the darkness more visible around it. 

The system of pleading demands renovations scarcely less than that of 
evidence. The mode of dispatching, we were going to say, but we 
prefer the term—slumbering over business in the master’s office, should 
be completely changed ; and there is not a subordinate office of the 
eourt which does not require thoroughly purging. 

The obvious modes for the infusion of new strength into its judicial 
force, are either the addition of new functionaries, or a better husbanding’ 
of the powers of the old. The requisite amount of the former will neces- 
sarily in part depend upon the extent to which the latter is carried ; 
and, in either case, the figure suggested must partake somewhat of the 
random character of speculation. Even with the command over the 
whole time of the present judges, four or five new ones might not be 
more than the purposes of dispatch require, and with the present dis- 
traction of their attention, possibly six. 4 , 

- We leave this, however, for the less conjectural ground of pointing 
out how the powers of existing functionaries. may be rendered more 
efficient. ; 


* Traité des Preuves Judiciarcs, tome i.,-p. 192.- 


oak 


1828.] Court of Chancery. 383 


_ The Masters, as the only subordinate officers who exercise any thing 
of a judicial function, are the only inferior functionaries to whom we 
shall allude. For them, the narration of a fact will be sufficient. They 
seldom make their appearance at their offices before eleven ; and are 
mostly off again at three. The earliest appointment for business before 
them is accordingly eleven—the latest two. ‘‘ Consequently,” says the 
pointed author of the Indications—“ Warrant sent for frequent answer 
—Master full for a week.” 

_ The Master of the Rolls we may, in like manner, dismiss with a fact. 
Legal vacations occupy about nine months out of the twelve. During a 
considerable part of those vacations, which occur between November 
and June, his sittings are only occasional ; from the beginning of August 
to the beginning of November he does not sit at all. Except during a 
very few days he never takes his seat until six in the evening, and leaves it 
seldom much after ten: and during term time, he sits but three even- 
ings in the week ; out of term, seldom more than four ; and never on 
seal days, without one of which a week rarely elapses. 

The Chancellor, however, is not so easily to be passed over, nor can we 
make so accurate a calculation of the time devoted by him to his judi- 
cial business, since we have not the number of days that he closes— 
either entirely or prematurely—his court, to sit in the House of Lords in 
judgment on himself—to assist in the formation of ricketty cabinets—to 
advise on the dispensation of the patronage of the church—to settle the 
diplomacy of Europe—in a word, to discharge the various duties which 
branch out of his political functions; and still less have we the means 
for measuring the amount of distraction which his mind must undergo 
from the combination of. all. Now upon what recognized principle 
of jurisprudence it is that judicial aptitude can be increased by 
political diversion, we have never yet been sufficiently fortunate to 
hear. That the very reverse of the case must be obvious to all those 
who will take the trouble to reflect that competency, and not political 
intrigue, is the only safe passport to the bench—the possession of a calm, 
unruffled, and undivided attention to its duties, a requisite security for 
their discharge—that next_to the consciousness of the popular eye, there 
is nothing so productive of a dignified independence in the individual, 
as the conviction that he is indebted for his high place, not to the sta- 
bility of a faction, but to his own high character alone—nothing so mischie-- 
vous to the suitors of the court as the eternal delay to which their causes 
are exposed by an ever varying succession of judges. Since unsupportable 
then on principles of jurisprudence, let us turn to the arguments by which 
this monstrous anomaly is attempted to be sustained. The search for these, 
however, is something like that of a needle in a bottle of hay. In one of 
the debates on this subject, the burthen of Mr. Canning’s song was, 
that it was a “noble” and a “yaluable prerogative” of the crown, that 
it could take from the ranks of Westminster Hall the meanest individual 
in birth and original station, and place him at once “in the head and 
front of the peerage of England.” Moreover, that it was a “ beautiful” 
prerogative, and further, that unless the Chancellor were thus to be 
placed at the front of the peerage, what were they to do for instruction 
in its laws and institutions—so that, in short, what between the nobility, 
value, and beauty of prerogative, and the want of a fugleman for the 
peerage, the igh was too good a thing to be given up. Prerogative 
may be a very fine thing, and in a royal cabinet it may be a beautiful 


324 Court of Chancery. [Ocr. 


curiosity into the bargain; but neither nobility or beauty are always 
devoid of mischief: and the value of all prerogative (except to him 
who enjoys its exercise) consists in its tendency to promote public 
utility, and in that alone. This tendency, we apprehend, it would be 
difficult to demonstrate for the prerogative in question: and certainly 
it is not very wise in a minister of the crown to rest the question on 
the want of an instructor to our hereditary legislators on the laws and 
institutions of the country they have to govern. Again, it is urged, that 
so high a prize operates as a beneficial stimulus upon the industry and 
exertion of the bar. Undoubtedly, the law is a dry study, and it may 
be necessary to treat lawyers like babies, and give them sweetmeats to 
make them learn their lesson. In God’s name, however, let the sweet- 
meats be given for the lesson, and not as they now are for playing 
truant—not, indeed, truant from books—but truant from the cause of 
honesty and independence to that of venality and corruption. It is well 
known that splendid as is the prize, political apostacy or political prosti- 
tution are now, as they ever have been, the only roads to its attainment. 


“Oone @cds5 exir elOnreut, pcr T ExAvoy aUTE, 


is a maxim pretty well understood by lawyers ; and we do not hesitate 
to declare, that the prize, as at present betowed, has no better operation 
than as an agent of corruption. 

With the slight interest both had in the matter, it was not very won- 
derful that, on the project for separating these discordant functions, 
Lord Eldon should have to oppose “not merely his own individual 
opinion, but the collective wisdom of an acute and intelligent profession.” 
We doubt not our readers will equally understand the answer of Lord 
Hardwicke, when informing Lord Northington that he must take with the 
chancellorship both political and judicial “offices together, he told him 
that “ Westminster Hall would never forgive him if he suffered these 
offices to be disjoined.” ‘“ Double headed monster,” may Mr. Bentham 
well remark, “ Head judge and Head party-man, back to back: fitter to 
be kept constantly in spirits in anatomy school, than one hour in the 
cabinet, and the next hour on the bench. Behold in this emblem* one 
ef the consequences of having one and the same man to sit as sole 
highest judge, with all the property in the kingdom at his disposal, and 
im the cabinet to act as chief organizer of intrigues, and moderator of 
squabbles about power, money, and patronage ; the cabinet situation 
being the paramount one, the most transcendent aptitude for the judicial 
situation cannot keep him in it, the most completely demonstrated inap- 
titude remove him out of it !” 

But if the petitioners for justice are thus injured by the union, assur- 
edly the state has little political gain to thank it for. All along our 
Chancellors have been little else than political adventurers. In the 
earliest period of their history they were ever the willing agents of 
arbitrary power. What they have gained on the score of government 
with a Thurlow, a Loughborough, an Eldon, or a Lyndhurst, ourselves 
require instruction. 

With all this in our view, it it impossible-we can hesitate about re- 
commending the confining the ao of the Chancellor to the discharge 


a —— es ——- 


* Lord Eidon. 


a awh | 


1828. ] Court of Chancery. 385 


of his judicial functions. With this, and the several other topics we have 
touched on, we think we have glanced at some of the more prominent of 
the measures to be adopted for infusing new vigor into the powers of 
the court, and here we complete our brief sketch of its morale. 

In the first of our papers on this subject, we proposed to lay bare the 
seat of disease, and we trust we have redeemed our pledge. If we have 
truth on our side (and we have spoken as those “having authority,”) it 
is obvious that gentle medicines and soothing palliatives will be about 
as efficacious as breathing over a limb up to which mortification was 
crawling. Indeed such remedies would be productive rather of mis- 
chief than of good ; like opiates, lulling the consciousness of pain, they 
would only leave the disease to acquire fresh strength, and already it bids 
defiance to all but the boldest application of the knife. That a length of 
time, however, will elapse, before this, or any other part of our jurispru- 
dence shall be placed on a system of thorough adaptation to its ends, 
’ the moral aspect of the country bids us too clearly foresee. That the 
time will at length arrive, we may almost as certainly predict. 


THE EVENING STAR. 


Tue chimes have rung from yon church-tower, 
The honey-bee has left the flower, 

The hushed wind sleeps, the leaves are still, 
And, high o’er bleak Llansaddon’s hill, 

Gleams from his watch-tower, faint—afar— 
The hermit-natured Evening Star ! 

Heralding to night’s wizard noon 

‘The coming of the zenith moon. 


Sweet Star! to thee, ’mid ruins grey, 
The owl hoots forth a boding lay ; 
To thee, ‘mid lanes retired and shy, 
The twinkling glow-worm lifts her eye ; 
To thee the wanderer turns, and hears 
The uplifted voice of other years 
Sweep o’er his soul in solemn tone ;— 
Then, sadly-musing, weeps to own 
How hopes have withered, friends have changed— 
Some dead, some distant, some estranged— _~ 
Since last within his native stream 
He marked, sweet orb! thine imaged beam, 
And drew in thought’s attempered power 
A moral from the scene and hour. 


Emblem of Hope and Holiness! ' 
What heart but must thy beauty bless ? 
What eye but recognize in thee 
+ Some germ of unknown deity ? 

A soul divine illumes thy rays, 
Eternity is in thy gaze ; 

Thy smile the first musician fired, 
The first young poet’s muse inspired, 


M.M. New Serics.—Vou. VI. No. 34. 3D 


The Evening Star. 


Ere yet unhappy Orpheus sighed 

To listening woods at even-tide ; 

Ere Homer sang night’s mellow noon, 
The vaulted sky, the unsullied moon ;* 
The first-born poet hymned to thee 
His song of rude idolatry ; 

Zephyr, as “neath a steep hill’s crest 
He lay, reclined on Echo’s breast, 
Caught up the wild and novel rhyme, 
Bore it aloft from clime to clime, 

And thus, while round the world it ran, 
Music and Verse were taught to man. 


Mild Genius of the Summer Night ! 
How oft, beneath thy guardian light, 
My school-boy feet have braved the gloom 
Of haunted glen, or church-yard tomb ! 

ere yon forlorn old abbey rears 

Her spectre figure, grey in years, 
Through whose lone courts, when winds are still, 
Time’s awful voice sounds strange and chill, 
I’ve stood with her—the young, the mild— 
The blue-eyed Ellen—nature’s child! 
Night was around us, night above, 
And heaven put on a look of love, 
While, ‘neath her sweet, expressive glance, 
The maid’s transfigured countenance 
Shone more than nymph or seraph fair, 
For tenderness and hope were there. 
But youth’s gay dream is over now, 
The sriows of age are on my brow ; 
And she—affection’s hapless slave— 
Sleeps in her lone, unnoticed grave, 
Watched by the moon in regal car, 
And hallowed by the Evening Star ! 


Hark ! round their old, accustomed tree, 
The gathering gnats hum drowsily ; 
And night, with finger-dim and grey, 
Hath closed ‘the eyelids of the day: 
’Tis gloom around, o’er flood and fell— 
Sweet Star of Evening! fare thee well! 


* Qe 8 of? ey ovpaw aorpa Gasiyny aeaPe oernvny 
Datyer’> 


Hom. Ii. 


{Ocr. 


—— 


-—T + 


4 


ra 
A 


, 


1928:] [ 387 ] 


VILLAGE SKETCHES; 
No. XI. 
Tue Suaw. 

Sepr. 9th.—A bright, sunshiny afternoon. What a comfort it is te 
get. out again—to see once more that rarity of rarities, a fine day! We 
English people are accused of talking over much of the weather ; but the 
weather, this summer, has forced people to talk of it. Summer! did I 
‘say? Oh! season most unworthy of that sweet, sunny name! Season 
of coldness and cloudiness, of gloom and rain! A worse November !— 
‘for in November the days are short; and, shut up in a warm room, 
lighted by that household sun, a lamp, one feels through the long even- 
ings comfortably independent of the out-of-door tempests. But though 
‘we may have, and did have, fires all through the dog-days, there is no 
‘shutting out daylight ; and sixteen hours of rain, pattering against the 


windows and dripping from the eves—sixteen hours of rqin, not merely 


audible but visible, for seven days in the week—would be enough to 
exhaust the patience of Job, or of Grizzel; especially if Job were a 
farmer, and Grizzel a country gentlewoman. Never was known such a 
season! Hay swimming, cattle drowning, fruit rotting, corn spoiling! 
and that haughty river, the Loddon, who never can take Puff’s advice, 
and “ keep between its banks,” running about the country, fields, roads, 
ardens, and houses, like mad! The weather would be talked of. 
deed, it was not easy to talk of any thing else. A friend of mine 
having occasion to write me a letter, thought it worth abusing in rhyme, 
and bepommelled it through three pages of Bath-Guide verse ; of which 
I subjoin a specimen :— 
« Aquarius surely reigns over the world, 
And of late he his water-pot strangely has twirled ; 
Or he’s taken a cullender up by mistake, 
And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake ; 
Though it is not in Lethe—for who can forget 
The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet? 
It must be in the river called Styx, I declare, 
For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear. 
‘ It did rain to-morrow,’ is growing good grammar ; 
Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer ; 
A pony-gondola is all I can keep, 
And I use my umbrella and pattens in sleep ; 
Row out of my window, whene’er ’tis my whim 
To visit a friend, and just ask, ‘ Can you swim?’ ” 


‘So far my friend.* In short, whether in prose or in verse, every body 


railed at the weather. But this is over now. The sun has come to dry 


* This friend of mine is a person of great quickness and talent, who, if she were not a 
beauty and a woman of fortune—that is to say, if prompted by either of those two powerful 
stimuli, want of money or want of admiration—and took due pains, would inevitably 
become a clever writer. As it is, her notes and jeux d’esprit, struck off a trait de plume, 

we great point and neatness. Take the following billet, which formed the label to a 

basket, containing the ponderous present alluded to, last Michaelmas Day :— 
“ To Miss M. 
£ When this you see 
Remember me,’ 
Was long a phrase in use ; 
And so I send 
To you, dear friend, 
My proxy. ‘ What?’ A goose!” 
3D 2 


388 Village Sketches : [Ocr, 


the world; mud is turned into dust; rivers have retreated to their 
proper limits ; farmers have left off grumbling ; and we are about to 
take a walk, as usual, as far as the Shaw, a pretty wood about a mile off. 
But one of our companions being a stranger to the gentle reader, we 
must do him the honour of an introduction. 

Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes 
ways as odd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk on 
two legs, and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful white grey- 
hound, Mayflower, for instance, is as whimsical as the finest lady m the 
land. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection for a 
most hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six months 
ago, and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardly tell 
how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laun- 
dress—a dog-lover by profession ; now winning a meal from the light- 
footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose ; now standing on his hind- 
legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of 
“ drowthy cronies,” or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper 
on the alehouse-bench ; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure 
contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on 
his throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint of ugli- 
ness ; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker’s pigs ; 
now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master 
Brow the shopkeeper’s fierce house-dog ; now filching the skim-milk of 
Dame Wheeler’s cat :—spit at by the cat ; worried by the mastiff ; chased 
by the pigs ; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker ; 
flogged by the shopkeeper ; teased by all the children, and scouted by all 
the animals of the parish ;—but yet living through his griefs, and bearing 
them patiently, “ for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;”——and even 
seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of sunshine, or a 
whisp of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcass, some comfort in 
his disconsolate condition. 

In this plight was he found by May, the most high-blooded and aristo- 
cratic of greyhounds ; and from this plight did May rescue him ;—invited 
him into her territory, the stable ; resisted all attempts to turn him out; 
reinstated him there, in spite of maid, and boy, and mistress, and master ; 
wore out every body’s opposition, by the activity of her protection, and 
the pertinacity of her self-will ; made him sharer of her bed and her 
mess ; and, finally, established him as one of the family as firmly as 
herself. 

_. Dash—for he has even won himself a name amongst us, before he was 
anonymous—Dash is a sort of a kind of a spaniel ; at least there is in his 
mongrel composition some sign of that beautiful race. Besides his ugli- 
ness, which is of the worst sort—that is to say, the shabbiest—he has a 
limp on one leg that gives a peculiarly one-sided awkwardness to his 
gait; but, independently of his great merit in being May’s pet, he has 
other merits which serve to account for that phenomenon—being, beyond 
‘all comparison the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I 
have ever known ; and that is saying much. He seems to think it 
necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra.good conduct, and does so 
dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one 
who has a taste for happiness good to look at him—so that he may now 
be said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him — 
when strangers come in the way, and think it necessary to explain that — 


1828. The Shan. 389 


he is May’s pet ; but amongst ourselves, and those who are used to his 
appearance, he has reached the point of favouritism in his own person. I 
have, in common with wiser women, the feminine weakness of loving 
whatever loves me—and, therefore, like Dash. His master has found 
out that Dash is a capital finder, and, in spite of his lameness, will hunt 
a field or beat a cover with any spaniel in England—and, therefore, he 
likes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his beauty, with 
another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most handsomely 
—and, therefore, he likes Dash ; and the maids like him, or pretend to 
like him, because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative 
class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going 
with us now to the Shaw, as I said before—or rather to the cottage by 
the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah 
Bint—a housewifely occupation, to which we owe some of our pleasantest 
rambles. 

And now we pass the sunny, dusty village street—who would have 
thought, a month ago, that we should complain of sun and dust again ! 
—and turn the corner where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over 
the clear deep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with the bright 
blue sky, and the white clouds that flit over it ; and loiter at the wheeler’s 
shop, always picturesque, with its tools, and its work, and its materials, 
all so various in forra, and so harmonious in colour ; and its noisy, merry 
workmen, hammering and singing, and making a various harmony 
also. The shop is rather empty to-day, for its usual inmates are busy on 
the green beyond the pond—one set building a cart, another painting a 
waggon. And then we leave the village quite behind, and proceed 
slowly up the cool, quiet lane, between tall hedge-rows of the darkest 
verdure, overshadowing banks green and fresh as an emerald. 

Not so quick as I expected, though—for they are shooting here to-day, 
as Dash and I have both discovered: he with great delight, for a gun to 
him is as a trumpet to a war-house; I with no less annoyance, for I 
don’t think that a partridge itself, barring the accident of being killed, 
can be more startled than I at that abominable explosion. Dash has 
certainly better blood in his veins than any one would guess to look at 
him. He even shews some inclination to elope into the fields, in pursuit 
of those noisy iniquities. But he is an orderly person, after all, and a 
word has checked him. 

Ab! here is a shriller din mingling with the small artillery—a shriller 
and more continuous. We are not yet arrived within sight of Master 
Weston’s cottage, snugly hidden behind a clump of elms; but we are 
in full hearing of Dame Weston’s tongue, raised as usual to scolding- 

itch. The Westons are new arrivals inour neighbourhood, and the first 
thing heard of them was a complaint from the wife to our magistrate of 
her husband’s beating her : it was a regular charge of assault—an inform, 
ation in full form. A most piteous case did Dame Weston make of it, 
softening her voice for the nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, and 
exciting the mingled pity and anger—pity towards herself, anger towards 
her husband—of the whole female world, pitiful and indignant as the 
female world is wont to be on such occasions. Every woman in the 
parish railed at Master Weston ; and poor Master Weston was summoned 
to attend the bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer the charge ; 
and such was the clamour abroad and at home, that the unlucky culprit, 
terrified at the sound of a warrant and a constable, ran away, and was 
not heard of for a fortnight. 


390 Viliage Sketches. ‘(Ocr. 


- At the end of that time he was discovered, and brought to the bench; 
and Dame Weston again told her story, and, as before, on the full ery. 
She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint had 
disappeared, and there were no women present to make common cause 
with the sex. Still, however, the general feeling was against Master 
‘Weston ; and it would have gone hard with him, when he was called in, 
if a. most unexpected witness had not risen up in his favour. His wife 
had brought in her arms a little girl about eighteen months old, partly 
perhaps to move compassion in her favour ; for a woman with a child in 
her arms is always an object that excites kind feelings. The little girl 
had looked shy and frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during 
her mother’s examination ; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom 
she had been a fortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and 
laughed, and cried, ‘‘ Daddy! daddy!” and sprang into his arms, and 
hung round his neck, and covered him with kisses—again shouting, 
« Daddy, come home! daddy! daddy !’—and finally nestled her little 
head in his bosom, witha fulness of contentment, an assurance of ten- 
derness and protection, such as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, 
or ever could inspire, since the days of King Solomon. Our magistrates 
acted in the very spirit of the Jewish monarch: they accepted the evi- 
dence of nature, and dismissed the complaint. And subsequent events 
have fully justified their decision; Mistress Weston proving not only 
renowned for the feminine accomplishment of scolding (tongue-banging, 
itis called in our parts—a compound word, which deserves to be Greek), 
but is actually herself addicted to administering the conjugal discipline, 
the infliction of which she was pleased. to impute to her luckless husband. 

Now we cross the stile, and walk up -the fields to the Shaw. How 
beautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sun 
glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and 
aspen! and how sweet the hedge-rows are with woodbine and wild sca- 
bions, or, as the country people. call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little 

Annie Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose, 
tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-polled 
urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singimg “Home! 
sweet Home !” at the top of his voice ; and then, when the notes move 
too-high for him, continuing the air ina whistle, until he has turned the 
impassible corner ; then taking up again the song and the words, “Home! 
sweet Home!” and looking as if he felt their full import, ploughboy 
though he be. And so he does ; for he is one of a large, an honest, a kind, 
and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poor 
ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts—all that 


he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly contented “ 


as George Coper! All his luxuries, a cricket-match!—all his wants 
satisfied in “ home! sweet home !’” 

Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brookes’s 
great bean-field, and crying the “ Harvest Home!” in a chorus, before 
which all other sounds—the song, the scolding, the gunnery—fade away, 
and become faint echoes. A’ pleasant noise is that! though, for one’s 
ears’ sake, one. makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in 
happy time, is that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its 
tangled dingles, its nuts, and its honeysuckles ;—and, carrying away a 
fagot of those sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint’s: of whom, and 
of whose doings, we shall say more another time. M. 


a“. = 


1828.] c 391 J 


DR. GRANVILLE’S TRAVELS TO ST. PETERSBURGH.* 


, Man (here, in England, at least) may be described, by way of distinc- 
tion, as a travelling animal. So strong is this propensity imprinted upon 
him, that even the impossibility of gratifying it (which in time eradicates 
all other propensities) has little or no effect upon this. If an English- 
man cannot travel in fact, he will, somehow or other, contrive to do s9 
in fancy ; if he is precluded from “ going abroad” in his own proper per- 
son, he will, in imagination, take upon him that of some one who is more 
happily situated, and, in default of being able to see “ foreign parts” 
with 1 his own eyes, will examine and judge of them through those of 
other people. The innumerable books of travels, of every conceivable 
class and quality, that each succeeding season puts forth, at once prove 
and provide for this imperishable and insatiable want of the English 
mind. Nothing in the shape of travels comes amiss to us, by whoever it 
may be offered, or of whatever it may consist. Even we ourselves (critics 
as we are, and therefore exempt, ex officio, from all human infirmities or 
deficiencies whatsoever) must plead peculiarly guilty to the charge now 
in question. For sedentary persons, who seldom or never move farther 
from our writing-tables than to our reading-chairs, we have been great 
travellers in our time, having made the circuit of the terrestrial globe 
several times—to say nothing of sundry voyages to the moon and else- 
where. And yet, tothis day, we are content to accompany “ to the 
Continent,” and back again, the mérest Cockney who contributes his 
travelling lucubrations to the Morning Herald newspaper! Nay, we 
have even read every word of the letters lately indited by Mr. Henry 
Hunt himself in the above-named erudite miscellany, touching the rela- 
tive prices of peas, potatoes, and periwinkles on the opposite side of 
the Channel, and pointing out the striking inferiority of the flavour of 
Bourbon coffee, as sold in the Parisian cafés, to the radical roasted corn 
of the said modest and disinterested reformer! It may readily be sup- 
posed, therefore, with what hungry delight we hail the appearance of 
a book of travels upon our table. Dr. Granville’s work,—(we take the 

of whispering this information into the doctor’s exclusive ear, 

seeing that it is a matter with which, for reasons to be explained 
eafter, our readers have little concern) is, among books of travels, 

and taken as a whole, in all probability not the most lively and intelli- 

_ gent that has for many years issued from the English press ; nevertheless, 
_ if we do not contrive to extract from it a sufficient quantity of entertaining 
matter to prevent our readers at least from complaining that it was ever 

' written, we will be content to be set down for the future as persons 
_ utterly unqualified to exercise the honourable calling to which we belong. 
d we shall-take the more pleasure in performing this duty, because 

the worthy doctor who furnishes us with the occasion of it is gifted with 

_ a certain irrepressible bonhommie, which, though it cannot make up for 
_ his manifold deficiencies as an author, renders him a by no means disa- 
able travelling companion. Accordingly, with his tediousness, his 


-_ * A Journal of ‘Travels to and from St.Petersburgh, by A. B. Granville, M.P., &c. &e. 
2 vols. Bvo. 


ieee 


392 Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


trifling, and his tittle-tattle, we never grow out of temper; with his 
logic we are never disposed to be very angry—though it, at vat 
page, leads him to general conclusions only not at open variance wit 

his premises, because he never seems to have any hold upon the latter at 
all ; except, indeed, in the cases of personal character, where, still fol- 
lowing his seemingly favourite prototypes, he sets down every one who 
confers the most ordinary civility upon him as the pink of politeness, 
grace, and good breeding—the pattern of learning and liberality—and, 
in short, the model of every virtue and accomplishment under heaven. 
These things, in consideration of the good doctor’s happy quality above- 
mentioned, we can easily away with. We can even overlook’ (because 
luckily we can also overleap) his eternal prosings about public buildings, 
and the interminable display of architectural knowledge which they call 
forth—with their peristyles, tetrastyles, octastyles, and innumerable 
other styles. Even his palpable blunders,—his puerilities, and common- 
places, without end—his fastidious affectations of finery—and his infinite 
unconsciousness of the presence of all these matters and things—we can 
easily excuse. Nay, so powerful and pervading is the effect of a happy 
temperament on all that it touches, we can even, in virtue of it in the 


present instance, almost pardon the worthy doctor his criticisms on Fine. 


Art, his philosophy, his physic, and his puns! 

It appears that our author left London on the 20th of September 1827, 
as part of the travelling suite of a Russian nobleman and his lady, the 
Count and Countess Woronzow, who were returning to their own coun- 
try, after a temporary visit to this. We state the case in the doctor’s 
own way, who, with all his affected contempt for what is beneath the first 
grade in society, is far from being “ above his business.” Luckily, 
the professional services of the doctor seem to have been confined to the 
administering forty-five drops of laudanum to the lady, as an antidote to 
sea-sickness in the passage across. If it had been otherwise, the secon- 
dary job which the pains-taking physician contrived to unite with his 
professional one—that of giving a full, true, and particular account of 
the Russian capital, by means of a residence of about forty days in it— 
must have “ come tardy off.” As it was, however, the doctor must have 
satisfied his gratitude to his patrons, and, at the same time, earned his 
handsome trattement, at a very small outlay of trouble indeed: for, during 
the leisure moments of the above-named brief period, he professes to 
have fully attained his chief object in visiting Russia ; inasmuch as he 
has seen, examined, and put himself in a condition to describe, in their 
minutest details, all the noticeable public institutions of Petersburgh ;— 
including half a score or so of royal palaces ; as many government esta- 
blishments and scientific institutes ; together with churches, hospitals, 
theatres, schools, and public charities, without number : to say nothing 
of his having gained a very satisfying insight into the general man- 
ners, habits, and state of society of this vast metropolis; and fully 
informed himself in regard to the most secret views, qualities, and per- 
sonal character of nearly all the leading members of the Russian com- 
munity! Out of these materials, thus collected, our traveller now sits 
down to furnish the English public with “a Guide’ to the city of 
Petersburgh: no such work existing, it appears, up to this time. In 
what manner the desideratum has now been supplied, it seems unneces- 
sary to state, after what we have said above ; and the more especially, as 


ee 


1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 393 


(we repeat) our object in noticing the work is simply to cull from its 
thirteen hundred closely-printed pages a few of those which seem calcu- 
lated to amuse and interest all classes of readers. 

Prepared (we had nearly said determined) as the doctor evidently was 
beforehand to see every thing in Russia couleur de rose, it will naturally 
be supposed that he does not start without flinging a sarcasm or two 
at his predecessors, Doctors Clarke and Lyall, who had viewed things 
under a different aspect. But it is not our intention to follow the tra- 
vellers, step by step, on their journey ; but to hasten forward towards 
the end of it—that being the portion which seems most likely to afford the 
kind of matter of which we are in search. Still we may, in the course 
of the journey itself, pick up a few straggling matters not unsuited to 
our purpose. 

As we have hinted that the doctor travelled in the ostensible character 
of family physician to a lady of distinction; it seems superfluous to add 
that he is a most determined gossip. He scarcely sets foot on a foreign 
shore, before, finding that (happily for all parties) he has little or 
nothing to do in his primary capacity, he commences operations in his 
secondary one, by proceeding straight to the bookseller’s-shop—that 
(and not the barber’s) being, according to the doctor’s improved and 
refined notions of such matters, the true spot whereon to pick up an 
acquaintance with what is passing in any given city. Here he gains the 
following information, touching that unfailing theme of interest and 
inquiry, Beau Brummel :— 


“* We learned that one of these voluntary exiles, once the leader of ton, not 
at all an enemy to snuff, or to the boxes that hold it, is lodged very comfortably 
at a bookseller’s not a mile distant from Dessein’s, and that he has been resident 
there for the last ten years, without once sleeping out of the house. He lives 
rather retired, but objects not to the visits of many of his old friends, who, on 
passing through Calais, make it a point to call on this exquisite specimen of 
the refined gentleman. His mode of living is rather monotonous and seden- 
tary. He writes and reads a great deal, or converses with his landlord, who 
is a most intelligent person, formerly an associate of Miranda, with whom he 
went to South America. Although he complains of not being rich, his apart- 
ments are said to be furnished with the most superb buhl meubles, most of 
which were purchased and selected by him with great taste, at Dunkirk, to 
the amount of two thousand pounds. The landlord speaks with great regard 
of his: iumate, with the whole history of whom he appears to be well 
acquainted.” 


Only conceive of the most exclusive of ex-exclusives being looked upon 
«“ with great regard” by the gossiping, beggarly provincial town ! 
Proceeding without delay through the Netherlands, our travellers at 
_ Ostend, and again at Brussels, fall in with Capo d’Istrias. As that person 
_ is at present filling a part which, if he uses rightly the opportunities it 
_ will afford him, may be looked upon as one of the most important in the 
_ European drama of the day, the following notices of him, vague and unsa- 
_ tisfactory as they are, will be read with interest and curiosity :— 
_ “Count Capo d’Istrias was born at Corfu, where he was filling a public 
situation of trust under Government in the year 1802, at the time of my visit- 
ing that island, and was held in high esteem by his fellow-citizens. Corfu 
and the rest of the Ionian Islands, were then under the protection of Russia ; 
but enjoyed a form of government of their own, as has been the case since 
_ their occupation by Great Britain. The Representative of the Russian 


| M.M. New Series—Vou.VI. No. 34. 3 E 


4 
; 
J 
iy 


co 


394 Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


monarch, at that time residing in Corfu, was Count Mocenigo ; anobleman 
who, by his impartial conduct, had gained the esteem of persons of all parties. 
He lived in a style of splendour well becoming his high station, and it was at 
his hospitable table that I recollect seeing, for the first time, Count Capo 
d’Istrias. One could observe, even at that early period of that gentleman's 
public career, that he possessed, within him, all the necessary elements for 
ensuring his future elevation. General Romieux, the Representative of the 
French Consular Government to the Septinsular Republic, near to whom I sat 
on that day, said to me, pointing to the Count :—‘ Cet homme ira bien loin 
dans la carriére de la diplomatie. Il ne lui faut que des circonstances favor- 
ables” The General’s prophecy has long been verified ; but its final and most 
triumphant accomplishment is even now taking place, by the Count’s eleva- 
tion to the chief station in the Greek Government. From the year 1813, when 
Capo d’Istrias was Minister Plenipotentiary from the Emperor of Russia to 
the Swiss Cantons, and, for his firm and upright conduct, was honoured with 
the right of citizenship by one of the Cantons, to the beginning of 1827, his 
career has been, with little interruption, a constant succession of highly 
honourable distinctions. He assisted at all the most important deliberations 
in.some of those Congresses of Sovereigns which peculiarly mark the diplo- 
matic history of Europe during the last fifteen years ; and, on the part of 
Russia, affixed his name to the memorable treaty of peace, concluded in Paris 
on the 20th of November, 1818. In the full enjoyment of the confidence and 
good opinion of his Sovereign, the Emperor Alexander, Count Capo d'Istrias 
ollowed his Imperial Master to St. Petersburgh after the signature of that 
Treaty, where he assumed, in conjunction with Count Nesselrode, the func- 
tions of Secretary of State for the Foreign Department. 

“ The more opportunities I have of conversing with Count Capo d'Istrias, 
the more convinced I feel of the justice of public opinion in regard to his 
merits. On one occasion he discoursed at full length on the state of Greece, 
and the form of Government best adapted for that country. On a subject 
that had been so long and so often discussed, I should have thought it impos- 
sible for any one to offer any thing new. The Count, however, proved by his 
opinions, corroborated by facts, and an appeal to long experience, that much 
which is novel, striking, and important, remained yet to be told on so interest- 
ing a subject. His notions respecting finances and loans, in particular, made 
a great impression on my mind. I had never heard those questions treated 
in so original a manner ; nor was I the less struck by the prudence and cau- 
tion which seemed to mark the sentiments of this statesman. The facility 
with which, while speaking, he referred to certain facts, led me to remark to 
him that his memory appeared surprising. He assured me that the compliment 
must not be generally applied, and that he never had any memory for precise 


words and numbers, but only for ideas. In support of this assertion, he 


related an anecdote respecting his admission as Doctor of Philosophy, in the 
University of Padua. On that occasion he had endeavoured to commit to 
memory his thesis, which had been previously approved of by the professors, 
with a view to his defending it, according to custom. But on mounting the 
rostrum, not a word could he recollect of his composition. He knew well 
enough what it was all about—recollected the arrangement of the different 
paragraphs by the help of the ideas which each contained; but the words, 
the provoking words, escaped his mind’s grasp. He hummed, and made the 
triple bow to his audience twice over, and stood mute; when at last, tired of 
this mummery, he took the thesis out of his pocket, and began reading it 
aloud, very-coolly, to the great amusement of the whole assembly. I take it, 
that this ,is, in fact, the best kind of memory for men of business: it helps 
them to retain things and ideas, rather than mere words and the arrangement 
of phrases. We saw a good deal of this distinguished individual during our 
stay at Brussels. His personal appearance is striking. 'The squareness and 
great elevation of his forehead—the extraordinary size of his ears, considerably 


el 


1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 895 


detached from the back part of the head—and the remarkable paleness of his 
complexion, give him a very peculiar character. He has a quick and brilliant 
eye, and a mildness in the expression of his countenance which is very pleas-~ 
ing. This nobleman, who, for the interest of Greece, had resigned the best 
pun of his moderate fortune, and was now journeying towards the seat of 
is Government, declined every assistance proffered to him, travelled by the 
diligence, and with a view of being wholly unfettered by foreign influence, had 
formally resigned all his pensions and other pecuniary emoluments. It is to 
be hoped that the Greek nation will prove worthy of such personal sacrifices, by the 
support they will give to the government of their distinguished countryman.” 


The reader will gather, from the last period of this extract, the class 
of social casuistry by which the conclusions of the worthy doctor are 
directed. He evidently looks upon “this nobleman,” and “ the Greek 
nation,” as no more than fit pendans the one for the other ; and that the 
latter, if it does not “ behave itself” in a befitting manner towards the 
former, will fully merit that extermination which for the present it seems 
to have escaped. 

It is singular to observe the intuitive knowledge which the doctor 
seems to possess, touching the moral and intellectual pretensions of every 
great personage towards whom he makes the remotest approach. He 
spends a day or two at Brussels; and the following is one of the revela- 
tions which come to him during that period. Having spoken of the Prince 
of Orange, as a person who “ promises, by his conduct, a succession of 
happy and brilliant years to the Flemish nation,” he adds, “ his amiable 
consort, the Princess Anne Paulowna, Grand-Duchess of Russia, enjoys 
likewise—and certainly no princess ever deserved it more—the greatest 
popularity. I have heard her spoken of in terms of admiration bordering 
on enthusiasm. This is not extraordinary, when it is considered to what 
royal stock this princess belongs, and under whose maternal care she has 
been educated.” 

As our author “ professes intendment” of rendering his book “ as use- 
ful as practical information can make it,” it may be proper to state here, 
once for all, that those travellers who take it fora “ Guide,” will do well 
to provide themselves with some other work of a similar nature, by which 
they may be enabled to check and correct its general and particular 
statements. Not that we would insinuate the probability of their meet- 
ing with any betier “Guide,” than that which is now offered to their 
notice: for we hold all professed “ Guides” to be equally skilled in the 
art of leading astray. But there are cases in which two bad things are 
better than one; and this is one of them. Travellers will not find any 
two “ Guides” that will give them exactly the same details, in regard to 
any one matter or thing whatsoever. The consequence is, that those 
persons who are prudent enough to provide themselves with two or three, 

will be induced to put no trust in either, and will thus escape that mass 
of misinformation which otherwise inevitably awaits them. Dr. Gran- 
‘ ville tells us that he wrote his work as a “ Guide” to St. Petersburgh— 
there being, up to the present time, no such thing extant. _Now thisis 
the only part, of either his design or the fulfilment of it, which we cannot 
forgive him. If there had been half-a-dozen of these deluders, we should 
have been happy to see him added. to the number: for, as “ in a multi- 
tude of counsellors there is wisdom,” so (as we have hinted above) ina 
multitude of misleaders it is not absolutely impossible that you may, 
among them all, fall into the right pages 
3 7 


396 -Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. (Ocr. 


That our present “ Guide” is not behind his fellows in the art 
which we have thus demonstrated to be so manifestly useful, one or two 
slight examples will be more than enough to shew. Speaking of Brus- 
sels as an eligible place of residence for persons of economical views, he 
says, “ The necessaries of life are not only plentiful, but cheap. Fruit 
and vegetables are very abundant.”—(Your “ Guide,” when he confines 
himself to generalities, can seldom do you much harm—for in these he 
can scarcely help following that general feeling, which is always right ; 
but when he descends to particulars, let him on no account be trusted.)— 
«« A small basket of the finest peaches in the world has been bought for 
ten cents. in the summer. I have seen magnificent pears sold in the 
market for three cents. the pound.” (Vol.i., p.83). Now, not having resided 
a greater number of years in Brussels than Dr. Granville professes to have 
spent days there, we will not pretend to set ourselves up as “ Guides” 
in matters of this nature. But thus much we will say—that we could 
never purchase a single fine peach—not to say a basket of them—even 
in the autumn, which is the season for them, for less than about ten cents 
—nor an eatable pear at less than about half that rate. Again: “ Bread 
is of an excellent quality throughout Flanders—perfectly white, light, 
and highly flavoured: its price is not more than half of what it bears in 
England.” (Ibid.) Now the merit of the Flemish and French bread is, 
that it is not “ white,” which genuine bread can never be ; and, if its 
general price be stated at one-fourth less than that of English bread, this 
is the utmost difference that truth will admit: and the point is one of 
the utmost importance, to those who are seeking the kind of information 
which “ Guides” profess to afford them. Once more: “ The Brussels 
coachmakers have considerable reputation in the north-west of Europe, 
and their caléches are in great request.”—(So far, so good—for the obser- 
vation is a gencral one; but, when we come to particulars, mark the 
difference.)—*“ A handsomely-built and strong carriage of this descrip- 
tion, built by Mosca, has been purchased for 3,000 francs, or 2,530 
florins ;” the former sum being about 120/. sterling, and the latter about 
210/.! The author adds, that such a carriage would cost in London 
« double that money.” Which money he means, probably he himself 
would be troubled to determine.—But enough of criticism, which is not 
our chief object in this notice. 

Our travellers now hurry through Louvain, Liege, and Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, to the Rhine, without meeting with any thing more remarkable 
than the appearance, at the last-named city, of two no less distinguished 
personages than “ the presumed author. of ‘ Almack’s Revisited,’ ” and 
“his amiable and fair lady,” who had actually been “ residing there 
during the summer !”’ 

The following is somewhat better worth knowing :— 

“« The establishment of steam-boats, however, has done away, in a great 
measure, with this tedious and more expensive mode of trayelling. One of 
these vessels starts twice a week from Cologne for Mayence and back again. 
Two whole days are employed in the former (stopping the night), and ten 
hours in the latter voyage. Similar conveyances exist from Cologne to Rot- 
terdam and back again, the distances being performed in twelve hours 
descending, and twenty-four ascending. The passage from London to Rot- 


terdam, in the steam-boat, occupies twenty-four hours: so that a traveller, | 


embarking at the Tower stairs for Mayence at nine o’clock on Saturday morn- ~ 


ing, in July, we will say, is sure of getting to Rotterdam on Sunday ; whence, 


Ar 


ee 


1828. ] Dr. Granville's Travels to St. Petersburgh. 397 


after taking a view of the place, he starts in another steam-vessel for Cologne, 
where he arrives on Tuesday afternoon. Having rested the night, he again 
embarks at five in the morning of Wednesday in a third steamer, reaches 
Coblentz the same day, and is landed at Mayence on Thursday afternoon. 
If his business takes him to Frankfort, a fourth steam-vessel is ready to con- 
vey him-to that place on the same day, as two such vessels perform that 
distance twice daily. Or if Switzerland be the point of direction, the Fre- 
deric William steamer will convey him to Strasburgh in forty-four hours ; 
from whence, plunging into the Black Forest, a short journey by land takes 
him into the very heart of Switzerland. Such are the wonderful performances 
of steam in navigation! A man may breakfast in London on Saturday, take 
his supper at the Rémisch Kaiser on the Thursday evening following at 
Frankfort, and dine in some Swiss Canton on the succeeding Sunday! And 
all this at the moderate expense of from forty to fifty rix-dollars, or at the 
very utmost ten guineas. Who will not travel? 


Again: the doctor’s advice in what follows may safely be taken :— 


« A journey performed at the close of the summer, along the banks of the 
Rhine, is, beyond question, a source of the greatest enjoyment—one which, 
in my capacity of physician, I would not hesitate to place among the most 
powerful auxiliaries for the cure of bad stomachs and the blue deyils. I have 
now had two opportunities of witnessing its beneficial effects on the consti- 
tution of invalids whom I accompanied during such an excursion, and I speak 
therefore from experience. There is something so soothing, and at the same 
time inspiring, in the contemplation of the successive and magnificent pano- 
ramas which present themselves to our admiration at every step as we pro- 
ceed—that few nervous disorders can withstand its sanative power. I would 
say to the dyspeptic and the bilious—to those who labour under hypochon- 
driac diseases, and a sorry state of the digestive organs ; go not, in the sum- 
mer, to Brighton or Eastbourne—neither cockneyfy yourselves in the Isle of 
Thanet with aldermen’s wives and their rubicund children; but embark for 
Rotterdam in a steam packet ; pray heaven that you may be duly sea-sick ; 
run away from Holland as soon as you get to it, taking the direction to 
‘Cologne, by acending, in a pyroscaphe, the noble stream, in front of which I 
am writing the present observations ; and, once safely landed at that place, 
as having seen as much of it as is worth seeing, follow us on land to the city 
of Bonn.” 


The following anecdote and bon-mot, in connexion with Coblentz, are 
too good not to merit being better known than they are :— 


“We drove to the Hotel de Tréves, on the place of the same name, next 
door to the Theatre, not far off from the Poste, and in the vicinity, in fact, of 
every thing that is good and convenient in Coblentz. The hotel is of the best 
description. When Napoleon, in the year 1812, invaded Russia, the Préfet of 
Coblentz, locking to the possibility of getting into better quarters by flatter- 
ing the man to whose ears the flattery of even the meanest indivdual was 
Sweet music, caused a stone monument to be erected on the Grande Place, to 
commemorate the bold enterprise and its anticipated success. At the close 
of that campaign, which brought the assailed into the country of the assail- 
ants, the Russian General, who took possession of Coblentz, was soon 
informed of the existence of the presumptuous inscription on the monument, 
and was recommended to level it to the ground. But Josephowitch, who had 
‘more esprit than the Frenchman by whom the memorial had been erected, ordered, 
on the contrary, that it should remain, with the following laconic commentary, 
written in the very language of the French bureaucratie. “Vu et approuvé 
par le Général Commanvant Russe a Coblentz, Jossrpuowitcu.” This monu- 
ment, with its bitter appendix, is still in existence, and visited by every 
stranger.” 


398 Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


Chapter V. of this volume contains a tolerably full and lively account 
of Frankfort, which is, perhaps, upon the whole, one of the most agree- 
able places of residence on the Continent of Europe. We cannot stay to 
make long extracts from it ; but may state in passing, that the doctor 
seems to have been successful in stripping Mr. Brougham of the credit 
(such as it is) of having originated the idea of the mechanics’ institutions, 
which have lately been making so much way in England. He shews, 
pretty satisfactorily, that one of an exactly similar kind existed at Frank- 
fort so early as 1816. But perhaps Mr. Brougham will be content (as 
he well may) with the credit of having originated the thing in his own 
country, ceding that of the zdea to whoever may claim it. At any rate, 
we suspect he will find ample grounds for that consolation which is to be 
gathered from an opportunity of “ having his revenge ;” since the very 
act which strips him of his honours in this instance, at the same time 
fulfils that amiable aspiration which an Edinburgh reviewer, above all 
people in the world, may be excused for making :—“ Oh, that mine 
enemy had written a book !” 

We sincerely wish the worthy doctor had treated us to a few more 
such anecdotes as the following, of Pozzi di Borgo. If he had, we 
should have been tempted to let him “ guide” his readers a little out of 
the right road with perfect impunity :— 


“ He was attaché to Koutusoff, during the brilliant campaign of 1812, and 
formed part of the suite of the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the Congress 
of Vienna, where his zeal, talents, and watchful anxiety for the interest of his 
Imperial master attracted the favourable notice of most of the foreign diplo- 
matists, with the single exception, according to common report, of Prince 
Metternich. That minister was supposed to entertain no cordial feeling 
towards the Baron. It happened, that during a severe indisposition which 
confined the Baron to his bed, the Prince saw, one morning, General Pozzo 
di Borgo, and another Russian gentleman now high in office, coming out 
of the invalid’s house. The Prince, assuming an air of grief and great 
seriousness, inquired of the General how the Baron was. ‘ Hélas!’ replied 
the General, ‘il n’y a plus d’espoir.’. ‘How so?’ rejoined his Serene High- 
ness eagerly, ‘he is dying then?’ ‘Au contraire, mon Prince,’ answered 
Pozzo di Borgo, ‘ c’est qu'il va beaucoup mieux.’ ” 


The professional extract which we also give below is highly interest- 
ing, and is explained with even more than the doctor’s usual good 
sense :— 


« As.a medical man, I may be expected to say a word or two on the sub- 
ject of the curious plan of treatment, called /a cure de raisins. I made parti- 
cular inquiries on this subject, and had some conversation with patients who 
had gone through the regular process with success. From both these sources 
of information, I collect, that people labouring under inveterate affections of 
the stomach, frequent indigestion, nervous irritability of the digestive organs 
generally, bilious head-aches following upon an obstinate condition of the 
bowels, soreness or tenderness of the abdomen, and, in fact, suffermg from 
that proteiform series of symptoms, which accompany diseases principally 
seated in the stomach or accessory organs, requiring strict diet and pure 
country air, cooling medicines, and the total absence of animal food, have 
been recommended to pass from a fortnight to three weeks or a month at or 
in the neighbourhood of Riidesheim, at the beginning of the vintage season, 
and to eat nothing but grapes during the whole of that time. Such patients 
take up their abode in one of the inns at Riidesheim, which are very tolerable, 
particularly the “ Engel,” (enjoying a magnificent prospect of the river), and 


Se Oe i i i i a ee i ea 


Be 


Te eae 


1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 399 


agree to pay a fixed sum for the lodging and two or three pounds of grapes 
daily. These should be eaten immediately from the tree, and the only thing 
allowed with it is a small quantity of bread. Those who can walk, are 
recommended to pluck their morning portion of grapes from the trees ; a thing 
easily accomplished, as all the innkeepers have vineyards of their own. The 
second portion, about a pound, is eaten at dinner, or at about one o’clock, and 
the remainder at sunset. The hours for retiring to bed are from eight till 
nine, and the patient rises with the sun. This treatment admits of no medi- 
eine or other article of food with it. The effect of it is, to adopt the lan- 
guage of Dr. Puff, to bring the action of the bowels to a proper standard—to 
quiet every symptom of irritability and nervous excitement—to remove head- 
ache—improve the digestion—procure sound and refreshing sleep—restore a 
proper degree of coolness to the skin and mouth—and inspire the patient with 
cheerful ideas and bright prospects. These miraculous effects of the cure de 
raisins are in perfect accordance -with the best notions respecting the modes 
of treating stomach complaints connected with indigestion. What these com- 
plaints require, is a cessation on the part of the affected organ from all ordi- 
nary operations; in other words, ‘a few holidays from the fatigues of eating 
and drinking ;’ and the cure de raisins is, perhaps, as good a way ‘ to keep © 
holiday,’ as any that can be recommended.” ] 


Our author is much too genteel and exclusive a person to adopt the 
ordinary methods of making himself acquainted with the popular man- 
ners and customs of the people through whose country he passes. Never- 
theless, on one occasion, he does condescend to visit a table d’héte, hav- 
ing learned beforehand that he is pretty sure to meet there “a select 
number of highly respectable people.” The description which he gives 
of the adventure being (notwithstanding its grossiérete) tolerably lively 
and characteristic, we shall present it to our readers ; though we should 
certainly have passed it over in favour of other matter, but for the very 
sensible reflections which the doctor educes from it, and which, coming 
from a professional person of considerable practice, are really worth 
attending to:— 

“T learned, on taking my place at the convivial board, that I had the 
honour of sitting with no fewer than three Barons, Privy Councillors, supe- 
rior employés in the Government, and some military officers. My informant, 
who presided at the table, who was master of the inn, introduced me to those 
who sat nearest. I first addressed one, then another, and at last a third, with 


- the usual introductory observations of strangers willing to enter into conver- 


sation; but to no effect. Either my German was unintelligible, or my 
French too much for them; for I tried both languages. The replies 
were monosyllabic and discouraging, and I was compelled to fall back into 
my character of silent observer. As the dinner proceeded, and the conversa- 
tion, with one exception, became general, a boisterous band of bugles and 
clarionets, enough to startle the whole Thuringian forest, was admitted into 
the room; and the astounding noise they made rendered the voices of our 
te louder and louder still, until it became, at last, animated to the highest 

egree, though no Rhenish wine, but only a single tumbler of cold punch had 
been set before them. Brandishing of knives and forks in the air, as the 
interlocutors studied to enforce by gesticulation their narratives and propo- 
sitions ; picking of teeth with the point of the knife or a pin during.the short 
pauses of affected attention to the adversary’s reply ; spitting across the 
room, and at some distance, on some unlucky piece of furniture ; despoiling 
every plate of the last drop of the savoury sauce, with a morsel of bread held 
between the finger and thumb ; these formed some of the episodes to the more 
general occupation of eating, enacted by these sprigs of nobility and untra- 
velled fashionables. Their shirt-pins, bearing stones of the diameter of a 


400 Dr. Granville’s Travels io St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


rixthaler, cornelian watch-keys like the pans of scales, profusion of massive rings 
on every phalanx, coarse linen, hair uncombed, and nails terminated by 
sable crescent, bespoke them members of that privileged class, which in many 
of the principal towns in Germany, I am sorry to be obliged to admit, do not. 
always combine the Chesterfieldian manners and neatness of person with their 
other excellent qualities of the heart and head, but whose peculiarities never 
strike the uninitiated so forcibly as at table. To all such, I would recommend 
as part of their education, a “season in London,” spent in the free inter- 
course with the best classes of society. I have frequently had occasion to 
witness the marvellous metamorphosis which such an experiment has pro- 
duced in many German and Italian noblemen who visit England with the 
benefit of excellent introductions. One hardly recognizes them again at the 
time of their departure, so thoroughly changed are their manners and general 
appearanee, by the result of example. The effects of such a change remain 
with them through life; and although on their return home they may for a 
time be considered as singular, the superiority of their address and the neat- 
ness of their persons, readily and advantageously distinguish them from the 
rest of their countrymen. 

“ Our dinner began with potage au riz, of which deep basinsful, with grated 
cheese, were speedily swallowed. To this succeeded, in single and orderly 
succession, plain boiled beef, with sour mustard, and a profusion of fermented 
red cabbage ; boiled carp, with its silvery scales in all their brilliancy upon 
its back; large balls, of a substance resembling hasty-pudding, light and 
savoury, swimming in a bowl of melted butter resembling castor oil, and 
eaten most voraciously by all present, with the addition of a sweet compéte de 
pommes. Chevreuil piqué au lard was next introduced, followed by some sort 
of fried fish. At last a boiled capon made its appearance, to which I, who 
had hitherto been a motionless as well as a silent spectator, eommended 
myself for a dinner ; and while thus engaged, I observed that fried parsley 
roots, hot and hissing from the pan, were received on the table with the 
approving exclamation, “ Das ist ganz vortrefflich!” This comedy had now 
lasted upwards of an hour, and I began to repent of my experiment. At last 
Dutch cheese, pears, and spunge biscuits, were laid on the greasy table-cloth ; 
coffee and liqueur were presented to some and not to others; and the “ con- 
vivii turbulenti,” after having rolled up their weekly napkin, and confined it 
within a ring of red leather, paid their moderate reckoning of half a rix- 
thaler (eighteenpence!) and departed, one after the other, in all the swagger- 
ing complacency which a full stomach is apt to inspire. 

“Surely, said I to myself, as I retired to my room, these gentlemen’s 
digestive organs cannot be of that class, for which Abernethy and Wilson- 
Philip, and Paris and Johnson have written their legislative codes of dietetics. 
Even within the singular, yet felicitous divergences which exist among those 
learned contemporaries, (each preaching an opposite sermon from the same 
text,) it would not be possible to find a place for such stomachs, as I had the 
leisure of a full hour to contemplate at the Weimar table @’hote. They seem to 
set at nought all statutes and regulations. The human caldron is daily loaded 
to the brim with the same ominous mixture above described, and which is not 
far different from that condemned by the gay author of the treatise on diet. 
Still chymification and chilification go on uninterruptedly. No hard liver, dys- 
pepsia, or morbid sensibility are produced, as I have taken pains to ascertain, 
and the general health proceeds uninterrupted. Something more, therefore, 
must needs exist in the physical question ‘of digestion, which my learned 
brethren have not touched upon—and such is in reality the fact. The for- 
mule which those authors have propounded for solving the general problem of 
digestion will not apply to, aud cannot explain, the many contradictory pheno- 
mena, which present themselves at every step in regard to food, nutrition, and 
disease, among the several civilized nations of Kurope. To lay down general 
rules for dietetics—to predict or threaten the same terrific catastrophe to 


» 


ee 


oo 


1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 40) 


every sinning gourmaid—to explain by the same unvaried cause, “ indiges- 
tion,’ every malanna to which flesh is heir to, is absurd, even when such 
generalizations are confined to a large class of society in this country, without 
wandering abroad. One can no more find two stomachs than two noses alike. 
The whole secret lies in learning how the stomach of our patient has been 
educated, and according to that education to deal with it. This involves an 
individuality in the attention to be given to cases of ‘ stomach complaints,” 
which physicians would find too troublesome ; yet without it justice cannot be 
done to the patients. It is sheer nonsense to talk of classing human stomachs 
and civilized stomachs ; stomachs of drunkards and stomachs of abstemious 
people; stomachs of aldermen, and stomachs of Pythagoreans; stomachs of 
literary men, lawyers, physicians, and parsons, and stomachs of young colle- 
gians, sportsmen, and dandies, under one and the same denomination and rule. 
Each has had its physical education as peculiarly different from that of the 
rest, as that which the possessor has received in the nursery or at college; 
and each must be dealt with accordingly. A friend of mine, who had occasion 
to see a physician write several directions for invalids labouring under what 
are called “stomach complaints,” wondered that he did not give a printed 
circular to each, in imitation of a great authority who had always the same 
printed page to refer to, and thus save himself trouble. Had he followed such 
a plan, he would have done his patients injustice ; for, as far as my own 
experience goes, I am confident he never met with two stomachs alike!” 


We must now quit our author during the remainder of his rout to St. 
Petersburgh, and rejoin him at the gates of that most interesting of 
European capitals ; for such it is, at least to the inhabitants of all the 
others. Much of the remainder of our notice will be devoted to the 
purpose of conveying to our readers as characteristic a notion of this 
beautiful city as our own space and our author’s powers of description 
will permit. The following are some of our traveller’s impressions from 
the first view of it :— 


“The general coup dil which the “Imperial Residence” of St. Peters- 
burgh presents to the traveller, is one of the most magnificent in Europe. It 
does not, like that of Naples and Constantinople, heightened by the magic 
effect of the surrounding country, convey the idea of beautiful nature and 
picturesque situation ; neither is the impression first received on entering the 
spacious streets and extensive squares of St. Petersburgh like that which the 
capitals of London and Paris excite when first beheld, imparting at once just 
notions of the wealth, splendour, and luxury of their inhabitants. But it 
surprises more than either, from the great number and magnitude of the public 
buildings, from the bold style of architecture which pervades every part, and 

from the total absence of those dark and wretched courts and lanes, the abode 
of the lowest classes, which in other cities obtrude themselves on the notice of 
the traveller, in the midst of grandeur and stateliness of exterior. 

Tt was not without some reason that a French traveller newly arrived in 
this city, asked where the people lived? “ Partout je ne rencontre que des 
palais et d’innombrables edifices,’ he observed ; and the remark thus far was 
correct. No capital in Europe can, in this respect, be compared to St. Peters- 
burgh ; for no where else do we meet with buildings of such striking appear- 
ance, nor does any other city contain so many private houses which might rival 
the palaces of Rome. St. Petersburgh is, in fact, a city of palaces.” 


What follows, in relation to the origin and peculiar situation of Peters 
burgh, is sensible and well put :— 


“To a sovereign who felt the desire and saw the necessity of bringing his 
people more immediately into contact with the maritime nations of Europe, and 
who by the nature of political events was obliged to keep a watchful eye over its 
nearest neighbours, who were also his most inveterate enemies ; the situation of 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 34, 


402 Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


this second capital of the Empire was not a matter of choice, but one of compul- 
sion. To place a town destined to be the principal seat of government, where 
St. Petersburgh now stands, has been considered a great fault on the part of its. ° 
founder. It has been alleged that to select a low and’swampy soil, on the banks 
and at the mouth of a river which divides the country into anumber of islands, 
was to perpetuate inconveniences which might never be overcome, and to create 
a new population that it might become the prey of an unhealthy climate. But 
Peter the Great, convinced of the important political and. commercial advan- 
tages of the chosen site of his new city, deemed any inconvenience which he 
might have to struggle with, arising from the nature of the situation, a matter 
of secondary consideration. He knew mankind in general too well, and the 
people in particular whom he proposed to bring together in this place, not to 
rely upon the efforts of human industry and skill for producing a gradual and 
beneficial change, and for deriving advantages even from the difficulties in 
which they were placed. He had the example and success of the first foun- 
ders of Venice on his side: he knew that the great towns in Holland had had 
no other beginning.” 


Our next extract shall point out some of the numerous changes which 
have taken place in the Russian capital during the last few years, shew- 
ing that no former descriptions cf it mecca preclude anew one :— 


“ A comparison between St. Petersburgh as it was in 1801, when Storck’s 
description of that town was first translated into English, and as it now is, 
shows its rapid increase in size and importance in the course of a quarter 
of a century. The difference is manifest, not only in the great addition 
of dwelling-houses, and public buildings since the former period, but in the 
many improvements and multiplied embellishments which have from that time 
become conspicuous features of the capital. 

“ Two new districts have been added in one part of the town since that 
time, and the other parts have considerably extended their limits. New streets 
and new squares have been opened; the former are now nearly double in 
number. A new Imperial Palace in town, and two Imperial residences in the 
country have been erected. New churches have been built, as well as new 
places of amusement. Another moveable bridge has been added to the two 
already existing on the Neva; and several new granite and suspension-bridges 
have been erected across the canals. Two new museums are forming ; several 
new literary and medical institutions have been founded. Most of the collec- 
tions of natural history and antiquities have been augmented. An extensive 
botanic garden has been opened. The principal Imperial palaces have been 
embellished, their internal decorations and arrangements changed, and new 
collections of objects of the fine arts added to them. A new exchange with 
extensive magazines has since risen on one of the points of Vassileiostrow, and 
Rostral columns to carry a Pharo light have been placed in front of it. The ex- 
terior of the great edifice of the Admiralty has undergone a complete change, 
and most of the streets leading to it have had trottoirs added to them. Other 
alterations also, too numerous to describe, although not less important, have 
taken place in the same period of time for the improvement of the city.” 


- It appears that Petersburgh is at present well supplied with vehicles 
of public conveyance, of every kind, and at a most moderate price. The 
various descriptions of these which are to be met with in all the fre- 
quented parts of the city, must produce a very lively and picturesque 
effect—especially when aided by the strange costumes of their drivers. 
The following sketch of a Russian coachman is worth extracting :— 

‘© The costume of a Russian coachman is very picturesque. It consists of a 
caftan or tunic of fine blue, crimson, or green cloth, closely drawn over the 
chest, reaching only as high as the lower ‘part of the neck, which is generally 
left uncovered, and either buttoned down the middle, with small round-headed 
gold buttons, or the two front plaits laid one over the other obliquely, clasped 


1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. AOS 


at the upper part with a gold clasp, and as low down as the loins, where it 
expands in folds, which are gathered together by a rich silk waistband, called 
a Koushak. ‘The tunic reaches to the middle of the leg. The sleeves are tight, 
and at the wrist have a vertical row of gold buttons. Wide trowsers, generally 
of the same, or of some fancy colour, with boots, complete the dress. The 
head in summer is covered with a round hat, low in the crown, and with a 
wide brim, which is curled up side-ways.. The upper part of the crown is 
very large, and the lower part surrounded by a wide band of velvet, buckled 
in front with a gold buckle. In winter, the head-dress is different. Instead 
of a hat, an expanding four-cornered turban, very high, and mostly of rich 
crimson velvet, with a gold band and a rim of fur, is generally worn. To com- 
plete the picture, this important personage wears a bushy beard, of which he 
is exceedingly careful, and his hair is cut square all round level with the eye- 
brows. The postilion’s dress is uniform with that of the coachman.” 


We must now pass on to the actual state of society in this rapidly 
improving capital. As we have hinted in the outset, the worthy doctor's 
views on this matter must be taken cum grano salis, especially when 
(contrary to his usual principles of universal politeness to all who hoi 
*< a certain rank in society”) he indiscreetly places the ladies of some of 
the Russian nobles above those of all other nations. Still there is no 


reason to suppose that such sketches as the following are greatly exag- 
gerated :-— 


“Tt is usual to say of Russian society, that it consists of only two great 
divisions, the Nobles and the Serfs. How far this may be true, in a political 
point of view, it is not the purpose of the present work to discuss. Speaking 
of the accessible society, or, in other words, of the persons of whom good 
society is composed, there can be no doubt, but that as many classes exist in 
St. Petersburgh as in any other large capital in Europe. The families of 
persons holding high situations at Court, the Ministers of State, and Foreign 
Ministers, military officers of high rank having important appointments, or 
being attached to the person of the Emperor, the hereditary nobility not con- 
nected with the Court or the Army may be considered as forming one group, 
of the first or highest class.of society : another group consists of persons who 
are not distinguished by any hereditary title, but who belong to the first four 
classes of nobility, on account of their rank in the civil or military service. 
The superior employés under Government, and the heads of the great Imperial 
establishments or institutions, may be included in this second group. 

“ The mutual intercourse among these various denominations of persons in 
high life, and their families, appeared to me frequent, and distinguished by 
that ease and those elegant manners which characterise the same classes of 
persons in the first capitals of Europe. A foreigner can only judge of them by 
what they appear in the midst of their friends and their guests. On such 
occasions, their deportment is free from hauteur, and their address engaging ; 
what they may be with their inferiors I know not. Much has been said of 
their hospitality, particularly to strangers. As far as I have had an oppor- 
tunity of seeing it, I am free to acknowledge that there is no exaggeration in 
placing it above that of the higher classes in other countries. To persons well 
recommended and properly introduced, be they Russians or foreigners, it is 
unbounded ; neither is it, as elsewhere, limited to a mere matter of form invi- 
tation to a dinner or a soirée, but extends to many friendly offices, and a fre- 
quent repetition of kindness. With regard to the ladies of this class of society, 
it is the least to say, that in point of mamners, politeness, and unaffected 
dignity of deportment, they yield to none of the most distinguished of the fair 
sex in other countries in Europe. Nay, constituted as society is at this moment 
in other capitals, it is impossible not to admit, that in regard to accomplish- 
ments, and the more solid advantages of education, some of the Russian ladies 
of rank are superior to those of other nations. There are few indeed among 
them, who do not speak with equal apa French, German, and English, 

3 


404. Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Pelersburgh. TOcr. 


besides their own native language. Many of them write these languages with 
equal ease and correctness. This is the case, particularly with regard to the 
younger branches of the nobility, owing to the new and happy direction given 
to their education, by the successful efforts of the Empress-mother. Nor is a 
knowledge of languages the only prominent qualification which these ladies 
bring into society; but varied and useful information also; an extensive 
acquaintance with the literature and history of Europe ; an exquisite finesse 
d@ esprit, displayed in an easy and well-supported conversation ; anda number 
of agreeable talents which tend to embellish their existence.” 


It appears that our own countrymen are alike everywhere. Whether 
on the banks of the Neva, or the Bay of Naples, reserve and restriction 
are the order of the day with them. They can do nothing in the way of 
hospitality, for either the merit or the pleasure of doing it—but only 
because “ it is expected of them.” 

Weare happy to agree with our author in the following tribute to 
Russian patriotism. ‘The national character has scarcely received the 
credit due to it on the points referred to in this extract :— 


“ But although I hold myself unqualified to speak of the Russian character 
in general, there is one striking feature belonging to it, which the history of 
recent events has consecrated, and cannot, therefore, be passed over in silence 
even by the superficial observer. IT mean that unbounded devotion to the cause 
of their country, displayed by the whole population, during the unprovoked 
aggression of the late ruler ‘of France, affording the striking example (one 
which is unparalleled in the records of the numerous conquests of foreign 
countries made by that extraordinary man) of not a single inhabitant, high or 
low, either of the towns or provinces occupied by his legions, joining his for- 
tune and party ; and by either words or deeds promoting the scheme of plun-~ 
der and devastation then executing against the Russian territory. When 
Napoleon sent his eagles to Holland, conquered Prussia, penetrated into 
Austria, and took possession of its capital; when he entered Italy, occupied 
Spain, and found reasons in diplomatic sophistry, for ejecting the House of 
Braganza from Lisbon, he ever met with a number of high and powerful 
individuals, and not unfrequently with a great portion of the population, who, 
unmindful of their duties as citizens, and unmoved by the more general 
example of patriotic resistance, or the distresses entailed on their countrymen, 
espoused and assisted his cause. But in the vast empire of Russia, no such 
humiliating occurrence took place from the day in which Napoleon set his 
foot on that territory, to that in which he bid a hasty adieu to the skeletons 
of his few surviving regiments. It is a curious fact, which the historians of 
modern times have failed to remark, that in none of those studied composi~ 
tions called the Bulletins of the Grand Army of the North, with which Buona- 
parte endeavoured to keep up the prestige in favour of his great enterprise 
among the people of his good city of Paris, has the writer boasted (as he 
invariably had done in similar despatches written from other foreign countries 
which he had invaded) of having been joined by any part of the people or by 
a single Russian individual of note.” 


In connexion with some professional remarks on the climate of St. 
Petersburgh, our author states the following remarkable fact :— 


“It is a fact which will startle my readers, that “ a cold” is seldom to be 
heard of in St. Petersburgh. That anomalous species of disorder is indige- 
nous to England, and above all to London. It does an infinity of mischief, 
and covers many a blunder. In the capital of Russia few people complain of 
“a cold ;” and if a person of consequence (who has been for a great length of 
time dying of disease ill understood, or badly managed,) does actually fall a 
victim to the complaint, the candid physician does not, as in some other 
capital, attempt to mystify the friends, by remarking that “ the patient was 
getting. better, but caught cold and died.” There are, seriously speaking, so 
few diseases of the chest, catarrhs,.and defluxions, and feverish colds in the 


1828. ] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 405 


Russian capital, that I was quite surprised on hearing consumption quoted as 
an almost endemic complaint.” 


We have no room for any details respecting that greatest of all winter 
luxuries, a Russian stove ; but we cannot help wondering, en passant, 
at the marvellous obstinacy and stupidity which have so long kept us 
from the enjoyment of such a comfort. But the truth is, that knowledge, 
reason, and common-sense have little or nothing to do in matters of this 
nature. Peremptory demand alone is the parent of supply ; and, in con- 
formity with this view, it may be stated as a general proposition, that 
the discomforts of cold and heat are less felt respectively, in the exact 
proportion that the sources of those discomforts present themselves in a 
greater degree. A sultry day in the East Indies (from the “ appliances 
and means” of meeting it) is not half so oppressive, even to the European 
population, as a sultry day in England ; and the inhabitants of the great 
European capitals have cause to dread the approach of winter, in the 
exact proportion that they approach the great northern source of it. A 
winter in Paris is intolerable; in England, it is not much better ; in Ger- 
many, it ameliorates as you get farther and farther north ; and in Russia, 
there is not an idea connected with it but those of comfort and luxury. 

Again,—we meet in Dr. Granville’s work with some very curious details 
respecting the Russian methods of employing that important mean of 
health and luxury, the bath. We cannot afford room for any of these details, 
but must not omit the liberal and sensible remarks of the doctor on this 
highly-interesting matter ; though we more than doubt of their leading 
to any good results: for we English are quite as obstinate in pursuing a 
wrong course as aright one :— 


“ The physical effects of a bath of this description are highly favourable to 
the constitution. Judging by my own feelings I should be inclined to place it 
above every form of bath in general use; and I think I am indebted to it for 
the removal of severe rheumatic pains which before nothing seemed to alle- 
viate. A Russian is apt to think that almost every disorder to which he is 
necessarily liable from the severity of the climate, may be removed by the hot 
bath, and he flies to it on all occasions when ailing. This general impression 
on the mind of a whole nation, who.are naturally keen observers, has its foun- 
dation on long experience, and although not strictly correct to the whole 
extent, is not to be contemptuously rejected as the eftect of ignorance. Most 
of those who have travelled in Russia, or in the Levant, where a similar kind 
of bath is used with even greater frequency by every class of people, can bear 
testimony to the efficacy as well as the comfort of a Russian or Turkish bath, 
in their own case, when afflicted with colds, rheumatism, cutaneous affections, 
or incipient fevers. On two other occasions besides the one already alluded toy 
I attended the same establishment in the course of five weeks spent in 
St. Petersburgh, and both times derived the full measure of benefit from it 
which I expected. I went thither with every symptom of an approaching 
feverish cold, and returned quite well, and continued so. The external tem- 
perature was on both occasions seven and eight degrees below the freezing 
point; snow was on the ground. In the ante-room, the temperature was 
at 100, and in the bath-room 132 degrees. Yet; notwithstanding this striking 
difference of temperatures, I walked home the distance of nearly half a mile, 
without the least inconvenience or ill effect.” 
_ The out-of-door scenes of a Russian winter have been so often, and so 
well described before, that we shall not repeat them here—especially, as 
they are features which a few years do not change. Neither shall we 
follow our author into any of his minute architectural and other details, 
respecting the chief public buildings of the Russian capital ; and which 
details occupy a very considerable portion of the second volume. But 


406 Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


some of the royal institutions, connected with the morals, manners, and 
education of the people, we must not dismiss so briefly—as they involve 
considerations of real interest and importance to all the civilized nations 
of Europe. First, however, we may cull a few personal anecdotes of 
the present emperor, who is just now an object of such intense interest 
throughout the whole of Europe :— 


“ Nor is the individual conduct of the Emperor himself without its good 
effect on the minds of his people. His application to business is most regular. 
The affairs of the state alone seem to engross his attention, and it is said that 
he seldom gives an hour to pleasure, which might have been better devoted to 
the welfare of his subjects. He rises early, and spends some time in transact- 
ing military matters. Part of this consists in receiving, as I before stated, 
Count Diebitch, the chief of the Etat-Major, who daily waits on his Majesty 
from seven o'clock till nine, and reports the state of the army during the pre- 
ceding day, and receives his Majesty’s commands. After breakfast he either 
attends the council, or receives his Ministers daily ; each of whom has his 
appointed days and hours for waiting on the Emperor. He has on some occa- 
sions attended the senate ; and it was reported, while we were at St. Peters- 
burgh, that having heard that the Senators had been in the habit of assembling 
very late, a practice which caused considerable delay in public business, his 
Majesty called early one day at the House of the Senate, and finding none of 
its members assembled, simply desired it to be made known to them, that the 
Emperor had attended to transact business at such an hour. From that time 
the Senators took care to be at their post with greater punctuality. At one 
o'clock he generally attends the parade.” 

“ The following trait of Nicholas, though of a different description, deserves 
to be recorded. I had it from the best authority. It is known that the Per- 
sians have, of late years, endeavoured to introduce the European tactics into 
their armies ; yet, with so little success, that the Russian troops opposed to 
them have found little difference in their mode of fighting. Some months 
before the capture of Erivan by the Russians, some hundreds of these Perso- 
European soldiers were made prisoners, when the Emperor desired that a 
certain number of them should be sent to St. Petersburgh, where he had them 
dressed in the uniform of one of his regiments of guards, and ordered that they 
might be trained and instructed like them. He even took care that their 
clothing should be of better materials, and their food of the best kind, and, 
from time to time, his Majesty himself would go to see them manceuvre in 
order to judge of their progress. When he found them well trained, he sent 
them back to the Shah, with this message: “Tell your Sovereign, that if he 
really wishes to introduce the modern European system of tactics and military 
discipline into his armies, he may safely take you as models—and that he may 
form as many such as he pleases, by applying to his immediate neighbours, 


instead of employing some renegade officers, or runaway adventurers from 
distant countries.” 


Of the Empress mother, Dr. Granville gives a very exalted character. 
The two following illustrations of it are all that we can afford to 
extract :—- 


“Those who are accustomed to look on the names of illustrious persons 
found in the capacity of patrons of schools, hospitals, and other charities, as 
being placed there merely to add lustre to the establishments, but not to call 
for personal exertion and interest from them, except on extraordinary occa- 
sions, will be surprised to learn that the Empress Maria Feodorowna of Russia 
does not consider her station, at the head of the numerous institutions alluded 
to, as a mere sinecure, but that she actually superintends the management of | 
them all, from day to day, and from morning till night: visiting them all in 
turn, and being for ever occupied in devising improvements, extending their 


sphere of utility, or maintaining that which has already been confirmed by 
the test of experience. 


1828. ] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 407 


** This most indefatigable and active Princess rises at a very early hour in 
the day, and receives the sealed reports direct; and without the interference of 
her secretaries or other officers, from each institution placed under her govern- 
ment. She reads them all, makes remarks, and gives the necessary directions, 
either verbally, or in writing, whenever required. So attentive is she to the 
very minutie and details of each establishment, the plan of most of which is of 
her own suggestion, that, in the case of the Hopital des Pauvres, for example, 
which is particularly her own foundation, as I have been informed by her 
physician, /e conseiller Dr. Ruhl, she will make appropriate remarks to him 
whenever the number of diseases or the number of deaths appears greater than 
in the reports of a corresponding period in the preceding year, and will express 
a wish that an inquiry may immediately be set on foot by this her principal 
physician into the cause of those differences. Nothing, in fact, escapes her 
attention.” 


The institutions of Petersburgh, from which, unquestionably, the 
most important public results will, hereafter, spring ; and, consequently, 
those which are of most interest in the eyes of the rest of Europe, are the 
establishments connected with the education of the various classes of the 
people. Not that the utmost possible spread of education, which these 
establishments can give rise to, is at all likely to be attended by results 
similar to those which must grow out of general education in a country 
like England : for these establishments being, for the most part, confined 
to the capital, their effects will be in a great measure confined to that 
also, as the capital of Russia, unlike that of every other in civilized 
Europe, exercises but little general influence on the remote provinces 
of the empire. So that the most enlightened views, even on political 
subjects, may be permitted to prevail there, without any immediate fear 
of their proving fatal to the general system of the Russian government. 
Nevertheless, it must be admitted to shew a real liberality of feeling on 
the part of the absolute sovereign of an empire like that of Russia, and 
the consciousness of an unfeigned desire to promote the welfare of his 
people, when he consents to incur even the remote risks of a system of 
education like that which is at present pursued in the capital of 
Nicholas I. Certain it is that, however honourable and beneficial such 
a system may prove to the Emperor himself, it will one day or other prove 
more or less fatal to his successors ; and this will happen sooner or later, in 
proportion as those successors recede from, or follow the track which he 
and his immediate predecessor have marked out for them. We recommend 
to the particular attention of all those whose time and inclinations permit 
them, to apply to Dr. Granville’s book itself, all that part of the second 


‘volume which relates to the two great establishments for female educa- 


tion in the Russian capital. The doctor’s description of them is clear 
and interesting ; and it is impossible, on reading it, to doubt that some- 


thing of a similar kind might, with great advantage, be adopted in this 


and other countries, in place of the monstrous system of female educa- 
tion which prevails at present. Numerous modifications and ameliora- 
tions would, of course, be required, in order to adapt the system to the 
different habits and after views of the parties to be influenced by it. But 
all these would speedily suggest themselves ; and the bare announcement 
of an attempt to introduce such a system, under proper patronage, would 
work infinite good, if it were but by arousing the public mind to an 
cary into the unthought-of and nameless abuses which at present 
pollute the very springs of our private morals and manners. 

At about the middle of volume II., the doctor commences his disser- 
tations on the state of medicine in Petersburgh. Here we shall, in 


408 Dr. Granville's Travels to St. Petersburgh. [Ocr. 


accordance with his own advice to that effect, part company with him 
for a space—not, however, without stating, that what he brings forward 
on this head is well worth knowing, “to those whom it may concern.” 
We cannot help stopping for a moment, however, to smile at the doctor’s 
lamentation over the fact, that in Russia, as well as elsewhere, patients 
are in the habit of occasionally “ changing their medical attendant :’”— 
a practice which the doctor looks upon as the height of human ingrati- 
tude! So hurt is he at this unprincipled abuse of our free agency, that, 
spite of the general bonhommie for which we so much admire him, he, 
in reference to this unpardonable defect in the human character, launches 
a (true) libel against the whole human race, in the shape of the French 
proverb, “ L’ingratitude est de tous les pays.” We must also recommend 
to the particular attention of patients in general, a new plan which the 
doctor most disinterestedly propounds, for the laudable purpose of getting 
rid of the present mischievous practice of giving daily fees to physicians. 
But as he professes an intention of developing this plan more at length, 
on some future occasion, we shall willingly wait. In the meantime, 
however, we must state our entire concurrence with the proposition he 
makes, that all the plans which at present prevail on this subject, “ are 
more or less objectionable and inconvenient to one of the parties.” — 
(Vol. 2, p. 269.) 

The doctor is not very profuse on the subject of Russian sports ; but 
he tells us of one, which, but for his obvious freedom from the traveller’s 
proverbial failing, we might have taken for a piece of innocent inven- 
tion ; unless, indeed, it is to be looked upon as a bit of ingenious satire 
on his part. Our readers shall judge for themselves :— 


_ » © The Russians of St. Petersburgh have no cock-pit among their sports ; 
but they have a goose pit, a fact which, I believe, has been overlooked by 
former travellers. Fighting birds of that noisy yet apparently harmless tribe 
are trained for sport, and the practice prevails to a great extent among the 
hemp merchants. They are taught to peck at each other's shoulders, so as to 
draw blood. The ganders have been known to have sold as high as five hun- 
dred roubles, and betting upon them runs very high. This sort of sport takes 
place in March, when geese, probably like hares, are mad.” 
The doctor does not inform us whether he ever ventured to witness, 
or, as the French have it, “ assist at,” this singular sport. 

We fear our extracts have already swelled this paper to an unreason- 
able, though we trust not an unreadable length. We must, therefore, 
hasten to a conclusion. After visiting and describing in detail: the 
markets, manufactories, prisons, courts of law, &c.; and also the environs 
of Petersburgh, our author, on the 11th of December, 1827, turns his 
back upon that city, and proceeds on his return to London, through. 
Poland, Silesia, Saxony, &c., making a short stay at Warsaw, and also. 
at Dresden, and describing in detail all that strikes him as worthy of 
notice in those cities, and on his route. He also makes a brief stay at 
Weimar, for the purpose of visiting Goethe ; and then makes the best of 
his way back to his zm-patients in England. 

In taking leave of Dr. Granville after our somewhat long sojourn in: 
his company, we must not fail to thank him for much information, and 
some amusement. The engravings and wood cuts—about seventy in 
number—public buildings and views in Petersburgh, are all well 
executed—and doubtless accurate in their representation. ; 


1828.] 


“—E 409 J 


‘MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 


. Lord Strangford and Colonel Napier’s 
Pamphlets ; 1828.—In his recent history of 
the Peninsular War, Col. Napier, speaking 
of the Portuguese emigration, charged Lord 
Strangford, our ambassador at Lisbon, with 
writing at Salt Hill the despatch relative to 
the emigration, though dated Hibernia, off 
the Tagus, 29th Nov., 1807, and in this 
despatch with claiming the whole merit of 
the emigration, though the credit was really 
due to Sir Sidney Smith—for the Prince 
Regent had actually sailed on the 27th Nov., 
before Lord Strangford could have reached 
Lisbon, or have had any “ official’ inter- 
view with him—and thus obtaining, by 
false representations, the red ribband, which 
by right should have blushed on the breast 
of Sir Sidney. 


* The statement was evidently on the face 
of it, hasty, and bore the marks of impro- 
bability ; it was utterly unlikely that any 
man in a public situation, like Lord Strang- 
ford, should commit himself by direct false- 
hoods. Accordingly from Lord Strangford’s 
reply, we find that he sailed immediately 
after the event with the messenger, and 
arrived with him in London on the 19th of 
December. When and where, therefore, 
the despatch was actually written, is perfectly 
unimportant, for he was in effect his own 
messenger. The account Lord Strangford 
gives is this—on the evening of his arrival, 
Mr. Canning sent for him to his house in 
Bruton-street, and expressed a wish, that the 
story of the Portuguese emigration, detailed 
by Lord Strangford in several and successive 
despatches should be drawn up in one un- 
broken narrative for publication in the Ga- 
 zette—omitting collateral matters—such as 
might compromise the safety of individuals 
—give notice to the enemy of intended opera- 
tions—or prove offensive to the government, 
to which he was again to be accredited. 
With this request Lord Strangford of course 
complied—and thus this “reduction”’ of his 
own dispatches, which appeared in the Ga- 
vette of the 22d, was certainly written not 
at sea, nor at Salt Hill, but in Bruton-street. 
Colonel Napier’s objection is a mere cavil. 
And with respect to his and Sir Sidney 
Smith’s merits in bringing about the emi- 
gration, Lord Strangford takes the story 
back to August—the period, when Bona- 
parte demanded of the Prince the confisca- 
tion of British property. On this occasion, 
Lord Strangford first suggested, on his own 
responsibility, the policy of an emigration 
to the Brazils, and within a month the 
Council at Mafra came to the resolution of 
crossing the Atlantic, on the event of two 
circumstances—the being compelled to con- 
fiscate British property, and actual invasion. 
In the meanwhile preparations were actively 
made for sailing, on the occurrence of the 
circumstances supposed. 
M.M. New Series,-~Vo1,. VI. No, 34. 


On the 8th of November the Prince, 
wisely or not, with necessity or without, 
complied with the reiterated demands of 
Bonaparte, detained the few British that 
had not yet fled, and confiscated their pro- 
perty—but no foreign troops yet appeared, 
and emigration was not yet carried into 
execution. In consequence, however, of 
this act of the Prince, Lord Strangford— 
his instructions leaving him no alternative— 
quitted Lisbon—having previously been as- 
sured by the Prince, that if the French ac- 
tually invaded, he was still resolved to go 
to the Brazils. The French did invade— 
and the Prince actually embarked on 
the 27th, 


On demanding his passport on the 10th, 
a ship of war was placed at his lordship’s 
disposal, but Sir Sidney Smith’s squadron 
appearing off the Tagus on the 16th, he 
took a boat and went on board the following 
day. From that time Sir Sidney and he 
acted in conjunction. On the 22d Sir 
Sydney wrote to the minister announcing 
hostilities, but the letter was not despatched. 
till the 24th, on which very day the final re- 
solution was taken at Mafra, and taken in 
consequence of the arrival of French troops, 
within the frontiers. Sir Sidney’s letter, 
therefore, whatever effect it was calculated 
to produce, had none on the resolution taken 
by the Court of Portugal. 


Colonel Napier imputes himself the emi- 
gration to fright, on learning from the 
Moniteur, of the 2nd of November, that the 
House of Braganza had ceased to reign. 
Unluckily for Colonel Napier’s accuracy and 
inference, no such declaration ever appeared 
in the Moniteur. . A sort of conditional de- 
claration appeared in the Journal de  Em- 
pire of the 3lst of October, and was copied 
in the Moniteur of the Ist of November. 
“ England would haye lost (or ruined) Den- 
mark, if that court had yielded to fear. . It 
is thus that she will have lost (or ruined) 
Portugal, and that the House of Braganza, 
if it makes common cause with England, 
will have ceased to reign.” 


We have, ourselves, no doubt of Colonel 
Napier’s industry, or of the general supe- 
riority of his book, as we expressed ourselves 
in our notice of it—but Colonel Napier has 
very manifestly his prejudices, and too 
readily gives vent to them—he assumes the 
tone of a radical—which is essentially and 
almost uniformly a vulgar and an oyer- 
charged one—he writes too like a partisan 
—with occasionally the flippancy of a news- 
paper. He professes himself altogether un- 
satisfied with Lord Strangford’s reply— 
though we really think it would be more 
creditable to his judgment and his candour, 
to have yielded a prompt and handsome 
concession. 

3G 


410 


The Designs of Russia, by Lieut.-Col. 
De Lacy Evans ; 1828.—This is a hasty, 
but energetic sketch of the probable career 
of Russia. he author is obviously in 
abundant possession of every circumstance 
requisite for the discussion of his subject ; 
but too much disposed te estimate by the 
population and acres of a dominion, and the 
number of bayonets, that can by possibility, 
or rather upon paper, be brought into the 
field. He seems not to consider that be- 
yond a certain point these things will not 
hang and work together—of a certain ex- 
tent and bulk, they become too distinct and 
disjointed for single management; and 
when deputies, with almost, or quite inde- 
pendent powers, must be employed to 
govern distant regions, unity is gone, and 
strength is broken. The Russians, unless 
some check is thrown in their path, the 
author doubts not, will accomplish the ex- 
pulsion of the Turks from Constantinople 
and Europe, and Constantinople become 
the capital of the Czar; he will boldly and 
effectively spread his eagle wings, one over 
the expanse of the Mediterranean, and the 
other over the regions of British India— 
“ Constantinople is only 3,000 miles from 
Bombay or Surat, and of them 400 only of 
Iand-carriage.”’ 

Colonel Evans looks far into futurity, or 
rather in his view—not far, for he imagines 
all will speedily be accomplished—all his 
gorgon terrors realized ; but among his an- 
ticipations of the Russian achievements, we 
Were somewhat amused—we scarcely say 
alarmed — at the successive steps of the 
autocrat’s encroachments—and the conse- 
quent decline of the British power. 

Once in possession of Constantinople, 
and her conquests a little settled into con- 
sistency, Russia will soon, he thinks, begin 
to feel her new strength, and will no longer 
hesitate, first, to intimate a desire, a friendly 
desire, to the government of both England 
and France, that some slight modifications 
shall take place in their systems of civil 
policy—that some of the unseemly ingre- 
dients of democracy which disfigure the 
French “ Charte,’”’ and that render the de- 
bates of our own legislative assemblies, 
doubtless, so undecorous and wounding to 
the refined apprehensions and lofty sensi- 
bilities of an autocrat, should be expunged 
or neutralized. By and by, when flushed 
with success—when he holds a still more 
numerous army in the leash than he does 
now—when his military chest is recruited 
with the obroks of 70 or 30 millions of vas- 
sals—when he is no longer locked up with- 
in the Baltic and the Euxine—when his 
fleets will ostentatiously parade the Mediter- 
ranean—when all the world begins to suc- 
cumb to the evidence of his power—what 
then ?_why then “it may be doubted whe- 
ther he will retain so unfeigned a respect 
either for the French Chambers or the 
English Parliament, or the obnoxious, im- 
pertinenfly inquisitive press, as may be the 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 


means of averting such a profanation as that 
which has been above contemplated.” (We 
do not always catch the Colonel’s specific 
meaning.) Besides, a request coming from 
such a quarter, couched in all the becoming- 
ness of amity and high censideration, re- 
commending, in gentle terms, merely an 
arrangement of the powers of government, 
more assimilated to the well-ordered con- 
dition of things in the superior state, will 
not appear so very unreasonable. and there 
will not be wanting, Col. Evans suggests, 
advocates at home. An attentive, and even 
deferential ear will at least be lent to the 
autocrat. 

Next, as soon as he is in readiness to pick 
a quarrel, or strong enough to levy contri- 
butions on us—which will not be till his 
fleets cover the Marmora, and his troops 
hover over the northern provinces of India 
—the Russian representative will be in- 
structed to express the Emperor’s earnest 
hope, that ows duties wpon corn will be done 
away with, as being conceived in an illibe« 
ral and unreciprocal spirit, and especially 
injurious to his subjects of the Ukraine, 
Crimea, and Wallachia—which must of 
course be complied with, or war ensue. 

But war! the London capitalists, tho- 
roughly aware that we have passed the cul. 
minating point, will no longer receive, with 
their long-wonted complacency, the propo- 
sitions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
—the minister must then temporize—and 
English indignation be smothered. But 
first the urgencies of the Russian envoy will 
get wind. The agriculturists will take 
fright about their rents—they will 
down to the House—they will threaten the 
government—and vituperate the Emperor ; 
all will be reported to that formidable Em- 
peror, and will serve to swell the list of 
grievances. Complaints will follow of the 
insults thus passed upon a faithful friend 
and ancient ally by the turbulent assembly - 
of the English Commons ; and then again, 
there will not of course be wanting some to 
dwell upon the advantages, under any cir- 
cumstances, of tranquillity—on the utopian 
absurdity of the representative system—on 
the unfitness of popular governments—the 
illusiveness of that obsolete chimera of po- 
litical visionaries—the balance of power, 
&e. 

But then, to embarrass the luckless minis- 
ters of the day still farther—to involve them 
more ingeniously—to throw a decent screen 
over the whole concern, Capo d’Istria, or his 
successor, or the Knights of St. John, long 
under the especial protection of Russia—or 
the Spanish King Ferdinand, if he still 
survive, will be directed to demand the 
restitution or relinquishment of our present 
Ionian, Maltese, and Spanish fortresses, 
On refusal, the Emperor will of course be 
appealed to, and will forthwith enforce the 
demands with his ablest logie. 

Our colonies are now perhaps some of 
them in no very thriving condition, but 


1828.] 


from that moment all will sensibly and ra- 
pidly decline; and then will begin to be 
felt the full pressure of the debt, for the 
quarters’ revenues, before declining, will on 
each return sink lower and lower. Disorder 
and discouragement must, consequently, 
pervade every department of the govern- 
ment, and desperate measures must follow. 
The church lands—the funds will be the 
obvious resources—public credit perish— 
Consols drop to 40, 20, or 10, nothing— 
and every branch of the service in arrear. 
Our ships will be rotting in our ports, for 


_ want of money to repair them ; and we shall 


fall an unresisting victim to the grasping Rus- 
sian, and our own want of timely exertion. 
—Oh dear!—But come, let us pluck up 
our spirits—it is not yet too late—the 
gloomy prophet tells us, England and France 
united can carry the world, and surely check 
the Russian. This union, we fear, is but 
a frail dependence ; but for our parts, we 
have no very paralyzing fears about the un- 
interrupted progress of Russia to universal 
dominion. Work will probably be soon 
cut out at home for the Emperor—his do- 
minions will be divided—Constantine will 
have a crown—and family quarrels will en- 
sue. In the long run we shall be probably 
pretty much where we were—if the Turks 
be expelled from Europe, they will be re- 
placed by others of more activity and more 
wants—wants which they will be long be- 
fore they can themselves supply—and in the 
meanwhile must depend for that supply on 
our manufactories. 


The Clarendon Correspondence. 2 vols. 
4to; 1828.—These are two very consider- 
able volumes, filled with original materials 
of information, relative mainly to one of the 
most interesting periods of our history—that 
of James the Second, and the memorable 
revolution of 1688. They consist wholly 
of the correspondence and diaries of two of 
the Chancellor Clarendon’s sons, Henry and 
Lawrence—the first inheriting his father’s 
title, and the other ennobled by that of Earl 
of Rochester. Both of them played dis- 
tinguished parts on the theatre of public 
life. On the restoration—at which period 
the eldest was but twenty years of age—they 
were both, by the chancellor’s overwhelm- 
ing influence, introduced into Parliament ; 
and did, and might well look forward to the 
most brilliant career. The final disgrace— 
we mean of course nothing but the dis- 
missal and exile—of the chancellor, seemed 
likely to check the course of the young 
aspirants for distinction ; but they had been 
thoroughly impressed with the necessity and 
the virtue of prudence, and Lawrence, in 
particular, lost no ground at all—he was 
uninterruptedly in good odour at court, and 
constantly employed at home or abroad. 
The elder brother—notwithstanding his 
office of chamberlain -to the queen—for a 
time gave in to a pretty active resistance to 
the measures of the court—opposing espe- 


Domestic and Foreign. 


41! 


cially Buckingham and Arlington — the 
more influential ministers, and his father’s 
chief and personal enemies. Through the 
whole of this opposition, however, he kept 
on terms of intimacy and service with the 
Duke of York, who had married his sister; 
and on the attempt of the country party to 
exclude him from the succession, was emi- 
nently useful in supporting the cause of his 
relative and patron. Towards the end of 
the reign—though odious to Charles—by 
James’s influence, he was introduced to the 
council, and on the duke’s own accession, 
received the privy seal, and, in the course 
of a twelyemonth, was appointed to the 
lieutenancy of Ireland. 


The younger brother, Lawrence, was em- 
ployed diplomatically, first, on an embassy 
of compliments to the French King on the 
birth of the Dauphin—next to Sobieski in 
his camp—and finally in Holland, with the 
Prince of Orange, to negociate a peace. 
He was thus actively and confidentially en- 
gaged till 1679, when he became a lord of 
the treasury, and on the resignation of Lord 
Essex, first lord, and was only prevented 
from going to Ireland by the death of the 
king. James, on his accession, preferred 
his services at home—the treasury com- 
mission was dissolved, and Rochester was 
named lord treasurer. 


The two brothers were thus at the top of 
the tree; and had they been as ready to 
promote the king’s views on the question of 
religion, as they undoubtedly were in poli- 
tical matters, might have remained the 
reigning favourites. But they had im- 
bibed their father’s attachment to the 
Church of England, and all its hierarchy, 
and were themselves too intimately con- 
nected with the prelates, and influential 
clergy, to fall in with the king’s views. 
Their devotion to Protestantism was un- 
shakeable—— we need not doubt the sin- 
cerity of it. Rochester, in particular, 
resisted more than one closetting with the 
king; and even Giffard, the Catholic Bishop 
of Madura, and then the intrusive presi- 
dent of Magdalen, laboured in his conver- 
sion in vain. They were both finally dis- 
missed—not in anger—for both of them 
were handsomely pensioned; but both of 
them, in spite of their lofty tory senti- 
ments, actually joined William on his in- 
vasion. Both of them, however, in the 
Convention, were advocates for a regency, 
and of course lost William's favour. Cla- 
tendon kept up a correspondence with the 
exiled king, and more than once was 
thrown into the Tower on suspicion of plot- 
ting with the enemies of the new goyern- 
ment; but finally, yet still under a sort of 
surveillance, he was suffered to withdraw to 
his own country residence, where he lived 
in perfect retirement till his death in 1709. 

Rochester — always the more prudent 
man—which seems to express the more 
accommodating man—was, in 1692, so far 

3G 2 


412 


purified, as to be again admitted into the 
council, and finally, by Harley’s influence, 
was made lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1700. 
But ‘on Anne’s accession—and the causes 
are not clearly developed—he became per- 
fectly unmanageable, and, refusing to re- 
turn to his post in Ireland, was deprived of 
his office ; and was for some years a con- 
spicuous leader of opposition, till his old 
friend. Harley took the helm, when he was 
placed at the head of the council, and but 
for his death in 1712; would have again 
been appointed to the government of Ivre- 
land. 

The papers now published are the relics 
of the writings of these two eminent indi- 
viduals. Those of the elder were printed 
64 years ago, by Douglas, Bishop of Salis- 
bury, from copies. The originals, - lately 
rescued from destruction, by Upcott, of the 
London Institution, who ferrets out all these 
matters with singular diligence and suc- 
cess, haye supplied sundry omissions, to the 
amount of a fifth or sixth of the whole. 
The chief of this portion consists of Claren- 
don’s correspondence with Sunderland, the 
prime minister, and his own brother, during 
the year he was lord lieutenant of Ireland— 
and. most valuable they are, as exhibiting 
the headlong career of James, and his tur- 
bulent agent Tyrconnel. The resolution 
is manifest on the part of James, not to 
place the Catholics on a level with the 
Protestants, but to give them the supre- 
macy—and the beginning was to be made 
with Ireland. Clarendon, nevertheless, was 
not in the secret—he was not considered 
thorough-going enough, and Tyrconnel ac- 
cordingly was appointed a sort of viceroy 
over him. The steps which were taken to 
fill the council—the courts—the magistracy 
—the corporations, with Catholics, to the 
exclusion of the Protestants, are minutely 
detailed. The dispensation of oaths—the 
suppression of obnoxious trials—the -expur- 
gation of the army—for even the ranks 
were -purified—full 4,000 men were dis- 
placed, pretendedly on account of age and 
size, but unquestionably because they were 
not Catholics—all these matters are fully 
and distinctly unveiled. Tyrconnel in per- 
son executed many of these changes; and 
the conversations between that “ranting, 
swaggering”? person, and the good lieu- 
tenant, which are most dramatically de- 
tailed, are among the amusing as well as 
instructive portions of the book. Poor Cla- 
rendon’s embarrassments are truly pitiable. 
He was eager to serve the king, and morti- 
fied at the slights he experienced, and for a 
long time seems not to have penetrated into 
the views of the court, or to have under- 
stood the ground or extent of Tyrconnel’s 
influence. 

The diary, again, which is complete for 
the years 1688 and 9, presents many curious 
particulars relative to William’s career from 
the period of his landing to the time when 
he was declared king by the convention. 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 


Impelled apparently by his fears for the 
hierarchy, Clarendon had joined the prince 
—his own son had gone over with the three 
regiments under his command at a most 
critical moment—but the good man seems 
to have joined William on the full convic- 
tion that he had no other views whatever 
than to secure the Protestant religion—no 
eye, not a glance at the crown; and when 


undeceived, would apparently have gladly 


receded. We have no space for extract ; 
but this part of the diary is full of interest, 
and will well repay the reading. Burnett 
shews admirably in it. 

The portions to which we have thus par- 
ticularly alluded, have been, the most of 
them, as we said, published before ; but to 
the greater part of readers they will be 
wholly new. Of the parts now for the first 
time printed, much is doubtless of inferior 
interest. They belong chiefly to, the younger 
brother—and consist mainly of a diary kept 
during his complimentary embassy to So- 
bieski—rather a dull performance. The 
correspondence contains numerous original 
letters of James, when Duke of York—of 
the Prince of Orange—Duke of Ormond 
and Sir William Temple--his own, with 
the lord justices of Ireland, during his ab- 
sence from the seat of government, and 
Vernon’s, the secretary of state, during his 
residence, which was but short. 

The Editor, Mr. Singer, the librarian of 
the Institution, in Albemarle-street, has 
executed his office with sound judgment— 


keeping his eye steadily fixed on the one - 


useful object—the reader’s convenience. 


Journal of a Voyage to Peru, &c., by 
Lieutenant Charles Brand ; 1828.—The 
author is a lieutenant of the navy, who on 
some professional commission, the object of 
which is of course withheld, started last 
year in a king’s packet for Monte Video, 
from which point, with all possible dis- 
patch, after failing in an attempt to elude the 
Brazil blockading squadron, he proceeded 
by land to Buenos Ayres. Without a mo- 
ment’s delay, he again set off, in a carriage, 
with three other travellers, to sweep across 
the Pampas to Mendoza, relieving the same- 
ness by occasionally riding on horseback, 
after the tearing manner of the country— 
—with which Captains Head and Andrews 
have recently made us all so familiar. From 
Mendoza, after due preparations, he scaled 
the heights of the Andes, in the depth of 
winter ; and descending thence, amidst nu- 
merous perils, and reaching Valparaiso, he 
took a passage in a small vessel, and arrived 
safely at Callao. Going up to Lima, he 
was so much occupied with the business he 
went upon, that, though he staid a whole 
month, he had no time to make observa- 
tions, he says; and contents himself with 
describing the ladies’ dresses, which he 
thinks not particularly decorous; and the 
tricks of the priests, which he represents as 
scandalous beyond endurance ; and the town 


ae 


1828.) 


itself, altogether, the dirtiest in South Ame- 
rica. Yes, one other matter forced itself 
upon his notice—an earthquake—several, 
indeed, occurred during his short stay—but 
one was very severe, in the evening, when 
the streets were full of people. 

In my life (says he) I never experienced a sen- 
sation more awful—a noise resembling thunder 
was underneath my feet—the earth shook and 
trembled—a sickly sensation came over me, and 
Iwas nearly knocked down by men, women, and 
children, flying out of their houses, screaming 
** Trembler, trembler !’’ and running tov and fro in 
all directions. Some lay down on their faces; 
most of the men were kneeling, and crossing 
themselves, and praying to their saints for pro- 
tection. Children were clinging to their mothers, 
and screaming with all their might; the dogs 
howled most piteously, and crouching amongst 
the crowd, seemed to ask for protection; the 
horses stood trembling with affright, with their 
riders kneeling by their sides; and the birds 
fluttered about in the air as if their wings were 
useless.- After three successive shocks, a death- 
like silence prevailed, and every one appeared 
rivetted to the spot where they stood. All. heads 
Were uncovered, and the different attitudes of 
standing, kneeling, and laying, impressed me with 
feelings which I think will never be erased from 
my memory. This shock happened on the 30th of 
October, 1827, and was registered by many as be- 
ing the smartest ever felt without doing damage, 
or causing the loss of lives. 


Scarcely had the lieutenant been a month 
. in this charming spot when he was recalled, 
and lost no time in returning the way he 
came—that is by a vessel to Valparaiso, 
then crossing the Cordilleras and the Pam- 
pas to Buenos Ayres, and from thence by a 
packet to Rio Janeiro, where he had the 
; felicity of seeing the emperor, and the little 
queen, that is to be, of Portugal. The 
habits and manners of the emperor are per- 
_ haps not much known, and as they differ a 
little from those of European royalties, we 
will quote the author’s account of them— _ 


I visited the opera for the purpose of getting 
sight of the Emperor, who happened to be there, 
accompanied by his two daughters, the Queen of 
Portugal and the Infanta. The former is about 
ten years of age (1827), and the latter an interest- 
ing little child of six or seven. They were very 
plainly dressed, and as they sat in their magni- 
ficent box, were to be seen to great advantage (by 
him, or for them?). Whenever the curtain dropt, 
the audience stood ap out of respect to the Em- 
peror—those in the pit facing him—at which time 
he would always rise and come forward with the 
little queen and child. He wore a plain blue coat, 
without star or mark of distinction of any sort, 
with white trowsers and shoes; and but for the 
gentlemen in waiting never sitting down, or 
coming forward, it was impossible to distinguish 
one from the other. The weather being very 
warm, he used a plain white fan during the whole 
of the opera, which, by the by, is customary 
among the gentlemen of South America. The 
queen is a very pretty little girl, with flaxen hair, 
and remarkably fair. She was dressed quite like 
a little old maid, very plain, wearing a prim close 


Domestic and Foreign. 


413 


cottage bonnet. The pretty infanta was the gay- 
est of them all, being dressed just like an English 
child of the same age, with petticoat-trowsers and 
sash, her bright flaxen hair flowing in lorg ring- 
lets over her shoulders. The Emperor is a hand- 
some young man, about thirty years of age, with 
very dark hair, and large whiskers. He is not 
very particular with respect to etiquette, for he 
was talking promiscuously to the ladies and gen- 
tlemen in the boxes on each side of him, and they 
appeared to be very familiar with him. He is 
frequently to be seen driving about the town in 
his tilbury, or riding on horseback, in plain 
clothes, with only one servant—a vast contrast 
this to his mother, the Dowager Queen of Portu- 
gal, who neyer appeared in public without the 
greatest parade, and whoever passed her car- 
riage, be they who they might, were obliged to 
kneel] down were it ever so dirty! The Emperor 
is a very active man, being up every morning by 
five o’clock. At six he may always be seen pub- 
licly hathing amongst the town’s-people, at the 
small island of Cobres, on which isa small fort 
opposite the palace stairs, from whence he starts 
in his boat, undresses before every body, and 
jumps into the water, swimming amongst hun- 
dreds of others that are constantly there abont 
him—it being the public bathing place of Rio de 
Janeiro. 


The volume is simply a journal, and to 
those who have read Captain Head’s gal- 
lopping tour will present very little novelty. 
The passage of the Andes, in the depth of 
winter, is the main point of interest. The 
scenes are tremendous—the difficulty of 
both ascent and descent enough to appal 
the stoutest; and the lieutenant has aided 
his imperfect accounts by a print or two 
descriptive of the passage. Another print 
is added, of the travelling carriage on the 
Pampas, accompanied by relays, and the 
quachos with their Iassos. Describing the 
descent down a steep of 1,100 or 1,200 feet, 
he says— . 


I stood and gazed witl: wonder, scarcely believ- 
ing it possible they (attendants) would attempt it. 
However, the loads were cast off, and away they 
flew, tumbling and sliding down. like lightning. 
Our beds went into the river, and were soon 
swept out of sight. Then the peons prepared, 
and laying themselves flat on their backs, with 
their arms and legs extended, to my utter amaze- 
ment, they flew down one after the other with the 
swiftness of an arrow, guiding themselves clear of 
the river, although going down with such velo- 
city—one turned, and rolled onee or twice head 
over heels, then round and ronnd like a ball, till 
he reached the bottom, without the slightest in- 
jury. Now, I thought, this weuld never do for 
me, sol waited to see how my companion would 
manage. He approached the brink, and working 
a hole first to rest his heel in, thrust his stick 
half way in the snow, so that it might support 
him to lower himself down a little, and then dug 
another hole. In this manner he went down the 
very steepest part, and then let go, and slid the 
rest in a sitting posture. Now came my turn—! 
commenced with the plan of my companion, but 
finding it so very steep, and not liking the hang- 
ing posture by one arm, I acted more securely, but 


414 


“was much longer about it—first working a hole 
with my stick, and putting my hevl in it; then 
working another hole, and putting the other heel 
in, tlfus seeing my way clearly before me; and 
having a footing of both feet at a time in a sitting 
posture, while I worked myself steps with my 
stick, till I passed the steepest parts; then I let 

‘go, laying flaton my back, and went down with 
amazing velocity a distance of 500 fect. Coming 
down this place occupied me nearly two hours ; 
but I would not have let goon the steepest part 
for all the gold and silver mines of Peru. 


The good lieutenant—his narrative lack- 
ing other interest—has taken pains to fur- 
nish advice for succeeding travellers, which, 
were we disposed or likely to follow the 
track, and hazard our necks, we should care- 
fully treasure up. He takes all into con- 
sideration—not only does he tell of distances, 
and post houses, and expences—but of food 

_and bedding—and not only these indispen- 

sible matters, but even pills he prescribes ; 
and by the help of sundry medical writers, 
talks learnedly of the eftects of cold, and 
.warns every body very seriously against 
drinking—recommending, moreover, those 
who seek relief from sorrow, not to go to 
hot climates, for that only makes -matters 
worse—particularly ifthere be in. the parties 
any predisposition to madness. 

His piety, too, is quite edifying. In 

. erossing the Cordilleras, one of the attend- 
ants fell, and dislocating his ancle was un- 
able to proceed. The other two were thus 
obliged to bear the loads of three, and these, 
by the additional weight were later in com- 
ing in, and thus fortunately picked up one 
of the lads who had lain down to sleep; and, 
from the severity of the weather, must have 
perished, had he not been thus found and 
roused. “ Thus proving,” adds the lieu- 
tenant, “the inscrutable wisdom of Pro- 
widence ; for had not one man dislocated 
his ancle, the other would have lost his 
life.’ On another occasion, he remarks— 
** IT made a hearty breakfast, then went to 
bed, and slept soundly till the cool of the 
evening, and much regretted having en- 
gaged the courier, or I would have gone on 
without waiting for him ;. but as the night 
turned out very rainy, and we had a tre- 
mendous thunder storm, I reconciled my- 
self to the delay—that every thing was 
for the best.” This sort of optimism is 
‘sailor’s theology; and very consoling and 
cheering it no doubt is in the encounter of 
their professional perils. 


Seven Years of the Opera, by J. Ebers ; 
1828.—The main object of this history— 
next to making a book and a penny by it~ 
is to account for the failure of the author’s 
administration. For seven years he rented 
and managed the theatre, at an annual 
average loss of about £6,000. The general 
magnificence of the style of the establish: 
ment—£500 for fitting up the kins’s box 
a single night—the prodigious salaries, pri- 
vileges, and accommodations of the leading 
performers, may seem sufficient to account 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 


for deficiency of profits ;—but such is the 
fashion and popularity of the institution, 
that all, it appears, may, with tolerable ma- 
nagement, be well sustained—it is the grasp- 
ing of the owners of the building that ruin 
the undertakers. At least, that and that 
alone is asserted by Mr. Ebers to be the 
cause of his ruin. The property, first by 
mortgage, and subsequently by purchase, 
fell into Chambers’s, the banker’s hands, for 
£80,000, when he immediately whipped up 
the rent to £10,000 for two years, with an 
understanding, on honour (that any body 
can be so green !), if the thing did not pay, 
not to be severe in exacting his full demand. 
Unluckily, Chambers’s affairs became in- 
volved, and the assignees (assignees have 
no bowels—with them it is always sacrifice 
before mercy) enforced the payment to the 
last farthing, and for the succeeding season 
demanded £15,000, to which Ebers—play- 
ing a desperate game—acceded, and the 
extravagant sum was actually paid. Such 
was the success of the, management, that 
this year Ebers lost only £3,000—so that 
with a reasonable rent, he might really 
have been a considerable gainer. Not yet 
content, the assignees, the next year, pro- 
posed to take the management into their 
own hands—in some delusive hope of inde- 
finite gain: this, however, was subsequent- 
ly abandoned, and the theatre let to La- 
porte and Laurent for £8,000, and Ebers was 
jostled out. This, of course, was most mor- 
tifying, and it may be safely added, unjust 
treatment of a man, to whose exertions the 
Opera, and especially the ballet; has been 
more indebted than to any one of his pre- 
decessors, since the first institution. But 
where personal interests are concerned, 
equitable and moral justice apparently claims 
no one’s regards—legal rights ace the stand- 
ard of action. These, however, are all pri- 
vate matters—except so far as it naturally 
becomes a subject of wonder and inquiry, 
how it is that every body connected with 
the administration of the Opera comes final- 
ly to the Gazette. Ebers has made the mat- 
ter obvious enough at least in his own case. 

But the interior view—which his inci- 
dental remarks throw open—of the Theatre 
is somewhat amusing. The condition of 
the manager is that of a toad under a har- 
row. The jealousies—struggles—treache- 
ries—graspings—caprices—sullens and sulk- 
ings of every performer, from the highest 
to the lowest—among singers, and dancers, 
and composers—are perfectly confounding 
and astounding. The wonder is, how such 
an establishment, amidst such anarchy and 
uproar, can get on at all. Rehearsal scenes 
are chaos come again.—‘‘ Sir, Mr. A. B. 
won’t go on with the rehearsal.’’—“ Indeed, 
why not ?”—“‘ He says you ought to do so 
and so for him; and he refuses to go on till 
it is done.”” While this is in discussion, 
behold an ambassador from the other per- 
formers. ‘“ The singers, Sir, say they can’t 
wait at the theatre all day; if the arrange- 


1828.] 


ment with Mr. A. B. is not settled, they 
must go home.”” What is the refuge of the 
manager? If he remains steadfast, an ap- 
peal to the committee (consisting of certain 
lords and others, who erect themselves into 
patrons of the institution, and whose patron- 
age seems indispensable) is an engine of 
confusion quite at hand—especially if the 
complainant happen to be a jolie danseuse. 

Yet some things are setiled—for instance, 
the prima donna absoluta, no one presumes 
to interfere with her allotments. Could not 
similarly effective limits be fixed for the 
successive gradations of rank, in the origi- 
nal contract between player and manager ? 
Her privileges are defined—she has a dress- 
ing room, with a sofa, andsix wax candles 
—a box, twelve box tickets, and twelve pit 
tickets ;—the seconda, a separate dressing- 
room, but no sofa, and two wax candles, and 
a smaller number of orders, &c. The same 
principle might surely be carried farther. 

The yolume contains slight sketches of 
the principal performers, particularly of the 
ladies, with some portraits, on stone ; but 
the few anecdotes scattered over the pages 
are very flat concerns, and Taylor’s practi- 
cal jokes are perfectly insufferable. Gene- 
rally, the narrative is of a plain and unam- 
bitious character—with a little, and but a 
little, of the puff and flourish—much more 
might have been expected from a theatrical 
quarter ; but here and there we were sur- 
prised with a scrap in a very superior style 
—for instance— : 


Ronzi de Begnis—who does not know as the 
model of voluptuous beauty? Perhaps no per- 
former was ever more enthusiastically admired. 
Her beauty came upon the spectator at once, 
electric and astonishing. You did not study her, nor 
trace out feature by feature, till you grew warmed 
into admiration—one Jook fixed. Her personal 
perfection took the more sure hold, because it 
was not of the ordinary stamp. Her features, 
bet not her complexion, were Italian. ‘The cha- 
racteristic of the latter was a fairness so perfect 
as to be almost dazzling—the more so, because so 
palpably set off by the glossy blackness of her 
hair. Her face was beautiful, and full of intelli- 
gence, and made almost eloquent by the inces- 
sant brilliance of eyes, large, black, and expres- 
sive, and in which the playful and the passionate 
by turns predominated—either expression seemed 
s0 Watural to them, that it seemed for the time 
incapable of being displaced by another as suit- 
able and as enchanting. Her mouth was so de- 
Tightfally formed, that she took care never to dis- 
figure it, and whatever she sang she never forgot 
this care. Her figure, if a thought more slender, 
would have been perfect, perhaps it was not less 
pleasing, because it inclined to exceed the pro- 
portions to which a statuary would bave confined 
itsswell. The form, when at rest, did not seem a 
Tively one, but when in action, it appeared per- 
feotly buoyant, so fall of spirit, so redundant with 
life. The exquisite outline of her swelling throat, 
pencilled, when she sang, with the blue tinge of 
its fall veins, admitted of no parallel—it was rich 
and full ~imeffectnal terms to convey an idea of 

its beauty, kc. 


* 


i? 


Domestic and Foreign. 


415 


Speaking of her performance—especially 
of Fatima— 


Her beauty, gaiety, and that little touch of the 
devil, so exquisite and essential in a comic ac- 
tress, were almost too bewitching ; but admira- 
tion was blended with astonishment, when the 
representative of the coquettish Fatima, changing 
her walk, exhibited, with a life and force that 
spoke to the soul, the wretchedness of the be. 
reayed Donna Anna (in Giovanni), when, in thrill- 
ing accents of despair, she calls on her dead 
father, and invokes her lover to avenge his fate, 


Teobaldo e Isolina failed to win the favour 
of the public, yet there were parts of it al- 
most unrivalled in effect— 


In the last scene, the prominent object is a 
castle illuminated by the rays of the moon, before 
which Velluti, habited as Theobaldo, in a suit of 
steel] armour, entered, the very personification of 
chivalry and romance. Such had been the skill 
of the painter, that a pale gleaming light seemed 
to pervade every part of the stage—it might have 
been the steely hue reflected from the armour of 
the solitary knight, that clothed the walls of the 
castle in a kindred tint. The melancholy light 
that fell on the dim scene appeared only to deepen 
its sombre and unearthly aspect. While this 
scene is displayed, which seems to paint the si- 
lence of night even to the eye, the full orchestral 
accompaniment is hushed—the flute and the harp 
alone are heard to prelude the mournful air that 
breaks from the lips of the melancholy warrior, 
If ever the attention of an audience was en- 
chained, enthralled, bound, as it were, by a spell, 
it was when Velluti sang the Notte Tremenda. 
‘The stillness of the scene was communicated to 
the house; and nut a word was spoken—not a 
breath was heard. Was this wonderful?—when 
not to the eye and ear only, but to the heart and 
the soul, every thing conveyed but one impression 
—that of pathos, so deep, so touching, so true, 
that it wanted but one added shade to become too 
deep for enjoyment. 


Rest your scribbling fame upon that; 
Mr. Ebers. 


Military Reflections on Turkey; 1828. 
—The materials of this little volume have 
been subtracted from the third volume of a 
Treatise on the Art of War, written by 
General Von Valentini, a major-general in 
the Prussian service. It is addressed mainly 
to military readers, and contains a general 
account of the military qualities and capa- 
bilities of the Turks, and their wars and 
modes of fighting during the 17th and 18th 
centuries, with some observations on the 
actual state of things in the present day— 
the result of which appears to be, that the 
Turks are very much as to these matters 
what they were during the last century—a 
little more degenerated. The eavalry is 
good, but, from the nature of the country, 
the horses cannot remain long on the field. 
They are still good hands at defending 
their towns, though the system of fortifiea- 
tion is any thing but system. They have 
no notion of bastions or of lines, of out 
works and covered ways, nor of conforming 
the height of the works: to. the nature of the 


416 


* ground in front. If any thing of the kind 
be found in a Turkish fortress, it is a proof 
of the place having once been in the hands 
of. Europeans. High parapets and deep 
ditches, and you have a sufficient concep- 
tion of Turkish fortresses. They will have 
nothing to do with winter campaigns—the 
men must withdraw to their homes—to fol- 
low their trades and domestic occupations. 
Their wars are wars of extermination—if 
they make prisoners, it is an exception to 
the general rule. They cut off the heads of 
the dead as well as of the living, and pre- 
serve the noses and ears as trophies of war. 
The Porte awards payment for these testi- 
monials of good fortune, but prefers entire 
heads—to fix them on poles in the capital— 
and shew something for money. 

But the chief and choicest morceau of 
the book is a plan—a receipt for taking 
Constantinople, which just at this moment 
is of too dainty a character to be rejected.— 
Thus—You will get first to Shumla—this 
is the point to which the Vizier usually ad- 
vances, and till he arrives, the campaign 
will not be worth talking about. The Rus- 
sians, it seems, never got beyond it—though 
we think Kaminskoy did in 1810, but we 
cannot step to examine that matter just now 
—hbesides, we are anxious to begin. First, 
then, you must beat the Turks before 
Shumila, or turn them—which you please 
—but it will be best and safest to turn 
them; and this you must accomplish mainly 
by a diversion—by previously directing a 
corps of 30,000 to cross the Danube at Ni- 
copole or Rutschuk, and march them, by 
Tornowa, straight upon Adrianople—stop- 
ping only to take Tornowa en passant, and 
make a magazine of it. The march is a 
trifle—the road, to be sure, a little rongh— 
not much frequented perhaps—but a few 
hundred pioneers soon clear the course. 
This will draw off the Vizier, who must 
retire to cover Adrianople, and if he 
should - happen* to be ‘too late, and lose 
time, you will gain it, and make much of 
it—and he must retreat still farther to look 
after Constantinople. \ It will be proper for 
the corps marching on Adrianople to sur- 
prise that place; they must commence bom- 
barding forthwith, and work away till a 
breach is effected, otherwise, the Vizier’s 
presence may prevent the capture altoge- 
ther, and spoil the beauty of the whole cam- 
paign. But being aware of this, of course, 
they will attend to the thing punctually. 

The Vizier thus retreating from Shumla, 
the main army will pursue him closely and 
diligently, and will endeavour to anticipate 
him, and with a detachment turn him. 
This will enable the main army just to stop 
and gather the fruits of the retreat—for 
Turks retreating, it seems, take nothing 
with them; and so all will fall into your 
hands, and you will have a glorious abun- 
dance of provisions. : 

Before, however, the main body advances 
farther than Faki, which is about seventy 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


ror: 


miles on the road from Shumla to Constan- 
tinople (the whole distance is about 200) a 
detachment should be despatched to the left 
and take Varna, by the co-operation of a 
flotilla; or if you cannot take it easily, 
leave it—no matter—let it (the detachment 
we mean) and the flotilla proceed to Bur- 
gas, forming thus the left wing of the new 
line. The centre will be at Faki, with its 
advanced guard twenty or thirty miles a 
head at Kirkklissa; and the corps at 
Adrianople will of course form the right— 
while another detachment will be sent still 
farther to the right, and occupy the vale of 
the Miritza. In this position the whole 
will repose a few days—for the purpose of 
gathering stragglers—completing its order 
—securing its communications, and bring- 
ing the country into subjugation, previous 
to a vigorous and conclusive moyement. 

Again, like a giant refreshed, the whole 
moves forward, and takes up a new line, in 
support of which the fleet will take posses- 
sion of Midia ; and the whole will concen- 
trate, in the narrowing country, at Araba- 
Burgas, from which point, when all is 
ready, a general advance will be made 
forthwith upon Constantinople. The force 
requisite for these arrangements—which in 
our eagerness we forgot before—will be 
200,000—neither more nor less. The main 
body 50,000; the corps for the coast and 
reserve 30,000; another 30,000 for Adria- 
nople; a third 30,000 for advance and re- 
serve ; and 6,000 on the Danube, to keep 
all right and tight in the rear. 

Now hey for Constantinople ; but first, 
a landing should be effected in Asia Minor 
—chiefly to prevent the escape of the Grand 
Signor into that country with his treasures 
—which must be intercepted to pay ex- 
penses. Therefore the flotilla, which has 
all along co-operated on the coast, will pass 
onward, and disembark a good stiff force, 
and especially take care to secure Scutari. 
The flag once flying upon Scutari, and Con- 
stantinople trembles.- Now the army ad- 
vances on the European side, cuts off, in its 
course, the conduits, which beginning at about 
12 miles from the city, supply it with spring 
water—nothing, it seems, reduces a Turk 
like thirst—and undertakes the siege. This 
will now give no trouble whatever—it will 
only demand a little patience—three or four 
days, and they will be ¢hirsted into sur- 
rendering, and all’s your own. We are 
not sure we understand what becomes of 
the Vizier—but of course the Adrianople 
detachment will give a good account of 
him. 

All this, however, must be done ear2y— 
in the spring and first summer months there 
is grass in abundance—up to the shoulders 
—but after this the whole is withered, 
singed, and burnt, and not a blade to be 
found; and the great valley of the Lower 
Danube is none of the healthiest in the hot 
months—nor are plains to the south of the 
Balkan. But what in a moderate climate 


——— 


1828.] 


is to prevent the Russians from going on, 
if not the whole winter, at least till Christ- 
mas? This is no question put by a mili- 
tary reader. The wear and tear of an-army 
demands repose—there is no going constant- 
ly on for months and months, much less a 
whole year, with the same forces in con- 
tinued activity. Health gives way—horses 
droop—the spirits flag—and all more or less 
disorganizes ; but, besides, the roads are 
scarcely passable for individuals but in dry 
weather. When the wet comes, and snow 
and wet, and frost and thaw alternate, the 
roads, for an army—knee deep—hip deep— 
are perféctly impassable, not only for horses 
and cannons, but the men themselves. 

We are much afraid the Russians are 
somewhat of the latest in their operations— 
to the 19th August, they were still at Shumla 
and Varna; a second campaign may be re- 
quisite—and between the cup and the lip 
what may not happen ? 


The Omnipresence of the Deity, by 
Robert Montgomery ; 1828.—“ It is, in- 
deed, a magnificent and sublime com- 
position — in the very highest class of 
English Sacred Poesy.’’ — Literary Ga- 
welite. ‘‘ Were the author never to write 
another line, he has won a wreath which 
the most successful bard of the present day 
might be proud to wear.”—Literary Chvo- 
nicle. “In the matter and substance of 
the poem, originality and strength of talent 
are strongly visible; much beauty of de- 
scription and pure feeling, a glowing and 
striking imagery, characterises its general 
style—we consider it as deserving a great 
share of public attention and applause.”’-— 
Atheneum. 

Of these papers, or of their opinions, we 
know very little—the precious decisions here 
noted, we find at the tail of the bookseller’s 
advertisements, and have no doubt at all of 
their all proceeding from one source—di- 
rectly or indirectly—the writer of the book 
himself, who in a recent publication upon 
“ Puffing,” which we may- possibly notice 
farther, has given ample proof of the close 
inquest he has made into the mystery and 
practice of the profession. No three per- 
sons, at all accustomed to analyse their feel- 
ings, could all of them, from the promptings 
of those feelings, have come to so preposte- 
rous a conclusion—nor, unbiassed, have so 
committed their judgments to the laughter 
of their contemporaries. The truth is, these 
weekly prints are mere advertising media. 

To our judgments—we have no waverings 
about the matter—the poem is a piece of 
sheer inanity. We need use no qualifying 
terms—it is a stream—a shower-bath of 
oily phrases trickling off the brain, like 
water from a duck’s back, that never wets 
a feather. It is all words, words, words— 
an eternal round of alliteration—a fatiguing 
monotony of never changing cadence—the 
workings of a forcing pump—a combination 
of Campbell and Darwin—the tone of the 
_ M.M. New Series. —Vou.VI. No. 34. 


Domestic and F oreign. 


417 


one, and the mechanism of the other, used 
and abused to weariness and loathing. Not 
a single sentiment—we speak advisedly, 
upon actual reading—occurs, but of the 
commonest cast—not an approach to one— 
nothing that enlightens the intellect, or 
touches the feelings—he is a poet without 
creative power—neither eliciting new truths, 
nor new-shaping old ones—an artist without 
the genius of invention—working by rule 
and measure—a mere manufacturer. 

But the poem has reached a third edition. 
Then it has been much bought — much 
vead we never can believe. It was first 
purchased as the production of the Mont- 
gomery whom every body knows—the very 
title was calculated to mislead—and any 
thing of the genuine Montgomery’s would 
be sure, and deservedly sure, to secure at- 
tention. - Afterwards, the reverence. which 
naturally attaches to the subject, communi- 
cated some portion of respect to the poem, 
and the author had thus the benefit of pre- 
vious associations, in which his own crea- 
tions had no share—and particularly in the 
minds of the pious, who are little used to 
question their sensations. Inquiry shrinks 
before the awful consideration, and the spi- 
rit of criticism is quenched in submission. 
The truths and doctrines on such a sub- 
ject are admitted and undoubted; and the 
author has at least the art of employing lan- 
guage that sounds like energy, and rings 
like music. A few pages, however, must 
inevitably break the spell; and then the 
question follows—what is there in it? and 
the answer, nothing ! 

Though scarcely thinking it worth while 
to establish our dictum, we will give the 
reader a specimen or two; and to avoid the 
chance of injustice, we will dip into the 
book at random—sure that whatever we 
pitch upon will confirm all we have said. 

The sick man— 

When wan disease exhales her with’ring breath» 

And dims his beauty with the damp of death, 

At some sfidZ hour the holy sigh will swell, 

The gushing tear of gratitude will tell 

That Thou art by, to temper and to tame 

The trembling anguish of the fever’d frame. 

* But oh! when heal'd by love and heaven, we 
rise, 

With radiant cheek and7e-illumined eyes, 

Bright asa new-born sun, all nature beams, 

And through the spirit darts immortal dreams ? 

Now for the breezy hills, and blooming plains, 

And pensive ramble when the noon-tide wanes ; 

Now for the walk beside some haunted wood, 

And dreamy music of the distant flood ; 

While fav and wide, the wand'ring eye surveys, 

And the heart leaps to pour away its praise! 


The reader marks the construction of the 
verse—the alliteration—_the cadence—the 
perfect emptiness. Again— 

And when, ollivious of the world, we stray 

At dead of night along some noiseless way, 

How the heart mingles with the moon-lit hour, 
As ifthe starry heavens suffused a power ! 

See! not a cloud carcers yon pensile sweep, 


3 iH 


418 


A waveless sea of azure, still as sleep ; 

Full in her dreamy light, the moon presides, 
Shrin'd in a halo, mellowing as she rides; 
And far around, the forest and the stream, 
Bathe in the beauty of her emerald beam, &e. 


One dip more—and a fine dip it is, we 
see— 
Imagination! furl thy wings of fire, 
And on Eternity’s dread brink expire ; 
Vain would thy ved and raging eye behold 
Visions of immortality unroll’d! 
The last, the fiery chaos hath begun, 
Quench'd is the moon! and blacken’d is the sun! 
The stars have bounded through the airy roar ; 
Crush’d lie the rocks, and mountains are no more; 
The deep unbosom’d, with tremendous gloom, 
Yawns on the ruin, like Creation’s tomb! &c. 


No ! it’s past all toleration. 


The Puffied ; 1828.—This is another of the 
same Mr. Montgomery—a poem of the satiric 
cast—a bolt forged in the fires of a generous 
indignation, and hurled at poor Mr. Col- 
burn, as the prince of puffers, and first cor- 
rupter (God wot !) of the simplicity of the 
age. The versification is full of storm and 
fury—signifying nothing—for over-doing is 
as fatal in defeating an object as under- 
doing. The whole is manifestly prompted 
by passion and thirst of vengeance. Mr. 
C. refused to buy it may be presumed—for 
as to any real repugnancy to puffing, the 
author has, unhappily for him, furnished 
abundant proof he has none—nay, has 
shewn no common proficiency in the art he 
undertakes toshewup. Set a thief to catch 
a thief. The very title of his “ Omnipre- 
sence”—the dedication to the Bishop of 
London—the palming it upon the Mont- 
gomery—at least the side-attempt to ride 
into popularity upon his shoulders — the 
puffs of the papers, direct and indirect—the 
choice morceaus of eulogy tacked to adver- 
tisements, &c. &c.—decisive. 


Lyric Offerings, by S. Laman Blan- 
chard ; 1828.—An unassuming little vo- 
lume, which contrasts delightfully with the 
magniloquent nothingness of Mr. R. Mont- 
gomery’s elaborations. Mr. B. has some- 
thing of the genuine poet.in him—more 
indications of it in a single page, indeed, 
than will be found in fifty of the other’s. 
His language is as rich and affluent, with 
the added beauties of ease and variety—and 
unindebted for it, comparatively, to any pre- 
cursors. The phrases are not all of the 
ready cut and dry manufacture—but a coin- 
age fresh from the mint of his own brain, 
and the dye often of a very graceful cha- 
racter — expressive, appropriate, direct.— 
Though fanciful and somewhat wayward, 
the sentiments have an air of truth 
and nature with them — congruous at 
least —betraying no forcings and _lash- 
ings of the imagination. The ease and 
even volubility with which he pours forth 
his feelings, shew the author rests with con- 
fidence in his own resources, and draws on 
them without dreading, or even dreaming 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 


of exhaustion. The “ Poet’s Bride” has 
some very beautiful morsels— 


O’er the sands she stray’d 

Mute as a wish within a human breast ; 
And ever where her step its footmark made 
Some wave did woo its faintness into rest. 

Her eyes had many shadows, as each dye 
Each tinge of thought dissolved into its sky. 
Their lids encircled with small beams of gold 
Were silver clouds; and shewed the sun behind, 
A world of deepening blue—that chased the cold 
Left on her temples by some wandering wind ; 
Feeding with light, or sending fitful showers 
To wash her warm cheek’s fondest passion— 

flowers. 

Her lips released the music which the lute 
Of her soft tongue discoursed ;—or if ’twas mute, 
A living whisper, a perpetual breath, 

Almost a sigh, did on her lips remain; 

As if *twould rather linger in such death 

Than fly to life where tender breathings reign. 

O'er the transparent clearness of her brow 

Her hair, like a fine waterfall, waved down, 

Bathing the pliant marble of her neck ; 

Whose native light streamed through without a 
speck, 

Now flashing out in snowiness, and now 

Hiding its glory in a ringlet’s crown, 

Around his heart she hovered like a bird, 

Secure of its firm nest: his faintest word, 

Called sudden light into her love-taught eyes, 

And bound her in a chain of eestacies. 

She sent rich-laden sighs from out her soul, 

And caus’d fair smiles and dew-like tears to sit 

Tn his heart’s honeysuckles ; or on the scroll 

Of the vast shore his haunting image traced, 

And wept to see the waters razing it, 

Qr harp’d some magic words of love misplaced, 

Then clung in sweet conviction to her own, 

Breathing her winged wishes through her eyes 

That trembled as they flew. 

They were united where no human ear 

Drank their deep vow, and where no human gaze 

Startled their still intensity of praise ; 

Where feet, save theirs, ne’er wander’d, nor huge 
piles 

Of turrets and tall porticoes appear, 

Wild nature mocking with smooth symmetry. 

The clouds in maiden meekness fled the smiles 

Of their bright loves, blushing into eve. : 

And all the living verdure grows so well, 

No soft small worm hath life amid its roots ; 

And through the air no sound unechoed shoots, 

And not a leaf but whose light curl can tell 

Of waters playiog on their coral flutes: 

No sigh or sorrow, or heart-heard farewell, 

Or sharper wail when worldly promise fell— 

Leaving the heart to break, or find its fruits 

Black with a deadly bloom—to feel its fame 

But folly, disappointment, and dumb shame. 

Here nothing liv’d that own'd an earthly law— 

Sincerity and fearlessness were by ; 

And each seem’d kindred to the scenes it saw 

Break on its separate nature, from an eye . 

Which guiltless oped at morn, and closed as mer- 
rily. 


Manual of Surgery, by Thomas Casile ; 
1828.—This little volume, every page of 


1898: 


which is brim full of real and important in- 
struction, exhibits the results of the practice 
and experience of two of the most success- 
ful surgeons and lecturers in London—Sir 
Astley Cooper and Mr. Green. The Edi- 
tor, Mr. Castle, of Bermondsey, has intro- 
duced nothing but what will be found in 
the lectures of these eminent men, unless 
specifically excepted ; and therefore the stu- 
dent will know precisely whom he trusts to— 
the whole comes from the best authority the 
actual state of the science will furnish. 
The Editor’s object has been to prepare a 
manual, literally, for the use of students. 
“ The mere walking,” says he, “from one 
ward to another, and taking a cursory view 
of ae patient, isnot a proper plan to be 
pursued; they should take with them a 
pocket companion, and when they meet with 
any particular case, they should first make 
their own observations, and then imme- 
diately refer to know what they have over- 
looked, or what is unusual to its general 
character.’’—Here is a manual exactly cal- 
culated for this purpose. Brevity and clear- 
ness have been studied throughout ; and we 
are bound to say, wherever we have dipped 
into it, we have found these aims success- 
fully accomplished. 


A Treatise on Universal Jurisprudence, 
by J. P. Thomas, Esq. ; 1828.—Has the 
prevailing style of dedication struck the 
reader lately ? Often have we been tempt- 
| ed to protest against it ~ Mr. Thomas has 

passed the bounds of toleration, and our 

disgust is no longer repressible. But Mr. 
| Thomas shall be self-convicted. He is, 
it must be premised, a Fellow of that pre- 
cious piece of mummery, called the Royal 

Society of Literature—the use of which— 
beyond that of pensioning adherents—is 

perfectly inconceivable. Take the dedica- 
tion—and when you have read it—quem- 
__ eunque voles modum pones :— 


To rue Kine’s most EXCELLENT MaAgeEsty. 


Most AuGusT SOVEREIGN, 
With more of gratitude than of confidence, I 
approach Your MAsesty’s throne, to lay at your 
7 
J 


feet, my Treatise of Universal Jurisprudence; 
deeply sensible of the highly-flattering con- 
descension with which Your MAJxsty is gra- 
ciously pleased to receive it. 

Amidst the varied fatigues of this attempt to 
reduce the comprehensive and often-puzzling 
science of Jurisprudence into a form intelligible 
to all Your MAsesty's subjects, it has been the 
constant object of my anxious ambition to merit 
your royal sanction. Often as the midnight lamp 
has lighted me in my researches—difficult as has 
been the task of condensing, with impartiality and 
precision, the principles of the noble but much 
neglected science of which I treat, I look back, 
Siee, with unmixed joy, to lucubrations which 
are recompensed by the exalted honour of Your 
Masusry’s approval. 

The age of gold which early fable painted, is 
realised in the auspicious sway of Your Ma- 
_ sesty. Science, by rapid strides, is approaching 
towards that perfection, beyond which she is fated 


_ Domestic and Foreign. 


419 


not to pass. The splendours of legislation and 
peace are, in Your MAgsgsty’s magnanimous 
mind, far more estimable than the achievements, 
even of your victorious forces. Your MaAsesty 
has raised a splendid pyramid of peaceful glory, 
in the institution of a Royal College of Literature ; 
which, so long as it exists, will, with the gratitude 
of an affectionate child, cling to the recollection 
of Your Masgsty’s munificence. 

Your affectionate subjects, Sire! in perusing 
this book, will perceive in the enumeration of 
kingly duties, a faint sketch of those imperial 
virtues which endear Your Maggsty to your de- 
voted people. 

That the reign of Kinc GeorGe THE Fourts, 
whicb history will record as one conspicuous for 
its dignity, and worthy of lasting imitation, may 
long continue to shed blessings upon the British 
nation, is the fervent wish of, Sire, &c. 


What is to be anticipated from a writer, 
on the principles of government too, who 
thus, without blushing scarlet, addresses the 
sovereign of a constitutional government, in 
terms suitable only to an imperial despot 
from a crouching slave, whose head is at 
stake? The book itself, however, is of a 
more upright and manly character; and if 


“the writer occasionally fall into the obsolete, 


the hum-drum, and the superfluous, it is 
more from defect of judgment, than want oF 
pluck. It has no doubt cost him labour 
enough; but the labour has produced a 
most unreadable book— its form is that of a 
syllabus, and its value precisely that of ari 
index. He speaks of his own running 
stream of references as a ‘* methodical in- 
dex,”’ but the term is more strictly appli- 
cable to the text. 

What is the basis of this Universal Juris- 
prudence? On what principle is it to be 
built? On particular and general utility. 
It is useful to me that my life, limbs, and 
property be secure ; it is useful to you that 
yours also should be secure ; it is therefore 
our reciprocal interests that we abstain from 
offending each other, and moreover to unite 
in defending each other. It is precisely 
the same with all others within the sphere 
of mutual influence—that all abstain from 
offending, and unite in repelling. These 
are the earliest suggestions of experience, 
the parent of the laws of nature. But in the 
complications of extensive societies, mewm 
and ¢wam require defining and enforcing, and 
then it obviously becomes useful that the 
business of protection and redress should be 
consigned to particular persons. Hence 
arises the distinction of the governors and 
the governed; and the regulations which 
are believed upon the whole best fitted to 
answer the purpose of their appointment— 
to define their rights and duties,—get the 
name of the laws of nations. But nations 
in the progress of civilization heconie con- 
nected with neighbouring nations, and ex~ 
tend their intercourse with them ; and here 
again it becomes useful to frame the rules 
or customs which shall govern that inter- 
course, and these go by the name of inter~ 

3H 2 


420 


national laws. There are three parties 
then—the individual—the collective nation 
—and foreign nations. With reference to 
individuals are involved the questions of 
property—of personal rights and duties—of 
marriage and sexual intercourse—of parents 
and children—of guardians and wards—of 
contracts and engagements—of reparation 
and punishment. The law of nations em- 
braces the constitution of civil power—the 
legislative—the _executive—administration 
of justice—civil liberty ;—while interna- 
tional law comprises treaties, ambassadors, 
wars, aliens, neutrals, rebels, &c. 


Here is a most spacious field of argument 5 
and Mr. Thomas’s attempt is to comprise 
it in the briefest compass—contenting him- 
self, for the most part, with laying down the 
results, without discussing the principles, or 
detailing the arguments that establish them. 
His purpose, he says, is to render the know- 
ledge of general rights and obligations more 
easy and familiar to all who cannot devote 
to their consideration a laborious and tedious 
attention, and to accomplish this he has 
stripped off all ornament—all encumbrances 
—and occasionally even the skin; and 
wonders the same thing is not done in every 
department of literature. He is in loye 
with skeletons. ‘This is his style. 

The duties of a sovereign are— 


1. To reign oyer his subjects according to the 
Jaws, upon which his authority depends. It is 
not contemplated that a king shall have the power 
to do harm to the community. 

2. To acquire the knowledge of useful govern 
ment—and watch over and advance the prosperity, 
security and glory of all his subjects to the 
utmost of his power—and for this purpose, to 
maintain honourable peace, to enter into prudent 
treaties, to practice justice, moderation, and ya- 
lour, select good and wise ministers, to be ac- 
quainted with the constitution, real condition and 
circumstances of the nation, to promote social 
harmony, to provide for the popular wants, to en- 
courage industry and population, to reward pa- 
triotic and learned men, to remedy all imperfec- 
tions, to inquire into alleged abuses within the 
scope of his royal jurisdiction, to ascertain the 
defects in the laws, and to encourage religion, 
morality, and useful education—considering the 
happiness of his people, the supreme law of the 
state, regarding his crown as the glorious gift of 
his people, not as inherently derivative from his 
ancestors, and desiring the happiness of his sub- 
jects, rather than the gratification of his private 
ambition. 

3. To lay out the taxes as intended by the 
legislative. 

4. To protect every subject from injury and 
wrong, so as such defence do not more harm than 
good to the state. 

5. To prevent the spread of obviously-wicked 
notions, 

6. To use his prerogative, on all occasions, for 
the public benefit. 

7. To listen to the respectful complaints of his 
subjects, and be accessible to them. 

8. To be just, merciful, virtuous, generous and 
accomplished. 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 
9. To overcome his passions, and dismiss 
eaprices from his mind, 

10. To observe international law, to keep his 
public parts with good faith, and to undertake only 
just enterprises against enemies. ° 

1]. Sovereigns of fine courage will pursue un- 
dauntedly that which is virtuous, &e. 


All which—like the greater part of the 
book—has the air of an ipse dixit :—such 
and such a thing should be done, as if the 
expression of it were sufficient to establish 
its propriety. 

OF what use, we would ask the author, is 
it to tell us, that “ all states, whether large 
or small, weak or powerful, are naturally 
equal and independent ?” ‘The weak will 
obey the law of the strongest. Or of what 
use to add——“ and have aright to send am- 
bassadors to such nations as receive them ?” 
The right, if there is any, is equally such to 
those who do not receive them. But it is 
all matter of compact. 

In cases of sieges, he says, ‘fa summons 
should precede the assault ;” but in a page 
or two before, he observes, in hostile acts, 
“deception is not perfidy.”” The writer 
will say, he is talking of stratagems in one 
place, and sieges in another—but does that 
make the matter consistent ? 

But in sieges, “ the lives of the besieged 
must, upon capitulation, be spared, except- 
ing by way of exemplary punishment, when 
the laws of war have been shamefully in- 
fringed upon;” and yet in another place, 
he of course insists upon the terms of a con- 
tract being strictly observed—and what is a 
capitulation, but a contract ? 

Sometimes we cannot comprehend him 
at all—for instance—the existence of an 
universal-‘monarchy is at the least a highly- 
improbable event ; and the very proof of 
its accomplishability might necessarily de- 
monstrate its usefulness. 

Establishing the benevolence of the Deity 
—all nature transcendantly glows with mo- 
tives of gratitude to him. What does he 
mean ? 

When the author quits his tabular form— 
we have strings of sentences of this kind :— 

The body of man is made up of several organs 
of life, motion, and enjoyment, which gradually 
develope themselves until their maturity; after 
which they decay, and become insufficient to per- 
form the demands made upon them. Death; 
which puts an end to all suffering, ensues. It 
occurs but once. We do not perfectly understand 
it. We ought not to condemn it. It is doubtless 
a wise appointment, 


This, we presume, is what Mr. Thomas 
calls in his dedication condensing, and in 
his preface—his proem, we mean—contrasts 
with wire-drawn writing. 


The Rector of Overton. 3 vols. 12mo. 
1828.—The well-meaning, but utterly use- 
less and unamusing production of some haf 
witted lady, who knows no more of the 
world which she professes to deseribe, and 
its ways which she proposes to correct, 


1828.J 


than the babe she should have been nursing 
the while. She has brooded over “ doing- 
good”’ people, till she imagines none but 
the busy, according to their rules, can find 
employment to resist the killing ennui of 
their own society. She is evidently one 
who thinks every thing is to be accomplished 
by lecturing and sermonizing—and the pro- 
per business of the rich is to fidget about 
the poor in the management of their own 
concerns—and under the notion of improy- 
ing and instructing, to shape their sayings 
and doings by some fanciful standard of 
their own. To any thing tending really to 
improve their comforts or their morals, we 
cannot of course be supposed to object ; but 
our doctrine is—furnish them with the 
means, and let them eut and contrive to 
their own liking. We have no ‘toleration 
for the busy-body, interfering spirit of those 
who must have all their own way—and who 
can know—and who indeed desire to know 
—little of the real wants, and less of the 
real feelings, of those, whose life is labour, 
and whose main concern must be the main- 
tenance of life. If we could give Jeisure, 
we might hope, through their intellects, to 
soften their manners ; but as matters are, 
prudence is the sum of their practicable vir- 
tues, and that they will, one thing with 
another, practise, as well as their betters. 
The good lady has a most becoming ad- 
miration for the clergy, and the Rector of 
Overton is, of course, her beau-ideal of one 
of the species, and a very fine animal we 
must acknowledge he is—Adonis, Hercules, 
Apollo—tria juncta in uno—less surely 
might have served even for abishop. That 
she is not herself a parson, or the wife or 
daughter of one—nor any body who knows 
anything of the clerical condition, or of life, 
taken generally, or the manners and habits 
of the day—nor capable at all of estimating, 
or exhibiting probabilities, is conspicuous 
in every page. The parsonage she calls a 
glebe-house ; and her favourite is at four- 
and-twenty despatched—to fill up the lin- 
gering days of an approaching marriage— 
to Oxford, to take his doctor’s degree (and 
not by mandate neither)—and is represented 
as previously reading with prodigious fer- 
your for that important occasion. Then a 
_ young lad, who has been at Winchester, is 
described, as thirteen, as writing Greek 
Pindarics before breakfast, and within a year 
or two, translating a chapter of Isaiah from 
the Hebrew, and commenting upon it, and, 
moreover, collating the most celebrated tran- 
slators and critics. Then this prodigy is 
to be sent to Oxford—because at Oxford 
they are all believers, and at Cambridge all 
reasoners. Then, again, a gentleman of 
large estate—the owner of 5,000 acres, or 
more perhaps, in a ring fence, is represented 
as a man of high and eminent virtue—of 
80 wide-spread a reputation—that the Lord 
Chancellor was desirous of appointing him 
_ —a “justice of the peace for the district.’ 
Bless the good woman —why will she 


a’. ei cme § | 


Domestic and Foreign. 


42} 


not keep within the bounds of rhe actual 
knowledge ! 

But to the Rector. He is the son of a 
man of property, and, of course, duly “born 
and bred ;”” but the said property had been 
so far encroached upon—the father had so 
hampered and enfeebled it, that the youth 
found it expedient himself to put the estate 
to nurse, and take to a profession to help 
him out. He had a stock of resolution, 
which nothing could daunt, and fagged and 
fagged at his books beyond any mortal 
powers: At College he had a friend—all 
ignorant people speak of College friendships 
as the most binding ties in existence—one 
Sir Wm. Somebody, who, with £5,000 a 
year, was destined for the church, because 
he had at his own disposal a family living 
of £700. This gentleman haying, it seems, 
an hereditary passion for sporting, though 
an excellent and even intellectual person, 
began to have some mistrustings as to his 
motives for entering the church, and dis- 
closing them to his friend, he was advised, 
and at once resolved to renounce the pro- 
fession, living and all; and haying so re- 
nounced, as if the sole purpose for going to 
the University was to qualify for orders, 
loses not a moment in abandoning alto- 
gether his College studies, and sets out the 
next morning on his travels—towards the 
Lakes first, because it was right to see what 
was to be seen at home, before he excursed 
abroad. 

In the meanwhile Mostyn, the hero, goes 
a curatizing, and while engaged in this en- 
chanting office, in some “ sequestered” spot, 
a lady, young, beautiful, and of magnificent 
fortune, fell fairly in love with him, and 
made him a frank offer of her hand; and 
being rejected, flew into a fury, threw her- 
self on the floor, played the part of Poti: 
phar’s wife, screamed ont for assistance, and 
reported him to the bishop, who very con- 
siderately, without further inquiry, com- 
manded the Rector to turn the offending 
young man adrift. Nothing, however, was 
lost by this—his friend Sir William hears 
of the adventure, and forthwith presents 
him with the living, which he had himself 
so recently declined. By the time the lucky 
Mostyn is comfortably fixed at Overton, 
comes home the Baronet, with a bride, a 
young lady of surpassing charms and vir- 
tues, whom he had picked up at the Lakes, 
and, setting himself down at Overton, pro- 
ceeds, without the loss of an hour, to put the 
village in order ; and encouraged and aided 
by the Rector, who proves, as might be 
expected, to be a man of universal know- 
ledge—theory and practice—all the same to 
him—things soon wear a new appearance :— 
smiling cottages rise on all sides—every 
thing and every body indeed rises—the 
pauper to the labourer—the labourer to the 
little farmer—the little farmer to the great 
one—rows of almshouses too are built ; but 
as there were soon neither sick nor poor, 
nobody seems found to fill them. 


422 


But in all and every matter, the Rector 
is soon aided by a blooming bride of his 
own—his patron’s loyely and accomplished 
sister. On the wedding day, the Baronet 
presents the Rector with £5,000 and that 
very day, too, the Rector’s own estate, in a 
period of inconceivable shortness, produced 
a clear £2,000 a year. He is thus rich, 
and able to share in the expenses attending 
the bounties of the Baronet, to which how- 
ever he does not, to our recollection, appear 
to contribute at all; and, really, the Baro- 
net himself does wonders with his £5,000 
a year—we detected in the details of ex- 
pense what would dip deep into £10,000— 
most unexpectedly, however, and. luckily 
we should think, his wife poured into. his 
lap, one fine summer’s morning, £120,000, 
besides odds and ends. 

The Rector, of course, must be expected 
to set the tone to every thing, and, accord- 
ingly, example is his especial field. He 
could not even marry without giving a spe- 
cimen—the marriage must needs take place 
on the Sunday morning before service, and 
the bride herself walk to the church—she, 
however, declared herself quite incompetent, 
and that one point was conceded; the bride- 
groom read prayers with due solemnity, as 
if nothing had happened, and Mr. Arch- 
deacon Cambridge—from Richmond Mea- 
dows—good man, we never expected to 
hear of him again—preached a charming 
Sermon on the text—‘“‘a good woman is 
above riches”—for which the bride herself 
gracefully and biushingly made her best 
curtsey and thanks. But then—the con- 
versations that followed at the Rector’s tea- 
table, that afternoon! “‘the state of the lower 
order of angels cannot be much above this.”’ 

After some years of matchless felicity, 
comes again upon the stage, the lady who 
had made so desperate an attack upon the 
curate’s virtue—a letter from France an- 
nounces her approaching end, and her 
desire to obtain his personal forgiveness for 
the injury she had endeavoured to inflict 
upon him. With his wife’s concurrence, 
he flies to present the said forgiveness, and 
offer, at the same time, his advice and cons 
solation. On his arrival, he was introduced 
to a magnificent apartment, and dinner was 
instantly served up by half-a-dozen attend- 
ants—but no lady. On inquiring into the 
state of her health, he is only told, her lady- 
ship will herself reply to the question ; and 
accordingly on the following morning she 
presents herself, not dying, but glowing 
with matured beauty, and burning with 
rage—revenge had been her object in send- 
ing for the good man—she showers down 
upon him reproaches and upbraidings — 
tells him he is her prisoner—her slave— 
she will keep him till she is tired of him. 
By her directions, his wife is already in- 
formed, and convinced he came willingly—~ 
that she had been struck to the brain by the 
intelligence—that she was now a wandering 
maniac, &c. Part of this was too true— 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr-. 


the intelligence had been -conveyed—and 
her mind fad given way. All this had 
been accomplished by a treacherous servant, 
who, repenting at the sight of her sorrow, 
and confessing, enabled the Rector’s friends, 
by the aid of some gens d’armes, to rescue 
him. At first the lady resisted, but the 
gens d’armes knew their business, and the 
Rector fought like a lion. Three of the 
servants attacked him at once, meaning to 
carry him off to another cover—but mark 
how the bold Rector foiled them—one he 
felled at a blow, and then seizing the other 
two, each by his collar, dashed their foolish 
faces against each other, till both were dis- 
abled ; and by the time half-a-dozen more 
came to their assistance, in rushed the 
civil power, and all was immediately as it 
should be. 

After a most critical period, the Rector’s 
unhappy lady recovers her reason, and just 
as all was getting quiet and comfortable 
again, comes in person the same autocrat 
lady, announced by an avant courier to be 
in a dying state—she is admitted—she is 
really ill—had in desperation swallowed 
poison—is put to bed—receives the Rec- 
tor’s forgiveness — puts her will into his 
hands—and dies. The Rector finds him- 
self the sudden master of £25,000 a year, 
and £40,000 ready money, and seems puz- 
zied what to do with it all. “ This,” he 
exclaims, ‘‘ will indeed be the most severe 
of all my trials, and the deceased lady could 
not have punished me more, even for an 
injury, than by this bequest.’’ Though thus 
the richest man in the parish of Overton— 
“he is,”’ the writer observes in conclusion; 
“the humblest’’—and evidently best. able 
to afford it. 

There is an under plot or two, of course; 
to make the necessary degree of complexity 
—one rake reformed, and another left unre- 
formed—and really many a touching scene 
from the mere juxta-position of things, and 
notwithstanding the silliness of much, and 
the emptiness of more. 


Strictures of the Rectum, by Frederick 
Salmon ; 1828.—Books of a professional 
character scarcely fall within the pale of 
general literature; but we have not always 
overlooked matters of utility, though not 
coming precisely within our general scope, 
and on the claim of utility, the book before 
us may very allowably be admitted. Stric- 
tures of the Urethra are the subjects of mul- 
titudes of books, but Strictures of the Rec- 
tum appear almost to have escaped notice. 
A Mr. White, of Bath, was the first Eng- 
lish surgeon, it appears, who published a 
regular treatise upon it, but the practical 
knowledge he conimunicated seems to have 
been but little atiended to. The disease, 
however, is of yery common occurrence— 
much more than is generally imagined even 
by medical practitioners—and leads to many 
other derangements—to irritation of the 
lungs—to affections of the urinary organs 


eee ee 


1828.] 


and of the uterus—and is connected with 
piles, fistula in ano, and various constitu- 
tional diseases. 

Between strictures of the urethra and the 
rectum there is great analogy, and the treat- 
ment of the one is here assimilated to that 
of the other. The writer has repeatedly 
discovered the existence of both these affec- 
tions in the same patient—and indeed the 
causes which apparently induce the one, 
seem also necessarily to tend to the pro- 
duction of the other. 

Our chief object in noticing the book is 
—not to call to it the attention of the pro- 
fession—that the medical periodicals will do 
—but that of lay individuals, who will not 
otherwise hear of it—to qualify themselves 
to watch the approaches of this insidious 
disease, and get relief in time. Though a 
matter of very inferior consideration—the 
book, it is but justice to add, is well writ- 
ten. We may be sure, where a man ex- 
presses himself well—his ideas are clear— 
and clear ideas imply sound judgment. 


The Newly-discovered Temple of Ca- 
dachio, in the Island of Corfu, illustrated 
by William Railton, Architect. Folio. 
Tn the spring of the year 1825, Mr. Railton 
(the young English architect to whom we 
are indebted for the present elegant illus- 
tration) was waiting at Corfu, for an oppor- 
tunity to proceed on a professional tour in 
Greece and Egypt, when the remains of an 
ancient temple, first discovered three years 
preceding, were being freed, for the second 
time, from the earth, which is continually 
brought down the ravine on Mount Ascen- 
sion, at the foot of which they stand. 


The site of the temple, with respect to 
the ravine, is a remarkable peculiarity ; and 
it is that which has assisted Colonel Whit- 
more, the discoverer, in forming a very pro- 
bable notion of its history. The springs of 
Cadachio, situate about a mile and a half to 
the south-east of the present city of Corfu, 
are the dependence of the shipping which 
frequent the island for their supply of water. 
The water of these springs descends the ra- 
vine ; and it appears to have been the sanc- 
tity of the springs which determined the 
place of the temple. In every other re- 
spect, that place is singularly ill adapted for 
such an edifice. The run of water, and the 
earth brought down with it, must have 
threatened its destruction from the moment 
when it was built ; in the same manner they 
still render it difficult to keep its small re- 
mains unburied. 

But, by these very facts, assisted by the 
inscription on a marble which has been en- 

ved in the Museum Veronese, Colonel 

. has been led to conclude that the temple 
belonged either to sculapius, or to Apollo; 
as, from the style of its remains, he also in- 
fers, that it was built in the same era with 
the Parthenon, and the Temple of Theseus, 
at Athens ; that is, in the fifth century be- 
fore Christ. 


Domestic and Foreign. 


423 


In five plates, and four pages of letter- 
press, of the folio size, Mr. Railton has here 
illustrated the ground-plan, the elevation to- 
ward the sea, and the general remains of 
the edifice ; and he has done the whole of 
this in the best taste, and with the fullest 
display of professional skill. In his descrip- 
tion, he has introduced extracts from the 
learned and sagacious remarks of Colonel 
Whitmore, and re-quoted the very curious 
and interesting Verona inscription, with a 
translation. Altogether, the little work re- 
flects high credit upon the author, and will 
be thankfully received by his professional 
brethren, and by the lovers of the fine arts, 
and of elassical history in general. 


Life and Remains of Wilmot Warwick ; 
1828.—A volume of light and easy trifles, 
indicating considerable resources in the 
manufacturer. They are mere incidents, 
but the point of interest is artfully seized 
upon, and felicitously developed. A certain 
naiveté of expression, with something of 
the quaint and startling occurring here and 
there, show the writer to be familiar with 
Sterne, and Jeoffrey Crayon, his dedicatee. 
In the stories of the Smuggler, and of Gor- 
don he has touched on the confines of the’ 
pathetic—and the pathetic will be his forte 
(he has the faculty of marking small par- 
ticulars well) notwithstanding the chief 
of his present efforts are spent upon the 
ludicrous—and from the perpetual chace he 
keeps up in pursuit of the comic, he doubt- 
lessly conceives his book to lie in that 
direction. But sketches of this kind are 
not to be closely scanned—they are meant 
for the minute—they leave no impression— 
one expels from the memory the other ;— 
and these especially are unusually loose and 
transient—there is a want of strong lights 
and shades—all is too much of the same 
unexciting hue. 

Warwick tells his own story first—a man 
of the poetic temperament—prefixing the 
roamings of fancy to the ploddings of 
business, till he finds himself a street musi- 
cian, playing tunes at two-pence a dozen. 
At this point he discovers a school-fellow, 
who kindly informs us his friend took cold 
and died, and left him these ‘ remains.”. 
The tales hang slenderly together. The 
author is supposed to be touring—he meets, 
in a fellow-traveller, with an odd fellow— 
whose ‘ oddness’ seems to consist in good 
humour—he tells a tale; they pass the 
evening together at an inn, and the traveller 
tells another—one of ghosts; the author 
goes to bed in a painter’s room—is heated 
and restless, and dreams of ghosts, and is 
alarmed by a dead arm under his back, 
which proves to be his own, a little be- 
numbed, and presently again by the sight 
of the painter’s ‘ lay’ figure—which serves 
for another—makes a visit to a family 
keeping twelfth day—describes the festivi- 
ties—the young ones go to bed, and the 
seniors tell two or three more stories— 


424 


travels again and picks up another—revisits 
his holiday friends, and meets again with 
the odd fellow, who again furnishes a tale 
—and finally, returning to the inn, encoun- 
ters the painter himself, in whose room he 
had been so much alarmed—who has his 
own adventures to relate. 

And so about a dozen tales are collected, 
making a very agreeable lounging volume, 
though doubtless better fitted for the glanc- 
ing pages of a magazine—than to be thus 
given in bundles. These things weary in 
troops—for you must go on, till you get to 
the end. 


Hannibal’s Passage over the Alps, by 
Messrs. Wickham and Cramer, 2d Edi- 
tion.; 1828.—This guestio verata of the 
critics, philological and geographical, seems 
now brought to a close; and this second 
edition of Messrs. Wickham and Cramer’s 
book, not in the least differing from the 
first, as to the line of march, but more com- 
plete, from the final and perfect survey of 
the possible passes of the Alps, and the 
thorough sifting of adverse authorities, has 
the merit of satisfactorily terminating a dis- 
cussion, which might have been terminated 
long ago, if writers had made as much use 
of their eyes, and unprejudiced understand- 
ings, as their books. 

The original authorities are Polybius and 
Livy... The Roman has always been more 
read than the Greek, and especially by the 
French, who, till of late years, in all geogra- 
phical discussions, have, always been more 
distinguished than the English. Now Livy 
decidedly points to Mount Geneyre, and the 
French authorities, accordingly, all labour 
to establish that route. But Livy’s account 
is not only stuffed with extravagancies, but 
is full of inconsistencies, and, especially, is 
irreconcileable with Polybius, though to 
Polybius he plainly trusted for his general 
story ; sometimes obviously and grossly mis- 
apprehending him, and at other times, after 
his manner, adorning, and amplifying, and 
blundering ; moreover, from knowing no- 
thing of the scene which he ventured upon 
describing. He wrote, too, nearly two cen- 
turies after the event. 

Polybius, on the other hand, published 
his account of the passage within forty years 
of Hannibal’s expulsion from Italy ; was 
himself a sober, unpoetical person—a mili- 
tary man too—and surveyed the ground 
with his own eyes, and with a direct view to 
the passage ; but though careful in marking 
distances, and not defective in descriptions 
of the country, he is sparing of particulars, 
and especially of names, and of course has 
not furnished the more obvious means of de- 
termining the precise line of march. The 
probabilities are thus all obviously in favour 
of Polybius’s accuracy ; and the writers of 
the volume before us, taking Polybius in 
their hands, set out with the express pur- 
pose of tracing his descriptions, step by step, 
and have produced a body of evidence con- 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Ocr. 


clusive, certainly, against Livy’s Genevre, 
and apparently, almost decisively, in favour 
of Little St. Bernard. 

Polybius, we have observed, was careful 
in marking distances, and has fixed two 
points on the Rhone—the crossing of Han- 
nibal’s main army 100 miles from the mouth, 
and the march along its banks upwards of 
175 miles. The first points out Roquemaure 
(confirmed by the additional fact recorded 
by Pansanus, that the river is there un- 
broken by islands) a little above Avignon, 
and the latter, Vienne. 

From Vienne, the obvious course to 
Italy was by Les Echelles, Aiguebellette, de 
l’Epine, or Mont du Chat, all passes of the 
Alps, within a few miles of each other; the 
latter, for sufficient reasons, is the one 
adopted, and Bourget (near Chamberi) is 
concluded to be the town or fort which pro- 
tected the pass, and was taken by Hannibal 
after the battle. From this place the de- 
clension of the country took him to the 
Isere, at Montmaillan; from thence the 
valley of the Isere, along its windings 60 or 
70 miles, to Scez, was an open route ; from 
thence again the passage of the Little St. 
Bernard was right before him ; from Little 
St. Bernard, the valley of the Doria Baltea 
led him to Aoste and Ivrea, and from 
thence he finally reached Turin: the 
whole corresponding throughout with Poly- 
bius, with as much closeness as in a matter 
of description can well be expected. 

The main fact to establish is the point of 
divergence from the Rhone—from thence 
all is comparatively easy. Livy stops at the 
point where the Isere falls into the Rhone, 
and does not take Hannibal over the Isere. 
Turning from this point, along the left bank 
of the Isere, the course to Italy was natu- 
rally by the Cenis, or the Genevre, and 
Livy leads him over the Genevre—in his 
time the Genevre had become a common 
pass. Polybius, however, though he does 
not specifically speak of Hannibal’s crossing 
the Isere, yet represents him on the right 
bank, and considerably to the north, and 
actively engaged there. He describes what 
was called the Insula very minutely, which 
he would have had no occasion whatever 
to do, if Hannibal had not crossed the 
Isere. The Insula, he compares in size and 
form with the Delta of Egypt, where he 
himself had been, and with which it corres- 
ponds in those respects. The angle is 
formed by the lines of the Rhone and the 
Isere, and the base of it by the line of hills, 
which constitute the first step of the Alps 
on. the western side, and of which the Mont 
du Chat is a part. This insula was the 
country of the Allobroges, for the sove- 
reignty of which two brothers were at the 
time contending, the eldest of whom Han- 
nibal fled and established, and in the mean 
while~suspended his course. Nothing is 
said of his returning, nor is it probable he 
did return to re-cross the Isere; and when 
he was in the insula, the obvious line was 


a 


* 


1828.] 


towards the Mont du Chat, and from thence 
to the Little St. Bernard. Besides, the 
original line laid down by Hannibal, on the 
evidence of previous inquiries from the 
natives of the Alps, who invited him and 
guided him, corresponds with this as to 
distances—which Livy will not do at all. 
Not ashadow of doubt can be entertained 
of the actual route being north of the Isere ; 
and Vienne, as was observed, corresponds 
with the distance marked by Polybius from 
the mouth and passage of the Rhone ;—from 
Vienne the course to Mont du Chat is 
direct and obvious; and from thence the 
vale of the Isere and the pass of Little St. 
Bernard equally so. No reason upon earth 
can be given for his going farther north, on 
the one hand, by the more impracticable 
passes Mont Blanc and Great St. Bernard, 
or on the other to Mont Cenis, far away from 
the Insubres, through whose country he 
certainly passed—that is, along the vale of 
the Doria Balea by Aoste and Isere. Po- 


Domestie and Foreign. 


425 


lybius has, in short, two fixed points, the 
one 275 miles from the mouth of the Rhone, 
that is Vienne; and the descent from the 
hills through the Insubres, that is, north of 
Iyrea and Turin—the whole line therefore, 
from west to east, must have been consider- 
ably to the north of Mont Genevre and 
even Mont Cenis. 

We have no space for niceties, but every 
thing which bears upon the question is 
discussed by the authors—and._ no shirking. 
They have themselves examined the country, 
completely, and in all directions—thoroughly 
sifted their materials—given to every body 
a hearing, and to every body their due: and 
all in a calm and temperate spirit which 
nothing but good faith and confidence in 
their researches could well support. General 
Melville, who spent many years in surveying 
the Alps, has the merit of first indicating 
the route now established, though he seems 
to have inclined to Great St. Bernard. 


MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 


WSILE our sheets are coming from the 
press, and preparing to take, under the hands 
of the binder, that form which speeds them 
through the delighted world, the Theatres 
will be raising their curtains, and display- 
ing their drop-scenes. We are not gifted 
with the faculty of prediction, and therefore 
think it wiser not to say what the Theatres 
are, and shall be, till they open. Covent 
Garden commences with a Shakspeare 
temple, painted by that capital artist, 
Roberts, and with a management directed 
by that not less capital artist in his way, 
Fawcett. But in what shape his ingenuity 
is to delight the world, we know not; for 
we have been painfully forced, from long 
experience, to doubt the actuality of the 
annual speculative list put forth in the 


| INSTITUTE—ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
_ Paris, June 16.—After the prizes had 


been awarded, as mentioned in our last 


Number, an historical eulogium of M. Ra- 
mond was read by Baron Cuvier, perpetual 
3 a Also a Physiological Memoir 
on the Brain, by M. Magendie. Baron 
Fourier, perpetual secretary, then delivered 


ecretary. 


an historical eulogium on M. Charles; and 


afterwards, M. Prony read a memoir on 
the labours of the late M. Perronnet. The 


“subject of the prizes for the years 1829 and 


were then announced.—23. M. N. 
atore, director of the observatory at 
] mo, forwarded to the Academy the 
ifth book of one of the astronomical works 
of Piazzi, and which was wanting in the 
M.M. New Series.—Vou.VI. No. 3.4 


newspapers, always giving us the “ promise 
to the ear” of from three to five Comedies, 
a pair of Tragedies, and a profusion of 
minor performances that would take up the 
brains of a whole generation of adapters. 
Drury Lane comes out in great force. By 
the accession of Farren, the Comic company 
is complete and admirable. With the best 
fop on the stage, in Jones, and the best old 
man, in Farren, Comedy can require 
nothing beyond the powers of the company- 
Wallack’s American trip has left the stage 
in the hands of Mr. Cooper, whose intelli- 
gence, moderation, and good sense, mark 
him for the situation. But excepting a 
Tragedy, from Miss Mitford, a Drama, 
from Knowles, and an altered play, from 
Kenny, the Theatrical Library is empty. 


PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 


library of the Institute. MM. Navier and 
Mathieu reported very favourably on a. 
perspective sector of M. Lalaune, an in- 
strument for facilitating the attainment of 
the perspective lines in a drawing. MM. 
Lacroix, Poinsot, and Navier, made a most 
flattering report, and recommended for in- 
sertion in the “ Recueil des Savans Etran- 
gers,”? a memoir of M. Corances, on the 
Integration of some Equations of Partial 
Differences, and on the Movement of Water 
in Vessels). MM. Dumeril and Blainville 
then presented a report, a memoir of Dr. 
Foville upon the Anatomy of the Brain ; 
and the Academy requested the continuance 
of his investigations.—30. M. Mirbel read 
a note on a remarkable development of the 
3 I : 


426 


stem of the calycanthus floridus. M. Gay 
Lussac presented a specimen of artificial 
ultra-marine, manufactured by M. Guimet ; 
and a new pyrophorus, formed by the calci- 
nation of sulphate of potass with charcoal ; 
and showed by experiment that it is much 
more inflammable than the pyrophorus for- 
merly known. MM. Dulong and Ampere 
reported on an Italian memoir of M. L. 
Nobili, relative to an effective system for 


Proceedings of Learned Societies. 


[Ocr, 


measuring the electric currents; and this 
eminent philosopher was solicited to con~ 
tinue his researches.—July 7. M. Poisson 
read a note on the problem of the waves.— 
14. M. Arago communicated a letter of 
M. De la Rive, on some electrical experi- 
ments. M. Latreille made a verbal report 
on a paper of M. Macquart, entitled Dip- 
téres du Nord de la France. 


VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


Meteorology.—On the evening of the 
second of November, 1827, a halo was ob- 
served in America, at New Haven, to which 
nothing similar seems to have been remark- 
ed. Between the hours of seven and eight 
there appeared around the moon, a little 
more than its width in distance, a very 
luminous saffron-coloured light. On the 
outer edge was a circle of bright red, which 
now graduated into a deep purple ; around 
the purple was a circle of bright blue, which 
faded into a yellowish green, increasing to- 
wards the outer edge to a very vivid green. 
‘Phere appeared to be faint white rays pass- 
ing from the moon across these columns, 
whose circles formed around this lunar 
glory a larger circle, of a dark leaden co- 
lour, which gave the whole a very beautiful 
appearance. 

Antiquities.—Some most interesting in- 
telligence has recently been transmitted to 
Europe by two French travellers, relative to 
the city of Petra, in Arabia Petrwa, and 
concerning the country of the Nabathzai. 
The following particulars regarding Wadi- 
Moasa, a place of which preceding travellers 
had scarcely obtained a view, are worthy of 
being laid before the public, and are ex- 
tracted from a letter written on the spot by 
M. Laborde. ‘ Arrived .in the ravine, we 
descended from our camels, and began to 
sketch, when the Arabs inquired what we 
were about, as these were not the ruins; in 
fact, we soon after entered the true Wadi- 
Moasa, in the midst of the most magnificent 
tombs, cut in the solid rock, and more ele- 
vated than the first; and in the back ground 
we perceived a range of giganticmonuments, 
of which the effect is indescribable. We had 
seen the ruins of Balbek, the long ranges of 
columns of Palmyra, the street and the oval 
of Djerask; but all these were far behind 
these immense piles of two or three stages 
of columns, this square league of rock, ex- 
cavated and strewed with the most splendid 
ruins. We wereina continual ecstasy. At 
length we arrived at the place called Serai 
Pharaon, palace of Pharaoh, an edifice 
near which we established our head quarters, 
in a grotto, and while examining these 
monuments, only intreated heaven to allow 
us sufficient time to pourtray and lay down 
plans of them. But scarcely had we began 
to sketch that which was nearest to us, when 


an Arab came to say that this was nothing, 
and that we should proceed without loss of 
time to the Kamel Pharaon, treasury of 
Pharaoh. We followed him, and passed 
by a vast theatre, excavated in the rock, and 
by other mausoleums. We soon saw @ 
chef-d’ceuvre, both for its state of preserva- 
tion and its singularity, of which the style 
and the construction are full of faults, but of 
which the mass, consisting of two stages of 
columns, interspersed with the richest orna~ 
ments, curious bas-reliefs, and great eques- 
trian statues, presented the most extraordi- 
nary appearance that we had ever seen, and 
of which the finest drawings would give but 
a faint idea. We subsequently penetrated 
deeper into the ravine, and found a great 
triumphal arch, supported by the two sides of 
the rock which enclose this narrow valley, 
and another avenue of the most interesting 
tombs, still richer than the first. All these 
monuments, cut in a rose-coloured granite 
rock, have a soft harmonious tint, and are 
still further embellished by the large sha- 
dows of the surrounding rocks.” 
Moniment to Kosciuzko.—On the moun- 
tain of Bronislawa (composed of two words, 
signifying to defend glory), almost at the 
gates of Cracow, the Poles have raised an in- 
destructible monument to Kosciuzko :—it is 
a mountain piled upon another mountain. 
Seven years it has been in progress, and is 
only now finished. Subscriptions were col- 
lected for the purpose of erecting it, in Po- 
land, Lithuania, and even in Russia. All — 
the youth of Warsaw, the nobility, the peo- 
ple, old men, women, and children, either 
handled the spade or wheeled the barrow ; 
and those who were unable to work them- 
selves, contributed to support the labour of 
others. But the tomb of the hero has not 
been placed on this monument; it still re- 
mains within the city, on the mountain of 
Wazel, where with Joseph Poniatowski only, 
Kosciuzko shares the honour of the regal 
sepulchre, and is placed near the great 
Sobieski. lit 
Circulating Manure.—Common salt and 
lime, when mixed together, gradually de- 
compose each other; the result of the decom- 
position is soda, and a peculiar deliquescing 
salt, muriate of lime. This salt, from its — 
great attraction for the moisture of the at-— 
mosphere, is an admirable fertilizer for sandy 


1828.] 


hot soils. A plan similar to this is actually 
adopted in China, but instead of fish (in this 
country sprats) night-soil is used with the 
lime ; the whole mass being made into cakes 
like bricks, is afterwards dried in the sun, 
and sent into the inland provinces for the 
use of the farmers. So universal is this 
practice 2t Pekin, that these cakes are said 
to form no inconsiderable portion of the 
circulating medium of that great city.— 
Quarierly Journal of Science. 

Damascus Steel.—From the observation 
of travellers, that the manufacture of Da- 
mascus blades was carried on only during 
the time when north winds occurred, a Rus- 
sian philosopher, M. Anozoff, made experi- 
ments on the hardening of steel instruments, 
by putting them, when heated, into a power- 
ful current of air, instead of quenching them 
in water. From the experiments already 
made, he expects ultimate success. He 
finds that for very sharp-edged instruments 
this method is much better than the ordinary 
one ; that the colder the air, and the more 
rapid its stream, the greater is the effect, 
which last varies with the thickness of the 
mass to be hardened. The method suc- 
ceeds well with case-hardened goods. 

Growth of Hair.—From the following 
circumstance, recorded in a medical journal, 

it would appear that a most redoubtable 
rival to the far-famed Macassar oil has been 
discovered in Germany. A man, between 
twenty and thirty years of age, of a strong 
and healthy constitution, having a short 

| curly, and coarse hair, of a dark brown 
colour, found himself becoming bald. Nu- 
__- merous and large bald spots appeared on the 
head, and gradually increased until it be- 
came perfctly bare; and as the eyelashes fell 
out, the man had quite a singular and dis- 
agreeable appearance. When the head was 
cloyely examined, a short white and scatter- 
Saaleicern; very similar to a slight degree of 
-mouldiness, was perceptible. At first it was 
_hoped that the hair would grow again; but 
the sequel proved the contrary. After two 
years, Dr. Radimacher advised him to pour 

_ French brandy upon sulphate of copper, and 
_ when it had remained a few days, to wash 
_ the bald parts once a-day with the solution. 
In eight days the hair had begun to grow, 
and in four months it equalled the original 
_ growth in quantity, but was of a lighter co- 
_ lour, crisp, dry, and stiff, and had not anatural 
A spot still remained bald on 
ie back of the head. The eye-brows and 
grew again, like the rest of the hair. 
_ year after this the man shed his hair 
in, but the eye-brows and lashes remain- 
ed. . Radimacher wished him now to 
wait awhile, to ascertain whether the hair 
would or would not grow again spontane- 
sly; but the patient would not, and had 
urse to the solution, which produced 
er growth of bland or light hair ; and 

¢ spot which had continued bald, notwith- 
nding the solution, became covered in 
mmon with the other -parts of the head. 


Varieties. 


427 


This growth had a much more natural ap- 
pearance than the former one. 

Temperature of the Planetary Space.— 
According to M. Fourier, the temperature 
of the space occupied by our planetary system 
is very nearly forty octogesimal degrees, or 
ninety degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale, colder 
than the temperature of freezing ice. 

Natural Phenomenon.—A substance was 
recently presented to the French Academy 
of Sciences, which had been forwarded to 
the government, as having fallen from the 
sky in Persia, at the commencement of this 
year. This species of celestial manna was 
found in such great quantities, that the 
earth for a considerable distance was en- 
tirely covered with it. In some places it 
was five or six inckes in depth. The cat- 
tle, and particularly the sheep, eagerly fed 
upon this singular production, which was 
also converted into bread for the support of 
the inhabitants. Such was the information 
which a Russian general, who had witnessed 
the phenomenon, communicated to the 
French consul in Persia. Upon examina- 
tion, this substance was found to be a sort 
of lichen, already described by botanists. 
These mosses, which appear to be found in 
very great abundance, must have been car- 
ried by the wind to the places where their 
sudden appearance was remarked. A simi- 
lar phenomenon was noticed in the same 
regions of Persia in the year 1824. 

Rectification of Spirits.—A patent has 
been recently obtained for an improved pro- 
cess of rectifying spirits, which deserves to 
be noticed. The material proposed to be 
employed is charcoal, which is to be re- 
charred immediately before using, and 
ground or bruised to a fine powder. This 
pulverised charcoal is to be introduced into 
the still in the proportion of about one gal- 
lon of the charcoal to four gallons of spirits. 
The application of fresh charred wood or 
charcoal to the spirits, in this way, will, it is 
said, totally destroy the empyreumatie fla- 
vour which the spirit may have contracted 
in the process of distillation. It is further 
proposed, in order to get rid of the essen- 


-tial oil in spirits, to mix water with it, and 


then to introduce the fresh charred charcoal 


-in the way described, which will perfectly 


purify it, and leave the spirit without any 
unpleasant flavour. Spirits rectified in this 
way will be found particularly desirable for 
preparing and mixing with cordials. 

Paper for Draughtsmen.—Reduce to a 
powder, and dissolve quickly in a glazed 
earthen vessel containing cold water, some 
gum-tragacanth, having been well worked 


_with a wooden spatula, to free it from lumps. 


There must be a sufficient quantity of water 
to give this diluted gum the consistence of 
jelly.. Paper, and some sorts of stuffs, upon 
which this composition is smoothly applied 
with a pencil or a brush, and dried before a 
gentle fire, will receive either water or oil 
colours. In using water colours, they must 
be mixed with a solution of the aboye gum, 
312 


428 


This cloth or paper, so prepared, will take 
any. colour except ink. When it is intended 
to retouch any particular part of the draw- 
ing, it should be marked with a sponge, or 
clean linen, or a pencil (containing some of 
the above-mentioned liquid); if the part is 
only small, it will then rise quickly, and 
appear.as if repainted. 

Intense Light.—It is stated by an emi- 
nent German chemist, that hydrate of lime, 
pulverised, and exposed upon charcoal to a 
stream of oxygen, through a blow pipe, 
with an orifice of 0-02 of an inch in diame- 
ter, fed by a common lamp, gives the most 
intense light. He attributes this to a sort 

.of pulverulent atmosphere, which the lime 
disengages at that tempengsure... Substances 
which do not form molecules in a gaseous 
state cannot produce so vivid an incandes- 
cence, 

Organie Relic.—A workman recently 

broke a mass of very firm conglomerate 
rock, quarried for the new state house, now 
building at New Haven, in the United 
States of America; and found lodged in a 
cavity, so completely enclosed as to exclude 
the possibility of external introduction, a 
piece of wood, the small limb of a tree, ap- 
parently of the pine family, with the bark 
entire ; the wood not mineralized, but fresh 
and in perfect preservation, and not even 
attached to the walls of the cavity, except 
slightly at one end, but lying in it, as ina 
case; the piece of wood was not longer 
.than a finger, and the cavity but two or 
three inches in diameter; it was lined with 
a soft and feebly coherent matter, resembling 
the substance of the rock, in a state of rather 
minute division. The conclusion, from this 
interesting fact appears irresistible, that this 
piece of wood was floating in the waters 

-which were charged with the materials of 
.this rock, and became enclosed during their 

~consolidation—thus proving that this rock 
had never been ignited, and that a tree or 
shrub was in existence when it was formed. 
That it is a very ancient rock of this class 
is evident from its composition presenting 

-quartz, fresh and brilliant, red feldspar, and 
mica, along with entire fragments of gra- 
nite, gniess, mica slate, argillite, &c., be- 
ing evidently an early offset from the de- 
struction of a primitive formation. It 
passes from a fine sand-stone into a coarse 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


A work, highly interesting to the ancient 
historian, is now in active preparation ; be- 
ing a complete series of Lithographic En- 
gravings, from the Original Model of the 
Great Egyptian Tomb, taken by the late 
traveller, Belzoni, on the spot. It is to be 
brought out by his widow, the possessor of 
the model; and under the patronage of 
H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence. In giving 
the intimation of this beautiful as*well as 
learned work, to our readers, it may not be 


Varieties. 


[Ocr. 


pudding-stone. \ The rock has been usually 
referred, by the American geologists, to the 
red sand-stone formation; it is in many 
places covered by ridges of green-stone 
lias. In the same rock formation, but 
fifty miles from New Haven, were found the 
bones of a large animal. In a similar rock 
in Scotland, certain traces of animals have 
been recently observed.—Si/liman’s Jour- 
nal. 

New Mode of communicating Heat.— 
A patent has been recently obtained for a 
new method of communicating heat, which, 
in some respects, resembles that of heating 
by High Pressure Steam. The Boiler is 
withdrawn from the direct influence of the 
fire, and heat is communicated through 
other substances, the peculiar properties of 
which, constitute the value of the invention. 
Double bottomed vessels are used, and in 
the intermediate space, fluid substances are 
placed, in sufficient quantity to cover and 
protect the flat bottom of the outer vessel. 

The substances used are various, but all 
have the properties of boiling at known and 
fixed degrees of temperature; so that when 
fire is applied to the vessel containing them, 
to raise them to the boiling point, they 
furnish vapour heavier than atmospheric 
air, and easily condensible by comparatively 
hot surfaces, which vapour, coming in con- 
tact with the colder surface of the inner 
vessel, imparts heat thereto, and falls again, 
in the fluid state, to be reheated, whereby 
a constant generation of vapour and return 
of fluid is going forward; and this without 
any mechanical pressure or elastic force 
being exerted, a communication being, at 
all times, kept up, between the fluid me- 
dium and the atmosphere. Thence a fluid 
which boils at 300° (and any degree between 
200 and 700—Fahrenheit may be chosen) 
will impart nearly that degree to substances 
placed in the boiler, without it being pos- 
sible to go beyond it: so that, a proper 
medium being chosen, all chance of burning 
or injuriously heating is avoided. 

By these means it is proposed to supersede 
the use of high pressure steam in various 
processes, where a high but regulated heat 
is necessary, and likewise to produce very 
elastic steam without any danger in the 
process, and at a cost very inferior to what 
is now required for the same effect. 


impertinent to say a few words of the inte- 
resting editress. We have been informed, 
on good authority, that she is a native of 
our own island, though some have dated her 
birth-place from Ireland. She married Mr. 
Belzoni when very young, also accompanied 
him, unrecedingly, through all the scenes 
of his enterprizing destiny ; which was not 
less perilous than various. To his first 
celebrated publication, concerning his dis- 
coveries in Egypt and Nubia, she added a 


1828.] 


‘little account of her visit to Jerusalem, 
which she modestly entitled ‘Mrs. Bel- 
zoni’s Trifling Narrative ;’’ but its: infoy- 
mation was far from trifling, and the un- 
pretending simplicity of the style disarmed 
all severity of criticism. The letter-press of 
the present proposed work (subscribers’ names 
for which are received by Mr. Churchill, 
bookseller, Leicester Square) we under- 
stand, is partly from MSS. notes of his own, 
and partly from subsequent written opinions 
of learned men, on the symbolic history, 
contained in the embossed and painted 
imagery on the walls of the tomb. Speci- 
mens of these figures and hierologyphics 
were shewn to the public, in the portion of 
the royal sepulchre exhibited in London, 
and also in about a dozen large plates, 
annexed to the before-mentioned narrative 
of Belzoni, published on his return from 
‘Egypt; but this contemplated work will 
-convey, in eighty large prints, the whole 
picture of the interior of the tomb, in accu- 
rate copy from the original model. 

A Poem, entitled, All for Love, or the 
Sinner well Saved, in three Cantos or Sec- 
tions. By Mr. Southey, will be publishedin 

- October. 

Mr. Sotheby is engaged in.a new version 

of the Iliad, in Heroic Rhyme; he has com- 
» pleted the first Six Books. 

A Manual of the Anatomy, Physiology, 
and Diseases of the Eye and its appendages. 
By S. J. Stratford, Member of the College 

. of Surgeons, London. 

Remarks on the several Sunday Services 
of the Church throughout the Year. By the 
Rey. Bishop Jolly. 

Dr. Shirley Palmer, will publish in No- 
vember, Popular Ilustrations of Medicine 
and Diet. Part I., Of the Principal Excit- 
ing Causes of Disease and Death. 

Another volume, in quarto, of Dr. 
Lingard’s History of England, beginning 
with the Commonwealth, will be published 

- in November. 

The Rev. Samuel Hinds, Vice Principal 
of St. Albans’ Hall, Oxford, is about to 
publish The History of the Rise and Early 

- Progress of Christianity, comprising an 

_ Inquiry into its true Character and De- 
sign. 

. The Rey. J. B. S. Carwithen, of St. 

_ Mary’s Hall, Oxford, Author of the Bamp- 
ton Lectures, for 1809, has in the Press a 

_ History of the Church of England to the 
beginning of the Nineteenth Century. 
The first two volumes will appear in No- 
vember, and bring down the Work to the 

- Restoration of the Church and Monarchy, 

- in 1660. 

The Rey. C. Benson, Master of the 

' Temple is about to reprint his Chrono- 

logy of Our Saviour’s Life. 

A Pocket Cyclopedia is in preparation, 


- which will be composed of complete Trea- 


. tises on every branch of Literature and 
. Science, freed from the difficulties of Tech- 


a, 


List of New Works. 429 


nical and Mathematical Language. By 


. Dr. Lardner. 


Time’s Telescope, for 1829, will be 
published with the Almanacks, on the 18th 
November. And will contain a variety of 
new and interesting matter, original 
Poetry by living Authors, &c. &c. 

The Rev. John Angell James has in 
the Press, in 12mo., The Family Monitor, 
or a Help to Domestic Happiness. 

The Bishop of Down and Connor, (Dr. 
Mant) is preparing for the Press a volume 
on those Events in our Saviour’s Life which 
are the subjects of Annual Commemoration 
in the Services of the United Church of 
England and Ireland. 

Early in October will appear, Great 
Britain Illustrated; a Series of Views, 
comprising all the Cities, Principal Towns, 
Public Buildings, Docks, and Remarkable 
Edifices in thé United Kingdom ; from 
drawings made expressly for the Work. 
By W. Westall, A.R.A., and engraved by 
E. Finden. With descriptions by Thomas 
Moule, author of the Bibliotheca Heral- 
dica, &c. &c. This Work will appear 
Monthly. Each number will contain four 
Views. 

A System of Geography, Popular and 
Scientific. By James Bell, Editor of 
Rollin’s Ancient History, &c. 6 vols. 8vo. 

Mr. Thomas Attwood has a new Work 
in the Press, on the Currency, &c. of the 
Kingdom. 

Essays on the Principles of Morality, and 
on the Private and Political Rights and 
Obligations of Mankind. By the late 
Jonathan Dymond, in 2 vols. 8vo. 

Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and 
other Matters, selected from the Times 
Journal, with additional pieces. 

An Essay, Explanatory of a Method 
whereby Cancerous Ulceration may be 
stopped, by the Formation of Crusts and 
granulating Margins; with Practical Re- 
marks on other Analogous Diseases. By 
W. Farr, Surgeon. 

Hints to Counsel, Coroners, and Juries, 
on the Examination of Medical Witnesses, 
By John Gordon Smith, M.D. 

The Rey. H. Pattam, Rector of St. 
Cuthbert’s, Bedford, has in the Press a 
Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian 
Language, both of the Coptic and Sahidic 
Dialects. With Observations on the 
Bashmurie and Enchorial Characters, and 
some Explanation relative to their Use ; 
with an Appendix, consisting of the Rudi- 
ments of a Dictionary of the Egyptian 
Language. By Dr. Young. 

The Casket of Literary Gems, 
Series. 

Dr. Shirley Palmer has nearly ready 
Popular Illustrations of Medicine and Diet, 
Part I. of the principal exciting Causes of 
Disease and Death. 

The Annual Publications are all making 
great exertions to outvie each other, in the 


Second 


430 


attractiveness of their engravings, and the 
celebrity of their contributors. In addi- 
tion to all those of last year, there will be 
several new ones this—each putting forth 
abnost the same pretensions to superiority : 
the contributors and engravers to each, 
are, with few exceptions, nearly alike in all 
of them. Those of last year were the 
Forget Me Not, The Friendship’s Offering, 
The Bijou, The Amulet, The Winter’s 
Wreath, The Pledge of Friendship, The 
Keepsake, and The Literary Souvenir.—In 
addition this year we are threatened with 
The Anniversary, The Juvenile Forget Me 
Not, The Juvenile Keepsake, Edited by 
Mr. Roscoe, The New Year’s Gift, making 
altogether 12 in number. When it is con- 
sidered that these elegant publications re- 
quire a large sale, perhaps 5000 or 6000, 
to repay the heavy expense of getting them 
up, it is to be feared that some of their 
proprietors will have reason to regret their 
speculation. 

Besides the above, a new French Annual 
is announced, to be published by Mr. Acker- 
mann. The writing to be entirely in 
French; and to contain seven engravings. 

Mr. E. Lytton Bulwer, the author of 
Pelham, has a new work in the Press, 
entitled the Disowned. in 4 vols. 

Tales of the Great St. Bernard, by the 
Rev. G. Croly, author of Salathiel, is on 
the eve of publication. 

The Castilian ; a Spanish Romance. By 
the author of Gomez Arias, will appear in 
October. 

Mrs. Bray, author of the White Hoods, 
and De Foix, has an Historical Romance 
nearly ready, entitled The Protestant. 

Tales of a Voyager. Second Series, will 
shortly appear. 

Mr. Grattan, author of Highways and 
Byways, has a new work nearly ready for 
the Press. 

The author of Brambletye House, is 
engaged on Zillah, a Tale of Jerusalem. 

Nollikens, his Life and Times, by. Mr. 
Smith, announced some time back in this 
Magazine, will soon appear; as will also 
Sailors and Saints, by the authors of the 
Naval Sketch Book. 

The Last of the Plantagenets, illustrative 
of Domestic Manners and Public Events 
in the 15th Century. 

Rank and Talent; Life in India, and 
The Anglo Irish, are all announced for 
speedy publication. 

Mr. Peter Buchan, of Peterhead, Aber- 
deenshire, Ancient Ballads and Songs of 
the North of Scotland, accompanied with 
Explanatory Notes, in 2 vols. 8vo. 

Mrs. Williams has in the Press, a 
Fourth Edition of her Syllabic Spelling 
Book, or a Summary Method of Teaching 
' Children to Read; upon the principle 
originally invented by the Sieur Berthaud, 

adapted to the English Language, with 
numerous additions and improvements, and 
illustrated by appropriate engravings. 


List of New Works. 


[Ocr. 


The 2nd Number of the *‘ Enigmatical 
Entertainer and Mathematical Associate,’ 
being for the year 1829, will appear this 
month. 


LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

The Life of the Celebrated Sir Francis 
Drake, the first English Circumnavigator, 
&c. &c. Imperial 8vo. 10s. boards. 

Memoirs of General Miller, in the Ser- 
vice of the Republic of Peru. Tlustrated 
by original Maps, and Plans of the Battles 
of Chacubuco, Maypo, Junin, Ayacucho, 
&c. By John Miller. In 2 vols. €vo. 
£1. 11s. Gd. boards. 

Royal Naval Biography, by Lieut. John 
Marshall, R.N. Supplement Part II. 
In 8vo. price lis. boards. 

The Life and Remains of the Rev. Leigh 
Richmond. By the Rev. W. Grimshaw. 
8yo. 14s. boards. 

The Thirty Years’ War. 
Shiller. Translated by G. 
2 vols, 18mo. 7s. boards. 

Notes on the Campaign of 1808-9. in 
the North of Spain. By Lieut. Colonel 
T. S. Sovell. Price 2s. 6d. 

LAW. 

An Accurate. Abstract of the Public 
General Statutes, passed in 9 Geo. IV., 
anno 1828, being the second session of the 
Eighth Parliament of the United Kingdom. 
By Thomas Walter. Williams, Esq. 8vo. 
9s. boards. 

Observations on the Natural Right of a 
Father to the Custody of his Children, and 
to direct their Education; his forfeiture of 
his Right, and the Jurisdiction of the 
Court of Chancery to control it. . By James 
Ram, Esq., of the Inner Temple. Price 2s. 

Practice of Tenantry. By Kennedy and 
Granger. 8vo. 15s. boards. 

MEDICAL. 

Elements of Descriptive and Practical 
Anatomy, for the use of Students. By 
Jones Quain. 8vo. 16s. boards. ; 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

The Life and Remains of Wilmot Ware 
wick. Edited by his friend, Henry Vernon. 
Post 8vo. 9s. 

La Petite Francaise, or Vocabulary, 
Exercises, and easy Reading Lessons, 4 
intended as a Companion to the Child’s . 
French Friend. By M. A. Allison. 2s. | 
half bound. 

A Sequel to Dr. Wanostrocht’s Recueil 
Choisi. 12mo. 4s. bound. 

Moral Biography, or Lives of Exem- 
plary Men, for the Instruction of Youth. 
18mo. 3s. 6d. half bound. 

An Historical Account of Sub-ways in 
the British Metropolis, for the fow of Pure 
Water and Gas into the Houses of the 
Inhabitants, without disturbing the Paye- 
ments. By John Williams. 8vo 12s. bds. 

The Five Games of the Match at Chess, 
played between the London and Edinburgh 


By Frederic 
Moir, Esq. 


1828.] 


Chess Clubs; with Variations and Remarks. 
By W. Lewis. 8vo. 8s. large paper, 12s. 
boards. 

The Tocsin, or a Review of the London 
Police Establishments ; with Hints for their 
Improvement, and for the Prevention of 
Calamitous Fires, &c. By T. B. W. 
Dudley. 

~ The Pomological Magazine ; a Selection 
of those Fruits most worthy cultivation, with 
their History, Management, &c. By 
Joseph Sabine, Esq., and John Lindley, 
Esq., of the Horticultural Society of London. 
Vol. 1 royal, 8vo. coloured plates, £3. 

-A Compendium of Mechanics, or Text 
Book for Engineers, Millwrights, Machine- 
Makers, Founders, Smiths, &c. ; containing 
Practical Rules and Tables connected with 
the Steam Engine, Water Wheel, Pump, 
and Mechanics in General. By Robert 
Brunton. Fourth Edition, greatly enlarged. 
12mo. price 5s. boards. 

POETRY. 

The Vale of Bolton; a Poetical Sketch. 
By F. C. Spencer. 12mo. 7s. boards. 
Poems, Sacred and Miscellaneous. 
George Woods, jun. 8vo. 6s. 6d. bds. 
An Epistle from Abelard to Eloise. 
Thomas Stewart, Esq. 1s. 6d. 

POLITICAL. 

Evidence before the House of Commons 
on the Wool Trade. 2s. 6d. 

Earl Stanhope’s Letter, to the Owners and 
Occupiers of Sheep Farms. ls. 6d. 

The Curse and Cure of Ireland; exhibited 
in a Dialogue on the Catholic Question. 
By William T. Haley. 


By 
By 


List of New Works. 


431 


A Supplement to an Analysis of the 
Constitution of the East India Company, 
embracing the important Laws as to Crimi- 
nal Justice and Insolvent Debtors, passed 
last Session; together with some Prelimi- 
nary Observations. By Peter Auber, Esq., 
Assistant Secretary to the Hon. the- Court 
of Directors. 8vo. 10s. 6d. boards. 

RELIGION. 

Antichrist ; an Estimate of the Religion 
of the Times. By the Rev. John Reland, 
A.M. 12mo. ds. boards. 

The Works of James Arminius, D.D. 
formerly Professor of Divinity in the 
University of Leyden. . Translated from 
the Latin. To which is added, Brandt’s 
Life of the Author, with considerable 
Augmentations, &c. &c. By James 
Nichols. Vol. 2. 8vo. 16s. boards. 

Sermons. By the Rev. R. H. Carne. 
&vo. 10s. 6d. boards. 

TRAVELS. 

St. Petersburgh ; a Journal of Travels 
to and from the Capital, through Flanders, 
the Rhenish Provinces, Prussia, Russia, 
Poland, Silesia, Saxony, the Confederated 
States of Germany and France. By A. B. 
Granville, M.D. 2 vols. 8vo. £2. 5s. bds. 

America, or a General Survey of the 
Political Situation of the Several Powers 
of the Western Continent, with Conjectures 
on their Future Prospects. By a Citizen 
of the United States. 8vo. 

The United States of North America as 
they are. 8yo. 

Guide to Mount’s Bay and the Land’s 
End.- By a Physician. 8vo. 10s. - boards. 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


New Patents Sealed in September 1828. 

. To George Stratton, of Frederick-place, 
Hampstead-road, Middlesex, gentleman, for 
his improvements in warming and ventilat- 
ing churches, hot-houses, and all other 
buildings ; which improvements may be ap- 
plied to other purposes.—Sealed 28th Aug. ; 
6 months. 

_To Granville Sharpe Pattison, of Old 
Burlington-street, Westminster, Middle- 

Esq., for an improved method of ap- 
vcs iron in the sheathing of ships and 
_ other yessels, and of applying iron bolts, 
‘spikes, nails, pintals, braces, and other 
fastenings in the construction of ships and 
other yessels.—4th September ; 6 months. 

To John Seaward and Samuel Seaward, 
of the Canal Iron-Works, All Saints, Pop- 
lar, Middlesex, engineers, for their improved 
methods for propelling carriages and all 
other vehicles on roads, and also ships’ 
hoats and other vessels on water.—4th Sep- 
tember ; 6 months. 

To John Robertson, of Limehouse Hole, 

All Saints, Poplar, Middlesex, rope manu- 
_facturer, for certain improvements in the 


manufacture of hempen rope or cordage.— 
4th September ; 6 months. 

To Charles Sanderson, of Park-gate 
Tron-Works, near Rotherham, York, iron- 
master, for a new method of making shear- 
steel.—4th September ; 2 months. 

To Samuel Brooking, Esq., of Plymouth, 
Devon, rear-admiral in the royal navy, for 
a new method of making sails of ships and 
other vessels. —4th September; 6 months. 

To William Bell, of Lucas-street, Com- 
mercial-road, Middlesex, for his improved 
methods for filtrating water and various other 
liquids. 4th September ; 6 months. 

To William Farish, of Cambridge, 
Jacksonian Professor in the University, for 
his improved method of clearing out water- 
courses.—4th September ; 6 months. 

To Thomas Robinson Williams, of Nor- 
folk-street, Strand, Middlesex, for certain 
improvements in the making of hats, bon~ 
nets, and caps, and in the covering of them 
with silk and other materials, with the as- 
sistance of machinerys——1 1th September; 6 
months. 

To Thomas Milikew, of Berwick-street, 
St. James’s, Middlesex, cabinet-maker, for 


432 


his improvement inthe construction, making, 
or manufacturing of chairs, sofas, lounges, 
beds, and all other articles of furniture for 
similar purposes, and also of travelling and 
other carriages and vehicles of every descrip- 
tion for personal use.—11th September ; 2 
months. 

To James Beaumont Neilson, of Glas- 
gow, Lanark, engineer, for his improved 
application of air to produce heat in forges 
and furnaces, where bellows or other blow- 
ing apparatus are required.—11th Septem- 
ber; 6 months. 

To Lemuel Wellman Wright, of Mans- 
field-street, Borough-road, Surrey, engi- 
neer, for certain improvements in machinery 
for making screws.—18th September; 6 
months. 

To William Losh, of Benton-house, 
Northampton, Esq., for certain improve- 
ments in the formation of iron rails for rail- 
roads, and of the chains or pedestals in or 
upon which the rails may be placed or fixed. 
—18th September; 2 months. 

To Joseph Rhodes, the younger, of Al- 
verthorp, Wakefield, worsted-spinner, for 
certain improvements in machinery for spin- 
ning and twisting worsted-yarn and other 
fibrous substances. —18th September; 6 
months. 


List of Patents. 


[Ocr. 


To Joseph Clisild Daniel, of Limpley, 
Bradford, Wilts, clothier, for certain im- 
provements in machinery for dressing wool- 
len cloths. —18th September ; 6 months. 

To John Melville, of Upper Harley- 
street, Cavendish-square, Middlesex, Esq., 
for certain, improvements in propelling ves- 
sels. 18th September ; 6 months. 

To Edward Forbes Orson, of Finsbury- 
square, Middlesex, gentleman, for his im- 
proved cartridge for sporting purposes.— 
18th September ; 6 months. 

To John Jones, of Leeds, York, brush- 
maker, for certain improvements in machi- 
nery for pressing and finishing woollen- 
cloths.—_25th September ; 6 months. 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in October 1814, expire in the present 
month of October 1828. 


3.—A. F. Didot, Holborn, for an im- 
provement in making printing types. 

— A Shaw, Leicester, for an apparatus 
for the better cutting of window, plate, and 
sheet glass. 

— W. Sampson, London, for improve- 
ments in raising water. 

— R. Philips, Newbury, Berks, for im- 
provements in a plough. 


BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT. PERSONS. 


DR. GALL. 

Jean Joseph Gall was born in 1758, in 
a village of the Dutchy of Baden; his 
parents were in trade. It was at Baden 
where he first commenced his education, 
then at Brucksal, and afterwards at Stras- 
burgh, where he studied medicine, under 
professor Hermann; it was at Vienna in 
Austria, that he became invested with the 
title of Doctor, in the year 1785, and after- 
wards followed the practice of medicine ; 
but at this place he was not permitted to 
develop his new ideas on the functions of 
the brain, which he had founded both on 
scientific study and observations on nature. 
This opposition to his views at length 
determined him to visit the north of Ger- 
many, and he was well received in all the 
capitals of the German states, as well as in 
Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, and he 
explained his system before several sove- 
reigns, by whom he was honoured with 
marks of esteem and admiration. He like- 
wise visited England, and at length deter- 
mined to go to and reside at Parts ; regard- 
ing it as the centre of the learned world, he 
judged it the most proper of all other places 
to propagate his doctrine: he therefore re- 
paired to that capital in 1807, where his 
great reputation had already preceded him. 
And here we may remark that, although 
Dr. Gall’s lectures had been interdicted at 
Vienna in 1802, by command of the govern- 
ment, it may be interesting to know that 


the expense of publishing the great work of 
Gall and Spurzheim, at Paris, in 1810, was 
guaranteed by Prince Metternich, at that 
time Austrian Minister at the Court of 
France. He had previously attended several 
courses of Dr. Gall’s lectures, consulted him 
as his physician, and remained attached to 
him up to the time of his death. 

The object which Gall proposed was to 
dissipate the void which existed in physio- 
logy and philosophy relative to the situation 
of the intellectual faculties of man; and, 
notwithstanding the knowledge of the an- 
cients, and the hitherto received notions 
which science had taught, yet still its” 
fundamental notions, not by any means 
perfect, were far from that degree of scienti- 
fic precision to which the observations and 
genius of Gall have conducted us; and, 
although in the history of science the first 
ideas of the system may have been dis- 
covered, yet still it must be allowed that 
all the proofs belong to him, as well as the - 
conservation of all the great truths which 
were brought forth in evidence. 

The immense labours of Lavater were 
well calculated to draw the attention of the 
curious to the subject, and to apply to the 
part of the head those observations which he 
had made on the face and on the frontal re- 
gion. Our knowledge of the exterior appear- 
ances of the head was yet very imperfect 
and vague, and those who supported the 
possibility had not the means of demon. 


1828.) 


strating it; and the form of the head of 
those pretended connoisseurs, like the facial 
lines of Lavater, seemed rather coinciden- 
ces than the necessary connexions between 
physics and morals. Gall collected these 
fugitive ideas, and finally imprinted on 
them a scientific form; and from which 
has resulted a system—a system of facts, a 
series of observations, enlightened by reason- 
ing, grouped and arranged in such a manner 
that there necessarily follows the demonstra- 
tion of a new truth, fruitful in useful appli- 
cations, and sensibly advancing the progress 
‘of ccivilization.. Such is the character 
' of the celebrated system of craniology in- 
wented by Gall, and which it may be said 
his genius distinguished almost instan- 
taneously, although confirmed by the force 
‘of immense application ; but, starting from 
this point, the able physiologist lakoured 
incessantly in his painful task, and con- 
seerated the whole of his life with that 
indefatigable ardour, of which men of 
superior minds alone furnish examples; and 
although he has not completely succeeded 
in the difficult enterprise, yet he ought not 
to be reproached ; on the contrary, thanks 
are due to his memory for the mere attempt ; 
for the service he has rendered to philosophy 
is immense; he has prepared immortal 
glory to medical philosophy, in indicating 
the nature of the study which ought to be 
pursued to give intellectual physiology all 
the development of which it is capable ; 
and moral philosophy itself is much in- 
' debted to him, for having diverted it from 
_ speculations foreign to its true end, and in 
which the most trifling prejudice is an 
incalculable loss of time. 

Gall was attended in his lectures by the 
most distinguished persons in Paris, as well 
characterized for their learning, as for the 
eminent digniti¢s they bore in society. 
He died at his country house, at Montrouge, 
near Paris, August 22, at the age of 71, 
and the examination of his body took place 
40 hours after his death, in presence of the 
_ following members of the faculty: Messrs 
Fouquier, J. Cloquet, Dannecy, Fossati, 
Sarlandiére, Fabré-Palaprat, Londe, Cos- 
tello, Gaubert, Casimir-Broussais, Ro- 
bouane, Vimont, Jobert, and Marotti. 
‘The exterior appearance of the body pre- 
sented a considerable falling away, particu- 
larly in the face. The skull was sawed off 
with the greatest precaution. - The sub- 
stance of the brain was consistent, and this 
organ was firm and perfectly regular. No 
trace of ossification was remarked in the 
cerebral arteries, notwithstanding the ad- 
vanced age of the defunct. The cerebral 
ventricles were not opened, the brain being 


rycen ordered to be preserved. 
; e funeral of Dr. Gall took place .at 
Paris, at the burying ground de I’Est, on 
August 27, which was attended by a very 
vonsiderable number of the faculty and 
wned persons. Three éloges or oraisons 
nebres were delivered at the place of in- 
1. New Series.—_Vour. VI. No. 34. 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


433 


terment by Professor Broussais, Dr. Fossati 
and Dr. Londe. 

Professor Broussais informs us, that Dr. 
Gall possessed most of the social yirtues, 


“particularly beneficence and good nature, 


qualities (he observes) precious in all ranks 
of society, and which ought to make amends 
for many defects; but for Gall, they had 
only to palliate a certain roughness of cha- 
racter which might wound the susceptibility 
of delicate persons, although the sick and 
the unfortunate never had to complain; and 
indeed the Doctor ought in strict justice to 
have more merit in our ideas, from never 
having once lost sight in his writings of 
either decency or moderation, particularly 
when it is remembered how severely he was 
attacked in propagating his favourite doc- 
trine. 
SIR HENRY TORRENS. 

Colonel Sir Henry Torrens was born at 
Londonderry, in the year 1779. Having 
lost both father and mother at an early age, 
he was taken under the care of his uncle, 
Dr. Thomas Torrens. He received his 
education at the Military Academy of Dub- 
lin, where, from the hilarity of his dispo- 
sition, he was universally designated “‘ Hap- 
py Harry.” He commenced his profes- 
sional career, by obtaining an ensigncy in 
the 52d regiment, in November, 1793; in 
June, 1794, he was promoted to a lieute- 
nantcy in the 92d regiment ; and, in De- 
cember, 1795, he was removed, with the 
same rank, to the 63d regiment. With 
the latter corps, he proceeded to the West 
Indies, where he served under Sir Ralph 
Abercrombie, distinguished himself by his 
bravery, upon several occasions, and was 
severely wounded in the thigh, at the siege 
of Morne Fortunee. _While in the West 
Indies, he was appointed to a company, in 
one of the native corps then forming ; and, 
through his professional skill, and the gene- 
ral amiableness of his manners, he obtained, 
in an eminent degree, the admiration and. 
love of the officers and men under his com- 
mand. 

Captain Torrens returned to England in 
1798; and, at the close of that year, he 
went to Portugal, as aid-de-camp to Gene- 
ral Cuyler, who commanded a body of 
auxiliary British troops in that country. 

Removed from his West India corps to 
the 20th regiment of foot, he served under 
the Duke of York in the Dutch campaign 
of 1799. In the battle fought between 
Egmont and Haarlem, he was severely 
wounded by a shot through both his thighs. 
On his return from Holland, he was pro- 
moted to a majority in a fencible regiment, 
with which he proceeded to Nova Scotia, 
and remained there till the autumn of 1801. 
He'then exchanged into the 86th regiment 
of foot; and, after taking the command of 
that corps, he marched with it across the 
desert, to India. In consequence of a coup 
de soliel, at Bombay, he was obliged to res 

3K 


434 


turn. At St. Helena, however, he recovered 
his health, and married Miss Patton, the 
daughter of the governor. He again pro- 
ceeded to India, served there till 1805, and 
was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant- 
Colonel. 

After his arrival in England, he was em- 
ployed.on the staff as Assistant Adjutant 
General for the Kent district. In 1807, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Torrens joined the un- 
fortunate expedition to South America, as 
military secretary to the commander of the 
forces. At the attack of Buenos Ayres, he 
received a contusion from a musket ball, 
which shattered the writing apparatus. that 
was slung to his side. 

On his return, the Duke of Wellington, 
then Sir Arthur Wellesley made him his 
military secretary; and, in that capacity, 
he embarked with the expedition to Portu- 
gal, in 1808, and was present at the battles 
of Roleia and Wimiera. 

When the Duke of Wellington was su- 
perseded in his command, he returned with 
his Grace to England; and immediately 
afterwards, the Duke of York was pleased 
to confer upon him the appointment of mili- 
tary secretary to the Commander-in-chief ; 
an office which he filled for many years with 
reputation to himself, and advantage to the 
army. In 1811, he obtained a company in 
the third guards; in 1812, he was made 
aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent, with 
the rank of colonel; in 1814, he was 
made major-general, by brevet; in 1815, 
he was appointed to the colonelcy of the 
2d regiment of foot ; and in 1820, he was 
appointed adjutant general. In performing 
the arduous duties of the last-mentioned 
office, he revised the old military regula- 
tions, and incorporated with them arrange- 
ments of a more rapid and masterly cha- 
racter. 

Colonel Torrens was also a Knight Com- 
mander of the most honourable Order of 
the Bath, and a Knight of the Portuguese 
Order of the Tower and Sword. — His 
death, which occurred on the 23d of Au- 
gust, while he was upon a visit at Welwyn, 
in Hertfordshire, was awfully sudden. Ap- 
parently never in better health and spirits 

‘than on the fatal day which closed his 
honourable and exemplary life, he went out 
for an airing on horseback, accompanied by 
Lady Torrens, his two daughters, and some 
gentlemen. He was seized with appoplexy, 
but did not fall from his horse. As soon as 
it was discovered that he was in a fit, he 
was carried into the house, and every effort 
was made to effect his recovery, but without 
success. From his first seizure, till the mo- 
ment of his decease, two hours afterwards, 
he never spoke. 

By the desire of his family, the funeral 
of Sir Henry Torrens was private. It took 
place at Welwyn, on the Thursday follow- 
ing, August 28. His remains were attended 
to the grave by one of his earliest and most 
attached friends, Lieut,-Colonel d’ Aguilar. 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


the insurrection in Aranjuez broke out ;- 


Oct. 


Sir Herbert Taylor has been appointed 
Adjutant General in the room of Sir Henry 
Torrens; and Sir William Keppel suc- 
ceeds him in the command of the second 
regiment. 

THE DUKE OF SAN CARLOS, 

The Duke of San Carlos, some years 
since ambassador from the court of Madrid 
to that of St. James’s, and subsequently to 
the French court, was born at Lima, in the 
year 1771. He received his education in 
the principal college of that city, the rector 
of which was his governor. At the age of 
seventeen, he went to Spain, where he pro- 
gressively attained high military rank, be- 
came a grandee of the first class, counsellor 
of state, &c. He commenced his military 
career as colonel in the second regiment of 
Majorca infantry, of which his uncle was 
colonel proprietor. He served in the Cata- 
lonian campaign, in the war of 1793; and 
as a volunteer in the Toulon expedition. 

On the death of his uncle, Colonel San 
Carlos was appointed Chamberlain, and 
afterwards Governor, to the Prince of the 
Asturias, now Ferdinand VII. His sys- 
tem of education, however, not being in 
accordance with the political views of Godoy, 
Prince of the Peace, the influence of that 
profligate adventurer deprived him of his 
honourable post. Yet, such was the conse- 
quence of San Carlos, that he was named 
Major Domo to the Queen, in 1801, when 
the court was occupied with negociating an 
alliance between the heir of Spain, with his 
cousin, a Princess of Naples. 

In 1805, he was invested with the office 
of Major Domo to Charles IV.; but, in 
1807, some time previously to the impri- 
sonment of the Prince of the Asturias, 
through the intrigues of Godoy, in the 
palace of the Escurial, he was removed 
from court, and appointed to the vice roy- 
ship of Navarre. Three months after his 
assumption of that government, he was or- 
dered to consider himself a prisoner in the 
citadel. This measure is understood to 
have been taken, in consequence of a report, 
that the Duke of San Carlos had ventured 
to advise the heir apparent to deprive the 
queen mother of all political influence, in 
the event of the king’s death—his majesty 
being at that time very ill—and also to put 
Godoy upon his trial. It was on the 29th 
of October that Ferdinand’s papers were 
seized, his person placed in durance, and he 
and his counsellors declared to be traitors. 
In the subsequent investigation of the 
Escurial, the Duke was subjected to close’ 
and severe examination ; and, though libe- 
rated at the same moment as the Prince, 
he was ordered to remove sixty leagues 
from Madrid, not to reside within twenty 
leagues of the coast, and not to fix his 
abode in Navarre. 

When the French armies: entered Spain, 
he resided at Alfaro. In the meantime, 


1828.] 


Prince Ferdinand ascended the throne 
(March, 1808), imprisoned and confiscated 
the property of Godoy, and appointed the 
Duke of San Carlos Grand Master of the 
Household, and Member of his Privy Coun- 
cil. The Duke arrived in Madrid some 
days before his royal master’s departure for 
Bayonne, accompanied him in his journey, 
and had several conferences with Buona- 
parte on the subject of exchanging the 
crown of Spain for that of Etruria. In 
those conferences, the Duke invariably in- 
sisted that Ferdinand would not consent to 
any treaty, without the enjoyment of his 
liberty, or without the sanction of the Cortes. 
In the interim, Gedoy had been liberated 
in Madrid, through the influence of Murat. 
He immediately proceeded to Bayonne, 
whither he was followed by Charles IV. 
and his queen. The old monarch then re- 
tracted his abdication, and, ultimately, his 
son was cempelled to restore to him his 
crown. Ferdinand — Joseph Buonaparte 
having first been placed on the throne of 
Spain—was sent to Walencay, in France, 
whither he was accompanied by the Duke 
of San Carlos, the Canon Escoiquitz, &c. 
The Duke remained with Ferdinand till 
he, with Escoiquitz, was ordered by Buo- 
Naparte to Paris. While in that capital, 
he ayailed himself of the opportunity to 
confer with the diplomatic agents of Russia, 
Prussia, and Austria, on the affairs of Spain. 
Buonaparte, afterwards suspecting the in- 
fluence possessed by the Duke, and by 
Escoiquitz, over his royal captive, deter- 
mined upon separating them from Prince 
Ferdinand. The Duke was accordingly 
confined at Leons-le-Saulnier, and the Ca- 
non at Bourges. 

In his retirement, the Duke of San Carlos 
cultivated his taste for botany, and more 
particularly for history, politics, and general 
literature. Five years had Ferdinand and 
his relatives been in captivity in France, 
when Buonaparte, finding himself attacked 
by the allied powers of Europe, and no 
longer in a condition to leave a numerous 
army in Spain, determined to reinstate him. 
In consequence of this resolve, he recalled 
the Duke of San Carlos to Paris, in the 
month of November, 1813. There San 
Carlos communicated with the Duke of 
‘Bassano, and then went to Valengay, 
where, after several long discussions, a 
_ treaty was concluded on the 11th of De- 
eember. The Duke, in consequence, set 
out for Madrid, to obtain the consent of the 
Regency to the treaty. He arrived there 
on the 16th of January, 1814; but the 


_ arrangements proposed by France were not 


accepted, and he was under the necessity of 
returning to Valengay. In passing through 
Catalonia, he had a conference with Mar- 
shal Souchet, on the subject of evacuating 
Spain by the French army. Previously to 
e Duke’s arrival at Valencay, Ferdinand, 
ient of his return, had despatched 
Joseph Palafox, to Madrid, with new 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


435 


instructions. At length, after many ob- 
structions, the King, accompanied by the 
Duke, set out upon his return. It was 
found expedient to proceed, in the first in- 
stance, to Saragossa; and, the Cortes not 
choosing to give up the reins of govern- 
ment, they next went to Valencia, in the 
month of April. 

On the third of May, the Duke of San 
Carlos was appointed first Secretary of State. 
In consequence of the refusal of General 
Freyre to accept the office of Minister of 
War, the Duke accepted it, in conjunction 
with that of Minister of the King’s House- 
hold. The former post he soon afterwards 
resigned in favour of General Eguia. 

The Duke of San Carlos was presented 
by the Emperor of Russia with the decora- 
tion of the Order of the Black Eagle—by 
the King of Prussia, with that of the Red 
Eagle—and by the King of Naples, with 
the insignia of the orders of Saint Ferdi- 
nand and Merit, and Saint Januarius ; with 
a very flattering letter of thanks from his 
Sicilian Majesty, for his having contributed 
to his re-establishment on the throne. 

Soon after the restoration of King Ferdi- 
nand, the Duke, his minister, commenced 
the task of introducing a system of economy 
into the kingdom: he established a junta 
of ministers, over whom he presided—took 
various measures for a general repair of the 
roads, increasing the number of canals, and 
reviving the credit of the national bank— 
and he established several academies for the 
cultivation of the arts and sciences. Not- 
withstanding these very laudable exertions, 
his enemies were numerous; and, finding 
them increase, he, in the month of Novem- 
ber, 1814, obtained permission to terminate 
his ministerial functions. 

In October, 1815, he was nominated 
ambassador to the Austrian Court. In 
1817, he was recalled, and sent, in the 
same capacity, to the court of Britain, where 
he resided some years, till replaced by the 
Duke de Frius. His next and last diplo- 
matic appointment, which he heid until the 
time of his death, was at the French Court. 
He died at Paris, of an aneurism of the 
heart, on the 17th of July, in the present 
year. His health is said to have declined 
very rapidly, since the death of his favourite 
daughter, the Countess de Lessine. He is 
succeeded in his title and estates by his 
eldest son, the Count del Puerto, an officer 
in the royal guards of Spain. 

M. CHARLES. 

Jacques-Alexandre César Charles, late 
librarian to the Institut Royal, at Paris, 
whose name recals to our recollection the 
progress of experiments in natural philosophy, 
and an extraordinary discovery, was born at 
Baugency, November 12, 1746. In his 
early years he cultivated music and painting, 
and was remarked by a delicate and singu- 
lay facility in acquiring the most varied 
talents. He occupied, for some time, an in- 

3K2 


436 


ferior situation in the finances, and nothing 
at that period foretold that he would one day 
become one of the most able natural philo- 
sophers in Europe; still, either in the cul- 
tivation of the arts, or in his ordinary occu- 
pations, he undertook nothing but what he 
completed with elegance, justness, and. pre- 
cision, At length the plans of the comp- 
troller-general of the finances forced M. 
Charles to enter into the career of the sciences. 
‘This employment was soon suppressed, when 
the name of Franklin and his discoveries 
mainly contributed to bring into vogue the 
study of natural phenomena. M. Charles 
therefore launched into the arena of science 
by public demonstrations, and was attended 
by numerous auditors, and in a short time 
his lectures gained great celebrity; inso- 
much, that Franklin himself, then ambassa- 
dor at the court of Versailles, being present 
at one of them in which he had been emi- 
nently successful, said, “‘ I see very well that 
nature has nothing to refuse you.”’ 

M. Charles had proceeded several years as 
a professor, when a striking and unlooked- 
for discovery astonished the amateurs of 
science. The brothers Montgolfiers had 
succeeded in constructing a machine capable 
of moving and elevating itself in the air to a 
great height, and supporting a considerable 
weight, which was received with joy and 
admiration throughout Europe ; it was hail- 
ed as a new era, in which man, master at 
last of the only element left for him to con- 
tend with, might see his power over nature 
doubled. It was on the 5th of June, 1783, 
when the Montgolfiers made their first ex- 
periment, in presence of the states of Viva- 
rais, assembled at Annonay ; their balloon 
weighed 500 Ibs., and elevated itself in ten 
minutes to the height of 1,000 toises; it 
then became stationary for a short time, and 
slowly descended, after having made an 
horizontal line of 7,200-feet. As soon as 
this was known at Paris it excited a general 
enthusiasm; all lovers of science felt the 
most lively desire to repeat the experiment, 
and M. Charles, from his celebrity, was 
fixed on to undertake it; andon the 27th of 
August, 1783, his balloon ascended from the 
Champ-de-Mars, in presence of a prodigious 
number of persons, who had the satisfaction 
of witnessing its complete success. The pub- 
lic astonishment was carried to its highest 
pitch afterwards, on viewing the ill-fated 
Pilatre-de-Rosiére, and the Marquis d’Ar- 
lande, ascend in the air, seated in a boat 
suspended, to a balloon. At length M. 
Charles formed a project not less adven- 
turous, and, accompanied by M. Robert, 
ascended, from the Tuilleries, to the height 
of 7,000 feet, and travelled in the air nine 
leagues in the course of several minutes, and 
safely descended at Nesle, in presence of the 
- celebrated Duc d’ Orleans (then Duc de Char- 
tres), and the éJite of the court of France. 
After M. Robert had quitted the car, M. 
Charles reascended, the balloon rapidly at- 
taining the region of the clouds in a still 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


[Oar 


higher degree, when he again descended 
perfectly safe. 

We well remember two anecdotes worthy 
recording upon this subject, of Louis XVI., 
both denoting the kind character of that 
prince. When he had been informed of the 
intention of M. Charles, fearful of the event, 
he ordered the police magistrate.to prevent 
the ascension ; but from some accident the. 
order was eluded ; and when his majesty 
heard the success of this daring enterprise, 
he gave M. Charles a pension from his own 
private purse, which was continued to the 
period of the revolution. : 

Some time after this event, the Duke of 
Orleans ascended with Messrs. Charles and 
Robert, from his (then) park of St. Cloud. 
It was in this excursion aux” nues that the 
duke found himself obliged to cut open the 
balloon with his sword, which caused. the 
zrial travellers to descend with more alacrity 
than they wished, although without any 
material accident. 

Although erostatic ascensions have offered 
spectacles the most astonishing, which the 
genius of man could ever imagine, yet they 
have not hitherto conferred any immediate 
advantages to society ; still it must be con- 
fessed, that in their progress, the process dis- 


covered and perfected by M. Charles, has 


been uniformly followed. 

Once during the lectures of M. Charles, 
the terrific leveller Marat, who professed the 
physical sciences; without any ceremony 
went to the apartments of M. Charles, and 
annoyed him with his opinions, which he 
called discoveries. M. Charlies in retwn, 
with his usual perspicuity, explained the ob- 
jects in discussion, when Marat, whom no- 
thing reasonable could ever convince, became 
frantic, and drawing his sword, fell upon the 
professor, who being a powerful man, and 
excited by the imminent peril, rapidly seized 
his enemy, threw him down, and taking his 
sword from him, broke it to pieces. Marat 
fainted away,* and for some time life ap- 
peared doubtful. M. Charles called in his 
neighbours to assist him, and Marat was 
carried home, whilst Charles went to the 
minister of police to inform him of the trans- 
action. We need hardly hint what a source 
of affliction this event became to Charles’s 
friends, during the system of terror, when 
his adversary possessed such unbounded 
power ; but luckily Charles had the happi- 
ness of being forgotten ; he was lost in the 
innumerable host of the monster’s new 
enemies.” 


® Marat, previous to the revolution, pretended 
to be the apostate of liberty, and was the same 
yain captious egotist in England, when he pub- 
lished here his ‘‘ Chains of Slavery,” written ex- 
pressly against the court of Versailles, about the 
year 1775. He was an envious mountebank, per- 
petually endeavouring to overthrow the reputation 
of every man of merit, and loading himself with 
consummate praise ; and this attack upon Charles, 
whom he would have murdered, was solely be- 
cause that professor had not spoken with adula- 
tion of his experiments. He was always the san- — 
guinary wretch he afterwards so fully demon- 


1928.) 


Although he escaped this danger, yet the 
ftemembrance of the revolutionary horrors 
obliges us to recount another. He had re- 
ceived from royal munificence, with his pen- 
sion, apartments at the Louvre, and the rich 
cabinet of curiosities which he had formed, 
occupied a part of the Galerie d’Apollon. 
When the Tuilleries was attacked (August 
10, 1792) the assassins penetrated into his 
apartments. Charles seeing himself so sud- 
denly assailed by the furious multitude, 
avowed himself, and brought to their recol- 
lection his. zrostatic ascensions, and even 
shewed them the car he used, which now 
became to him a monument of protection, 
for he owed his life solely to the singular 
impression this remembrance made on them. 
But a more powerful motive than personal 
interest animated him on this perilous oc- 
Casion, and gaye to his words an extraordi- 
nary effect, and indeed at no period of his 
life had he been so eloquent: one of his 
brothers, an ecclesiastic, pursued by the re- 
voluticnary demens, was hid in his apart- 
ments, where Charles had secretly kept him 
for above two months. After some useless 
Searches the murderers retired; thus fra- 
ternal piety, presence of mind, talents, and 
courage, obtained a double blessing ! 

. In the latter years of his life Charles was 
attacked by the stone, which, at length, 
(at the commencement of the present year), 
making rapid and despairing progress, 
obliged him to endure, with resignation, an 
operation almost without hope, and three 
days after, he was lost to science and the 
world—dying, he said, “ I die without re- 
gret, since I shall not be forgotten by my 
friends !”” 


JEAN SAMUEL ERSCH. 
- The Universities of Halle and Jena have 
lately lost a professor who was esteemed one 
of the most indefatigable that bibliography 
had to boast of in Europe—Jean Samuel 
Ersch, born in 1766, at Gross-Glogau, in 


strated, and affected to challenge the whole world ; 
et at the same time a remarkable coward. Indeed 
e was-eyer in fear, for he had been informed 
that he had been watched closely when in Eng- 
land ; we believe it was the Editor of Le Gazetier 
| Cuirassé, who gave him this hint, which, to the 
_ day of his death, continually haunted him. Thus, 
when in 1782, he wrote a “ Memoir on the Crimi- 
nal Law,” which he dared not put his name to, 
“ because,” said he, ‘‘ that will be the way to the 
Bastille.” Indeed, Brissot, who relates this anec- 
ote, characterised him thus: “ Under despotism 
i¢ was afraid of the Bastille, and since the reign 
of liberty he has always been in fear of prisons!” 
Tn 1787, he was importuned by Brissot to join the 
popular party. “No,” said he, “1 would rather 
continue my physical experiments in peace, for 
epi does not lead to the Bastille; besides, 
the French are not yet sufficiently ripe nor cou- 
_ Fageous enoughto support a revolution.” This 
_ Was the monster that a very short time after, not 
cow preached (in his halfpenny paper called 
* L'Ami du Peuple I’) but saw put in practice, 
Ly doctrine, that “ pour affranchir la France 
Saut que le sang de 300,000 tétes aristocra- 
ues ruisselent dans les rues !"—the blood of 
¢ heads of three hundred thousand aristocrats 
flow, before France can be free! 


ie Oy 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


437 


Silesia. He resided formerly at Jena,’ where 
he was occupied in periodical works on geo- 
graphy and statistics, and where he trans- 
lated a variety of interesting voyages and 
travels in foreign countries. In 1788 he 
published a catalogue of the anonymous 
works of Germany, serving as a supplement 
to the work of Meusel, entitled “ Learned 
Germany.” He was associate with Schutz 
and Bertuch, in conducting the “ Literary 
Gazette of Jena,” and he contributed to that 
work until the beginning of the present year. 
He likewise edited a “ Repertory of the 
Journals, and other Periodical German 
Works on Geography and History,” in 3 
vols., in which he indicated the different 
Mémoires contained in the journals. At 
Hamburgh he edited the “‘ Gazette Peli- 
tique,”’ in which he continued the Reper- 
tory of Literature that he had commenced 
at Jena. It was at Hamburgh also he pub- 
lished the work which made known, the 
name and the laborious researches of this 
German bibliographist. His “ Literary 
France,” containing the French authors 
from 1771 to 1791, with two continuations, 
which he published in 1800 and 1806, was 
very favourably received, although. some 
faults and omissions were apparent, which it 
is hoped will be remedied and improved by 
M. Quérard’s forthcoming work at Paris, as 
that is undertaken upon a grander scale. 
Ersch likewise published “‘ The New Ger- 
man Library,” without mentioning many 
other literary productions, the severe toils 
of which brought upon him a very~ serious 
illness ; but having, in 1800, been chosen 
librarian to the University of Jena, he re- 
turned to that town, and there commenced 
a course of lectures on geography and mo- 
dern history. Some years after, he was 
named chief librarian and professor of geo- 
graphy and statistics at the University of 
Halle, where he transferred the Literary Ga- 
zette, of Jena. He there continued his 
bibliographic researches with the same zeal 
and attention, and published his ‘¢ Manual 
of German Literature,’ from the middle 
of the eighteenth century to the end of 
1814, in two heavy volumes; and he con- 
tinued, after the death of Meusel, “‘ Learned 
Germany,”’ which contained an indication 
of all the works composed by each author, 
and the journals where they were either 
criticised or analyzed. He undertook, in con- 
junction with M. Gruber, a “‘ General Ency- 
clopedia of the Arts and Sciences;” an im- 
mense work, and which differed adyan- 
tageously from all other encyclopedias, in- 
asmuch as every thing in it was reduced to 
facts, and in which care was taken to join to 
every article numerous bibliographic refer- 
ences, where the reader might find more 
ample information upon all its various sub- 
jects. Unfortunately, the enterprise was 
more than Germany could support, and the 
work was discontinued, which so affected 
poor Ersch that he took it seriously to heart, 
and, falling ill, at length expired, broken-. 


438 


hearted, the 16th of January last, at 
Halle. 

- Ersch was one of those laborious profes- 
sors with which Germany, more than any 
other country, so much abounds. He was 
continually sought after and consulted ; and, 
notwithstanding the occupation and toil with 
which he was almost overpowered, he still 
found time for satisfying the reiterated de- 
mands made upon his various knowledge. 
Nor can we conclude this short notice with- 
out wishing, in justice to his memory, that 
means may yet be found for finishing the 
very voluminous and useful encyclopedia—a 
work so much wanted in Germany, and the 
commencement of which was so arduously 
undertaken by Ersch and his coadjutor, 


MONSIEUR GALLOIS. 

Monsieur Gallois, a member of the French 
Institute, in the class of Political Economy, 
was formerly known, in England, as well as 
in his own country, as an active revolution- 
ist. In 1798, he was sent over to negociate 
an exchange of prisoners with the English 
government ; but, from some cause, with 
which we are unacquainted, his mission 
failed of success, and he was even forbidden 
to reside in the metropolis. 

After his return, M. Gallois was, in 1799, 
made a member of the Tribunate. He is 
eonsidered to have exerted himself very ef- 
fectively in procuring the elevation of Buo- 
naparte to the imperial dignity ; and parti- 
éularly in drawing up an instrument for the 
purpose of rendering that dignity hereditary, 

In 1805, he made an official report on the 
letter which had been written by Buonaparte 
to the King of England. It was, we believe, 
for that service that he received the cross of 
the Legion of Honour. After the Tribu- 
nate was dissolved, he entered into the legis- 
lative body. In 1815, he was named, with 
M. Lainé, and others, one of the commis- 
Sioners to inspect the papers relative to the 
negociations of France with the allies. The 
report of the commissioners was, that peace 
alone could save the country. 

On the last night of the year 1813, M. 
Gallois was one of the deputies who were 
appointed to present the compliments of the 
season to Buonaparte, who was then in mo- 
mentary danger of perdition, and who was 
pleased to treat the deputation as traitors to 
his state and power. M. Gallois, however, 
remained at his post in the Assembly, and 
was one of the first to acquiesce in and pro- 
mote the abdication of his fallen master. In 
the month of August following, he expressed 
himself with great energy in favour of the 
liberty of the press; observing, that none 
but despots need fear it, orwould lay it under 
restraint. 

When Buonaparte returned from Elba, 
M. Gallois finally retired from public life. 
He died at Paris, on the 6th of July, be- 
queathing a rich library to the Institute. 
He is known as the translator of Filangieri’s 
work on the Science of Legislation. 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


LOcr. 


DR. HOOK. 

The Rev. Dr. James Hook, Dean of 
Worcester, &c., was the eldest son of Mr. 
James Hook (musical composer for Vauxhall 
Gardens, for nearly half a century), and 
brother of Theodore Hook, Esq., the well- 
known author of Sayings and Doings, and 
various other popular works. 

Educated at St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, 
Mr. Hook entered into Holy Orders. 
Previously, however, to that important 
epoch of his life, he is said to have written 
for the stage, in 1795 and 1797, a comic 
opera, entitled Jack’ of Newbury ; and ano- 
ther dramatic piece, Diamond Cut Dia- 
mond ; but we are not aware that either of 
these productions has been published. 

Mr. Hook married, in 1797, the second 
daughter of the late Sir Walter Farquhar. 
He had also the good fortune to be patro- 
nized by one of the members of the Royal 
Family; and, through a combination of for- 
tunate circumstances, aided by merit and 
talent of no common order, he rose rapidly 
in the church, obtained a lucrative living, 
became one of the King’s Chaplains, a 
Prebendary of Winchester, chief Deacon of 
Huntingdon, and Dean of Worcester ; and, 
in all probability, had he lived a few years 
longer, a mitre would have encircled his brow. 

Amongst Dr. Hook’s clerical publica- 
tions, we find—Anguis in Herba, a Sketch 
of the True Character of the Church of 
England, 8vo. 1813 ;—A Sermon preached 
at St. George’s, Hanover Square; with a 
Correspondence between Earl Grey and 
the Author on the subject of it, 1812 ;—~ 
and a Charge to the Clergy of the Arch- 
deaconry of Huntingdon, 1816. 

The correspondence between Earl Grey 
and Dr. Hook, mentioned above, arose 
from the circumstance of the preacher hay- 
ing stated some opinions respecting the 
Roman Catholic Question. Lord Grey ani- 
madverted upon those opinions with great 
severity ; and Dr. Hook replied with equal 
pungency. 

The Rev. Dean died at Worcester, om 
the 5th of February. This event was thus 
respectfully announced in the Worcester 
Journal of the following day :—“* We have 
the painful task of recording the death of 
our worthy Dean, the Rey. Dr. Hook, 
whose courtesy and hospitality endeared 
him to all ranks, during his comparatively 
short residence at the deanery. He ex- 
pired yesterday, between twelve and one 
o’clock, in the 56th year of his age.” The 
consignment of his body to our parent 
earth, in the succeeding week, was, also, 
thus honourably recorded :—‘* The funeral 
of our late lamented Dean, Dr. Hook, took 
place on Tuesday, in our Cathedral. The 
whole of the Choir, the Minor Canons, 
the Lay Clerks, the Prebendaries, the Arch- 
deacon, and the Lord Bishop of the dio- 
cese, were in the procession. The pall 
bearers were Lords Foley and Deerhurst ; 
Colonel Davies, M. P.'; Sir Anthony Lech- 


1828.] 


mere, Bart.; Mr. Whinnington Ingram ; 
Messrs. Isack, Lechmere, and Wall. The 
mourners consisted principally of the 
Dean’s family ; the King’s scholars closing 
the melancholy train. The body was de- 
posited in a vault of our Lady’s chapel. 
We may truly say, that never was more 
general or sincere sorrow felt, than has been 
excited here by the death of this most esti- 
mable divine ; who, during his short resi- 
dence at the Deanery, had, by his charity 
and benevolence, secured the gratitude of 
the poor ; and by his urbanity and hospita- 
lity, obtained the esteem and affection of 
all who knew him in the county and city.” 
THE COUNT DE SEZE. 

The memory of this noble-minded French 
royalist, who died in the month of April, 
will long be cher?shed with feelings of re- 
spect and devotion, from the fearlessness 
with which he advocated the cause of his 


Biographical Memoirs of' Eminent Persons. 


439 


lected, with Tronchet, and Lamorgion de Ma- 
lesherbes, then in. his seventy-third year, to 
prepare the defence of their illustrious client. 
With what success, history too truly records: 
the task of delivering that defence was en- 
trusted to De Seze. 

More fortunate than his venerable col- 
league, Malesherbes, De Seze survived the 
horrors of the reign of terror, and had the 
exalted gratification of living to witness the 
restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. His 
fidelity was then rewarded. He was created 
a peer of France, grand treasurer of the 
order of the Holy Ghost, commander of the 
king’s orders, and first president of the Court 
of Cassation. 

Eminently moral and pious in all the 
relations of life, the Count de Seze expired in 
the arms of his children, to whom his dying 
words were addressed :—“‘ You have always, 
like me, followed the path of duty : con- 
tinue in it, my dear children.” 


sovereign, Louis XVI. He had been se-~ 


MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL# REPORT. 


Tue Continental harvests have partaken, generally, of the defects of our own. Ireland- 
seems to have been more fortunate, few complaints having arrived from thence, and consi-+ 
derable improvement having taken place in the condition of her labouring population. 
Greater numbers of them have found employment at home during the present, perhaps, 
than during any past year within memory. As subjects for wonder will never be wanting, 
even Ireland is, at length, rising in the scale of nations. Scotland, also, boasts a more 
prosperous harvest than the generality of our more Southern counties. In Perth, and the 
higher northern districts, though the wheat was beat down by the winds, it has been 
secured with little damage or complaint, excepting, in some parts, of a yellow caterpillar’; 
the quantity about two-thirds of an average ; the late sown wheats defective, all of various 
quality. Oats, barley, beans, peas, potatoes, a full average and of good quality. Turnips 
avast crop. The oats are said to be the largest crop that has been obtained of late years. 
From Scotland we have received high panegyrics of the Irish labourers, as not only steady 
workmen, but able to cut a greater breadth of corn in a day, at the same time performing 
it with greater ease, than any other. Hopes are expressed that their usual annual visits 
to Scotland may ever continue. In various parts of England, complaints have been made 
of a deficiency of labourers for the harvest; in consequence, labour has been so dear, 
that good hands have earned upwards of eight shillings aday. This has chiefly arisen 
from the circumstance, that we haye had less of Irish assistance during the present, than 
in former harvests. 

Notwithstanding this reduced number of harvest labourers, several of our Correspondents 
express their apprehension of a surplussage of hands, during the approaching winter, and 
an extreme solicitude as to the ability of their parishes for the support of the supernume- 
raries. In this very serious exigence, they seem to have no other resource than in assist- 
ance from the legislature, which surely, all past expectations and circumstances considered, 
must be a very precarious dependence, if not absolutely a forlorn hope. A plan has been 
proposed of splitting the large parishes, each into two or three; but granting such a 
scheme might produce a better regulation of the support of paupers, or the unemployed, it 
could bring no accession of labour, which is the great.desideratum. As it appears to us, 
the legislature can afford no relief in such a case, which indeed can only be supplied by the 
tenantry themselves, assisted by their landlords. It is, in fact, a strange occurrence, that 
the most important occupation of the most flourishing and opulent country upon the face 
of the earth, should be so managed, as to be incapable of giving bread for the labour it 
requires. Something surely must be radically wrong, must be rotten to the core, in such a 
state of things. 

__In all concerns of moment, men should look to themselves, and, taking an impartial 
view of their own conduct, endeavour to ascertain how much of the misfortune suffered, 
_may have originated in their own error, and to what degree the remedy may lie within 
their own power. We will briefly recur to one source of ill success in farming, which we 
__ have repeatedly noticed in these reports—the excessive, and we venture to add, shameful, 


440 Monthly Agricultural Report. [Ocr. 


foul and weedy state of vast breadths of both arable and pasture land, throughout this 
country, so boastful of her agriculture. Now the clearing away this degrading nuisance 
would, at once, employ a great additional number of labourers, and return a vast profit to 
their employers. There are also many profitable articles heretofore cultivated in England, 
but many years since entirely neglected, since wheat has been the golden object, the cul- 
ture of which might now be advantageously revived. There are, too, numbers of indispen- 
sable articles which we have long been voluntarily in the habit of importing, that might be 
profitably grown athome. Our tenantry, indeed, complain, and very justly, of the oppres- 
sive burden of taxation; for though the public bears this burden, it must be understood 
with respect to those growers who have the means of holding their corn, whilst the less for- 
tunate in that respect, on every falling market, must feel heavily the grievous weight of 
taxation. On this point, indeed, the appeal to Parliament is most legitimate. And it is 
the clearest and most obvious duty of all public bodies, to use their accumulated and power- 
ful influence on the legislature, for the removal of all unnecessary, that is to say, of all 
taxation which is not required for truly public and national purposes. Such, however, 
seems by no means the leading object of our great agricultural associations. Finally, the 
signs of the times seem to indicate, that the monopoly of home-grown corn cannot be 
revived or obtained. = 

A summer, the most variable, wet, stormy, and blighting, that we have seen during 
many years, has been fortunately concluded by some weeks of the most mild and beautiful 
cweather, with which our fickle climate ever indulges us. The result has been most fortu- 
nate for late harvests, and for those farmers in early districts who had either the good luck 
or the discretion not to be too hasty in their operations. ‘The wheat crop will be full as 
defective as we stated in our last; nor will the quality of the best preserved, equal that 
produced in a good, namely, a dry season. Wet summers are unfriendly to the weight 
and quality of bread corn. However, price will make ample amends to the fortunate 
growers of the best samples of the year, and even afford some indemnity to the less for- 
tunate, since the damp and rough corn will fill the bushel. Had not the Corn Bill passed, 
wheat would at this moment have been at an alarming price, sufficient to excite the most 
heart-burning clamours in the country. It may at present be deemed high, with little 
probability of a fall, since, from a harvest like the late, the supplies from abroad cannot be 
so considerable as in productive years. Old wheat is superior in price to the new, by 6s. 
to 16s. per quarter. The straw of all culmiferous crops is necessarily great, from the con- 
stant moisture of the season ; and in the least fortunate districts, it is averred, that a sheaf 
of wheat has scarcely produced beyond one-half of the weight of corn, which was rendered 
by a sheaf of last year, the quality also cold, rough, and lean. These facts have been 
speedily ascertained, as the flail and threshing-mill, this year, have been called into very 
early operation. ; 

The spring crops have been universally more prosperous than the wheats, both in straw 
and corn. Beans and peas are the most productive ; oats standing next, though much of 
this corm was blown away by the high winds. Barley-is a great crop, but a considerable 
part of it discoloured ; and that which has been put up in a damp state, will scarcely escape 
being mow-burnt, thence unfit for matting. Much corn of all kinds, indeed, was stacked 
in so moist a condition, as to induce the necessity of unmaking the rick, in order to dry 
the sheaves. The harvest has been most perplexing and expensive, but to the fortunate 
few. The fen counties appear to have suffered most, and the heaviest calamities of the 
season have arisen from the floods. Clover seed, from the favourable change of the weather, 
has succeeded beyond expectation, yet will not be an abundant crop. ‘Trefoil is a crop, 
and winter tares particularly good. Turnips, potatoes, and mangel wurzel are great.crops 
—the after grasses most abundant, and the fallows green like a meadow, and full of keep. 
But in the fens, both the cole and turnips are unproductive. Our late observation has 
been verified, as to the inferior quality of grass forced into an inordinate luxuriance by con- 
stant moisture. Beasts, in the great cattle districts, have not improved in proportion to 
the superabundance of grass. The present cannot be deemed a great fruit year, nor is the 
quantity of any species entitled to particular commendation. 

All store stock is in great request. Cart colts are at an extravagant price, and the 
import of horses continues. Wheat sowing began early, the length of the harvest, and 
condition of the fallows considered. These last, indeed, we never before saw in a more 
foul and slovenly condition. ‘The next crop of wheat, that is to say, the proprietors of it, 
will suffer heavily for this. Hops, in consequence of the late favourable weather, have 
improved, but neither the quality or extent of the crop can be yet ascertained. 

Smithfield.—Beef, 3s. 4d. to 4s. 4d. Mutton, 3s. 8d. to 4s. 6d.— Veal, 4s. 8d. to ds. 6d. 
— Pork, 5s. to 6s. —Raw fat, 2s. 4d. 

Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 46s. to 90s.—Barley, 34s. to 40s.—Oats, 19s. to 34s. 
—Bread, The London fine 4 lb. loaf 11d.—Hay 55s. to 100s.—Clover ditto, 75s. to 120s. 
Straw 32s. to 38s. : 

Coals in the Pool, 27s. to 39s. per chaldron. 


Middlesex, September 22d. 


1828.] [. 441° J 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 


_ Sugar.—The Sugar Market has been languid all the week; but the prices are fully 
supported, except for the very ordinary Brown Muscovadoes, which have in several instances 
been sold on rather lower terms. At the close of the market this afternoon the estimated 
amount of sales for the week were stated at 2,600 hghds. and tierces. 

Coffee.—There have been several public sales of British Plantation Coffee this week ; 
and some descriptions, of late so much neglected, have met with purchasers at advanced 
prices. 

Rum, Brandy, and Hollands.—There have been rather extensive cargoes of Rum at 
market this week, as also a good supply of Brandy: moreover, Geneva is still inquired after ; 
but no supplies of any extent are yet needed. 

Hemp, Flax, and Tallow.—The latter article continues progressing: and has expe- 
rienced an advance of from 6d. to 1s. 6d. per cwt. during the past week. Hemp is also in 
good demand. In Flax there is little variation. 


Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 2.—Rotterdam, 12. 3. — Antwerp, 
12. 3.—Altona, 13. 141.—Paris, 25. 40.—Hamburgh, 13. 14.—Bordeaux, 25. 65.— 
Frankfort, 1514.—Petersburgh, 10.—Vienna, 10. 1}.—Trieste, 10. 3.—Madrid, 361.— 
Cadiz, 364.—Bilboa, 30.—Barcelona, 354.—Seville, 351.—Gibraltar, 46.—Leghorn, 484. 
—Genoa, 25. 40.—Naples, 39}.—Palermo, 119.—Venice, 474.—Misbon, 451.—Oporto, 
451,—Rio Janeiro, 203/.—Bahia, 347.—Dublin, 17}.—Cork, 17. 

‘Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. 0d.—In Bars, £3. 17s. 6d.—_New 
Doubloons, £0. 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 93d.—Silver in Bars, standard, £0. Os. 0d. _ 


Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
Wo tre, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill.—Birmingham Canat, 292/.—Coyen- 
try, 1,0807.—Ellesmere and Chester, 107/.—Grand Junction, 305/.—Kennet and Avon, 
29%/.—Leeds and Liverpool, 413/.—Oxford, 700/.—Regent’s, 26/._Trent and Mersey, 
( sh.), 805/.— Warwick and Birmingham, 260/.—London Docxs (Stock), 8832.—West 
India (Stock), 215/.—East London Warrer Works, 120/.—Grand Junction, 56/.— 
West Middlesex, 69/—Alliance British and Foreign InsuRANCE, 923/.—Globe, 160/7.— 
Guardian, 21/.—Hope Life, 54/.—Imperial Fire, 101/.—G.as-Licgur Westminster Char- 
tered Company, 523/.—City, 0/.—British, 8 dis.—Leeds, 195/. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 


Announced from the 22d of August to the 23d of September 1828 ; extracted from the . 
London Gazette. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


J. Barker, Shrewsbury, coffee-house keeper 
T. Fortune, Heighington, Durham, cattle-jobber 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 53.] 
_ Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 
Allen, W. S. Kingston-upon-Hull, bookseller. 
‘Hall and Co., Beverley 
Armand, P. le Comte de Fontaine Moreaw, South- 
‘ampton-street, Fitzroy-square, and Church- 
court, Old Jewry, silk-merebant. [Darke, 
Red-lion-square P 
_ Alexander, I. and A, Stodart, Upper Clapton, 
brick-makers and builders. [Stratton and 
Overton, Shoreditch 
Brooke, W. Gainsborough, innkeeper. [Spike, 
Temple; Wélls, Gainsborough 
Brandon, J.1. Rickmanswortb, merchant. [Ja- 
cobs, Great St. Helens 
Blake, J.G. Chelsea, shipowner. [Wrigbt, Alie- 
street 
= +e C. Spalding, scrivener, [Carter, Spal- 


in, 
itearley, J. Milmow, Rochdale, shopkeeper. 
-[Battye and Co., Chancery-lane; Higham, 
> righouse, Halifax 
Boone, A. and J. Piccadilly, hatters. [Coe, Hat- 
_ ton-garden 


 M.M. New Series.x—Vot. VI. No. 34. 


Cook, J. J. Southwark-brige-road, coach-maker. 
[Hardwick and Guest, Lawrence-lane 

Crossland, J. Honley, Almondbury, York, scrib- 
ling-miller. [Evans and Co., Gray’s-inn ; Carr, 
Gomersal, Leeds 

Dickinson, G. Liverpool, dealer. [Norris and 
Co., Bedford-row; Woodburn, Pre-ton 

Davis, T. Goswell-street, cheesemonger, [Bous- 
field, Chatham-place, and Mould, Great Knight 
Rider-strect 

Edwards, P. B. Tanyralt, Carnarvon, merchant. 
[Kearsey and Hughes, Lothbury ; Williamson, 
Liverpool 

Edmunds, A. Worcester, timber-merchant. [Car- 
dale and Co., Gray’s-iun; Parker and Smith, 
Worcester 

Emet, J. Downend, Mangotsfield, Gloucester, 
stone-quarryman. [Adlington and Co,, Bed- 
ford-row ; Haynes, Bristol 

Foster, F. Oxford-street, tailor. [Sutcliffe and 
Co., New-hridge-sti eet 

Fallows, S. Stainland, York, cotton manufac- 


turer. [Williamson, Gray’s-inn; Norris, Hali- 
fax 

Fair, C. Liverpool, wine-merchant. [Prest, Li- 
verpool 


Geary, J. Brentwood, master-mariner. [Badde- 
Jeys, Leman-street 


3.1L 


442 


Herring, J. M. Aberystwith, victualler. [Davies, 
Temple ; 

Harris, J. Bletchington, Oxford, tailor. [Bridger, 
Finsbury-cireus ; Cecil, Oxford 

Harris, G. North-buildings, Finsbury, bill-broker. 
{Norton, Jewin-street 

Hone, W. Ludgate-hill, bookseller. 
Hatton-garden 

Jones, K. Reading, 
(Church, Spital-square_. 

Kemp, J. A. Prittlewell, Essex, miller. 

. and Co., Little St. Thomas Apostle 

Lister, H. North Audley-street, tailor. [Jackson, 
New-inn 

Little, E. C. Old Kent-road, Camberwell, brewer. 
(Hayward, Temple : 

Lane, J. N. St. Mary-at-hill, wine merchant. 
[Young and Gilbert, Mark-lane 

Lee, I. Bankside, Southwark, timber-merchant. 
[Walker, Gloucester-street, Queen-square 

Luff, T. Long-lane, Bermondsey, victualler. 
[Child and Mann, Upper Thames-street 

Lind, G. Brighton, merchant. [Collier and Co., 
Carey-street 

Moore, T. Tipton, Stafford, grocer. [Norton and 
Co., Gray’s-inn; Spurrier and Ingleby, Bir- 
mingham 

Marshall, C. H. Cheltenham, merchant. [Vizard 
and Blower, Lincoln’s-inn-fields; Pruen and 
Co., Cheltenham 

Maunder, W. and J. Morchard Bishop, Devon, 
serge - manufacturers. _ [Anderson and Co., 
Bridge-street, Blackfriars ; Terrell and Barton, 
Exeter 

Metealf, R. Haddiscore, Norfolk, miller. [Fran- 
cis, New Boswell-court; Beart, Great Yarmouth 


[ Harmer, 
canvass - manufacturer. 


[Stevens 


Bankrupts. 


[Ocr. 


Nelson, W. Broad-street, Golden-square, oilman. 
{Atkins and Dayies, Fox Ordinary-court 

Palmer, J. Wells, innholder. [Miller, Frome, Sel- 
wood 

Roper, P. H. Manchester-street, dealer. [Bebb 
and Ganning, Bloomsbury-square 

Rhodes, E. and W. H. Sheffield, cutlers. [Smith, 
Sheffield 

Snelus, T. Oxford, carrier. [Dudley, Oxford 

Smallbones, G. Bath-place, New-road, St. Pan- 
eras, glass-cutter. [Gill, Millman-street 

Shaw, J. Newsome, Almondbury, York, mer- 
chant. [Sandare, Old. Jewry; Jacomb and 
Tindale, Huddersfield , 

Scholetield, J. Middleton, Lancashire, dealer in 
coals. [Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane; Duck- 
worth and Co,, Manchester 

Tress, C. Bishop’s Stortford, grocer, 
Staple-inn 

Town, J. Croydon, innkeeper. [Parker, Bou- 
verie-street 

Tomlinson, J. Salisbury-street, Strand, milliner. 
{ Richardson, Ironmonger-lane 

Tanner, P. Manchester, publican and iron-foun- 
der. [Heslop, Manchester 

Thurtell, J. Great Yarmouth, commission-agent. 
(Austin, Gray’s-inn ; Palmer, Great Yarmouth 

Wetherall, W. Mansfield, horse-dealer. [Perkins 
and Frampton, Gray’s-inn; Raisbeck and Co., 
Stockton . 

Wadsworth, C. Salford, spirit-dealer. [Morris 

[Ashurst, Sam- 


[Chester, 


and Goolden, Manchester 
Winder, J. Leicester, draper. 
brook-court 
Watkins, H. D. Limehouse-hole, mast-maker. 
[Stevens and Co., Little St. Thomas Apostle, 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


Rev. W. L. Bowles, to be a Canon Residentiary 
of Salisbury Cathedral.—Rey. L. H. Biddulph, to 
be Vicar of Old and New Shoreham, Sussex.—Rev. 
T. N. Blagden, to the Vicarage of Washington, 
Sussex —Rev, L. Jefferson, to the Vicarage of 
Brough, Westmoreland.—Rey. R. Rocke, to the 
Rectory of Lynden, Rutland.—Rey. T. M. Sy- 
monds, to be Domestic Chaplain to the Countess 
of Carysfort.—Rev. T. Pitman, to the Vicarage 
of Eastbourne, Sussex.—Rey. R. J. Beadon, to 
the Vicarage of Holcombe Burnell.—Rev. J. 
Bettridge, of York, to the Living of St. Paul, 
the new church near the Asylum.—Rey., J. Skel- 
ton, to the Chaplaincy of Wykeham.—Rey. E. 
Ramsden, to the Perpetual Curacy of St. James’s, 
Upper Darwent, Lancaster.—Rev. T. Furneaux, 
to the Augmented Perpetual Curacy of St. Ger- 
man’s, Cornwall.—Rev. E. P. Stock, to the Cu- 
racy of St. James’s, Bath.—Rey. W. Hobson, to 
the Perpetual Curacy of Thurton, Norfolk.—Rey, 
J. Salter, to the Rectory of Iron Acton, Glouces- 
ter.—Rey. J. C. Campbell, to be Chaplain to the 
Duke of Argyle—Rey. J. Fayaer, to be Master of 


the Grammar School at Chard.—Rey. G. W. 
Wrangham, to the Rectory of Thorpe Bassett, 
York, and Chaplain to the Duke of Montrose.— 
Rey. W.J. Thornton, Chaplain to Earl Leven and 
Melville.—-Rev. G. F. Tavel, to the Rectories of 
Euston with Barnham, Suffolk.—Reyv. W. Deal- 
try, to the Chancellorship of Winchester.—Rev. 
M. Dallas, to the Rectory of Wonston, Hants.— 
Rey. M. Colpoys, to the Rectory of North Wal- 
tham.—Rey. A. Gibson, to the Vicarage of Ched- 
worth, Gloucester.—Rey. H. N. Pearson, to be 
Rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate——Rev. J. 
Wilkinson, to the Rectory of South Croxton, 
Leicester.—Rev. J. Hayton, to the Perpetual Cu- 
racy of Ryhope, Bishopwearmouth.— Rev. R, 
Ripley, to the Perpetual Curacy of Chester-le- 
Street.—Rey. Dr. Richardson, to the Rectory of 
Brancepeth.—Rev. G. L. Warner, to the Vicar- 
age of St. Mary Breden, Canterbury.—Rey. J. 
Taylor, to the Perpetual Curacy of St. Michael’s 
at Thorn, Norfolk.—Reyv. H. Green, to the Vicar- 
age of Upton Snodsbury, Gloucester. 


POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS. ‘ 


The King has appointed Viscount Melville, 
Vice-Admiral Sir G. Cockburn, Vice-Admiral Sir 
H. Hotham, Sir G. Clerk, bart., and G. C. Pratt, 
esq. (commonly called Earl of Brecknock) His 
Majesty’s Commissioners for executing the Office 
of Lord High Admiral.—And the following have 
been appointed Commissioners for the Affairs of 


India: Lord Ellenborough, Right Hon. R. Peel, 
Lords Aberdeen, Sir G. Murray, bart., Duke of 
Wellington, Right Hon. H. Goulburn, Lord Wal- 
lace, Right Hon. I. Sullivan, Lord Ashley, Mar- 
quis of Graham, L. Peel, esq., and Right Hon. T, 
P. Courtenay. 


7 


ee |S 


} 


1828.] 


P4438 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


CHRONOLOGY. 


August 21.—Report of the Committee of the 
House of Commons published relative to their 
inquiry inte the manner of obtaining dead bodies 
for dissection. Their proposition is to follow the 
example of France, and appropriate for dissection 
the bodies of those who die under public charge, 
or who, when dead, are not claimed by their 
friends. 

25.—Parliament prorogued to October 30. 

26.—A beautiful new Gothic chapel consecrated 
at Kennington, called St. Mary, Lambeth ; it is 
intended to hold about 2,000 persons ; and as auxi- 
liary to the chapel, a Sunday school is to be esta- 
blished. 

27.—The late Archbishop of Canterbury’s will 
proved in Doctor’s Commons ; personal property 
taken at £180,000!!! The value of the nomina- 
tion to the Registry of the Prerogative Court, se- 
cured to his Grace by an Act of Parliament only 
a few days before his death, estimated at upwards 
of £100,000 more. 

- 23.—Workmen commenced pulling down Co- 
yent Garden Market, in order to proceed with the 
building of a new one immediately. 

— Duke of Cambridge left town on his return 
to Hanover. 

— Governor and Deputy-Governor of the Bank 


“of England had a conference with the Chancellor 


of the Exchequer, relative tothe disposition of the 
funds arising from the deposits of the Savings’ 
Banks. 

— Merchants of Liverpool trading to the Bra- 
zils, memorialized the Admiralty for protection 
against pirates infesting the South American 
seas, 

September 5.—Parliamentary Paper published, 
containing a table of the number of persons em- 
ployed in all public offices, and the gross amount 
of their salaries in 1827; the number is stated to 
be 22,912, and the money paid them, £2,788,907 !* 

8.—The Jewish year 5589, ushered in at sun- 
set with the preparatory rites observed on such 
occasions by the Israelites resident in the metro- 
polis assembled at their synagogues. The Feast 
of Trumpets early the next morning was cele- 
brated, in commemoration of Abraham’s offering 
up his son. 

' — First stone laid of a Meeting House for the 
Society of Friends at Stoke Newington. The ex- 


’ * In the reign of George I. the army consisted 
of 18,500 men; and “the whole peace establish- 
ment,” says Sir J. Sinclair, “ cost £2,583,000.” 
So that the present corps of placemen exceeds 
that number by 4,000, and their salaries amount 
to more than the whole of the peace establishment 
of that reign !!! 


pense is estimated at £10,000, and it is expected 
to be one of the handsomest buildings, as a place 
of worship, that has yet been erected by that re- 
spectable body. 

11.—Old Bailey Sessions commenced. 

12,—Adyices from Lisbon announce the termi- 
nation of the trial of Sir John M. Doyle and Mr, 
Young. Sir J. M. Doyle to be banished Portugal 
within eight days, and Mr. Young to find secu- 
rities for not again interfering in the political 
affairs of the country. 

13.—Notice sent to Lioyd’s, from the Foreign 
Office, that the French Government had ordered 
an additional naval force to blockade Algiers. 

20.—Sessions ended at the Old Bailey, when 
24 prisoners received sentence of death (one of 
them only 15 years of age!) and above 100 were 
ordered for transportation. 

MARRIAGES. 

D. Mackeller, esq., to Maria, daughter of 
Count Meneghetopulo, of Zante.—Lieut.-Colonel 
Dumaresq, to Elizabeth Sophia, daughter of the 
late Hon. A. R, B. Danvers.—Rey. A. P. Clay- 
ton, son of Sir W. Clayton, bart., to Georgiana 
Elizabeth, daughter of the late Dean of Salisbury 
and Lady E. Talbot, and niece to the Duke of 
Beaufort.—Lord Clarina, to Susan Elizabeth, 
youngest daughter of Hugh Barton, esq., Battle- 
abbey. 

DEATHS. 

Hon. H. F. Stanhope, only brother to the Earl 
of Harrington.—Hon. and Rey, A. G. Legge, Dean 
of Lincoln.—93, Very Rey. Dr. R. D. Waddilove, 
Dean of Ripon.—Sir Henry Torrens, Adjutant- 
General of the Forces,—At Kensington, 79, T. A. 
Grindal, esq.— Her Grace Susan, Duciess of 
Manchester.—In Regent’s-park, Mrs. C. A. D. 
Chapman, daughter of the Bishop of Sodor and 
Man.—At Blackheath, the Very Rey. Dr. G. Gor- 
don, Dean of Lincoln.—Lady Montgomery, wife 
of Sir J. Montgomery, bart., M.P. Peebles.—In 
Myddleton-square, Mrs. T. Dibdin.—Lieut.-Col. 
Forsteen.—Ann, relict of Major General Faw- 
cett.—90, Sir A. S. Namond, bart.; late comp- 
troller of the navy, 

DEATHS ABROAD. 

At Paris, Dr. Gall, the phrenologist.—In Sweden, 
Count Frederic Wachtmoister, lately in the Bri- 
tish naval seryice.—At Stockholm, 85, Professor 
Thimberg.—At Dieppe, Miss Georgiana Drew, 
daughter of the late Lady Susan Douglas.—At 
Sydney, New South Wales, the Hon, C. Thorsby, 
member of the legislative council.— At Rotterdam, 
the Rey. H. Randolph. 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES ; 
, WITH THE MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 
No less than 47 shopkeepers (many of them 


respectable! the Tyne Mercury says) were 


4 


fined, August 25, in the Mayor's Chamber, at 
Newcastle, for their scales being not just, or their 
weights deficient, 

3.1L 


444 


A letter from Lord Eldon to the Ship-owners 
of the Society of North Shields, has been recently 
-published; it is dated July 23, and announces 
that the Duke of Wellington purposes giving his 
attention to the important case of the shipowners 
during the present recess of Parliament. 


YORKSHIRE AND LANCASHIRE. 


Lately part ofthe cliff at Owthorne, once the 
site of the Sister Churches, fell into the sea, by 
which circumstance a leaden coffin was discover- 
ed, containing the remains of a clergyman, interred 
there upwards of 120 years ago; he had been 
murdered, and thrown into a well, where he was 
found four years afterwards. 


The question relative to the Vicarial Tithes at 
Halifax is row finally settled, with the concur- 
rence of the Archbishop of York, who has under- 
taken to recommend the measure to the Crown; 
the°sum to be paid to the vicar is £1,500 per an- 
num. The arrangement will ultimately be rati- 
fied and settled, in perpetuity, by an act of Par 
liament.—Leeds Mercury. 


The Exhibition of Fine Arts (Northern Society) 
at Leeds has closed; and £400 were taken for the 
sale of pictures during the season. ‘The number 
of single admissions, sold at Is. each, were 5,422, 
besides 442 season tickets at 5s. each.—Leeds In- 
telligencer. 

In consequence of the increased population of 
Preston, His Majesty has been pleased to grant 
to the Corporation a new Charter, bearing date 
August 7, 1828, and appointing the late mayor and 
the senior alderman, for the time being respec- 
tively, His Majesty’s Coroners, and the residue 
of the aldermen His Majesty’s justices of the 
peace for the borough, in addition to the Coroner, 
and four justices of the peace, heretofore appoint- 
ed by former charters. 

At Lancaster assizes, 3 prisoners received sen- 
tence of death for burglary; the calendar (like 
all the other counties of the northern circuit this 
summer) was very light. 

The firststone of a new Wesleyan Protestant 
Methodist Chapel has been recently laid at Hol- 
beck. 

At the September meeting of the Yorkshire 
Horticultural Society, a cucumber was presented, 
called the Wellington, which measured upwards 
of two feet in length, and of a proportionate thick- 
ness. 

The Bazaar at Wakefield has produced 
£444, lls. 6d., for the benetit of the Dispensary 
and Fever Ward. 

The stupendous work of removing a mountain 
into a yalley, in the Godly-lane-road, near Hali- 
fax, is proceeding successfully, and will, when 
completed, surpass any improvement ever at- 
tempted in Yorkshire.» 


Married.| At Liverpool, Sir John Jervis W. 
Jervis, bart., to Miss Bradford. 


CHESHIRE AND DERBY. 


Respecting the Silk Trade, and comparing the 
present state of the throwing mills in Congleton, 
as contrasted with 1824, it appears that, in 1824, 
there were 52 mills in Congleton, containing 
13,340 dozen spindles in full operation, furnishing 


Provincial Occurrences : Yorkshire, Lancashire, &c. 


[Ocr. 
a remunerating return on the outlay employed, 
and an adequate price for labour, the average of 
each hand being somewhat more than 6s. per 
week. In 1825, communly called the “ mad year,” 
12 new mills were erected, and several others 
wereenlarged. In 1828, the trade began with 64 
mills, capable of containing 20,784-dozen of spin- 
dles. ‘Of these mills, 25 are wholly unoccupied ; 
and there are 12 parts of mills standing, compre- 
hending 8,439 dozen of spindles ; and the remain- 
der, viz. 12,345 dozen, the number now in opera- 
tion, are worked at a weekly loss to the occupier, 
notwithstanding aninadequate price forthe labour, 
wages averaging somewhat more than 4s. per 
head, being a reduction of almost one-third, or 
upwards of 30 per cent.— Macclesfield Courier. 


August 19, a new church was consecrated at 
Derby by the bishop of the. diocese ; it is in the 
Spanish Gothic style; and consists of a large ob- 
long building, with fourlight and elegant towers 
at the corners, and other smaller embattled 
tuwers along the sides, and reminds the beholder 
of the Moorish buildings of Grenada.—Derby- 
Reporter. 

The canse against certain members of the cor< 
poration of Chester, as trustees of Owen Jones’s 
Charity,’’*has been argued before the Vice-Cham- 
berlain’s Court, and given against them with costs, 
thus obliging them to render a faithful account of 
their stewardship, or ‘sufferan attachment aeeiiak 
the Chancery of the Palatinate. 


At the Derby Musical Festival, the sum of 
£961. 4s. 11d. was received at the church doors 
during the four days ; and the amount of tickets 
sold produced £2,944, 17s. 6d. 

Died.] At Glossop, 70, the Rey. J. Barbe, a 
Roman Catholic clergyman, who had quitted 
France in 1793, in consequence of the revolu- 
tionary atrocities, and remained in England until 
his death, highly respected. —At Macclesfield, Mr. 
Batt,-who for 2h years superintended the Sunday 
School.—At Bank-hall, Chapel-en-le-Frith, 70, 
S. Frith, esq., deputy lieutenant of the county. 


SALOP AND STAFFORD. 


The foundation stone of a new church has been 
recently laid at Wolverhampton ; it will contain 
2,300 sittings, of which 1,300 are to be free. 


A new Wesleyan Chapel has been begun at 
Walsall ; it is to be in the Grecian style. 


Lord Kenyon has addressed ‘a Letter to the 
Protestants,” dated August 30, on the state of the 
Catholic Question. With a proper respect for his 
lordship’s motives and character, we read the 
following paragraph with surprise and sorrow :— 
“« We live in times when every man who values 
principles should depend on his own exertions, 
and not on those’of princes, prelates, nobles, 
politicians, or parliament. Some of the last 
sessions of parliament have shewn how little safe 
it is to trust to suca quarters forsecurity.”— 
Shrewsbury Chronicle. 

A meeting has been held at — for the 

purpose of promoting the building of a free 
church in the vicinity of Castle Foregate in that 
town, when a committee was formed, and a sub- 
scription entered into for that purpose. 

A monument has been opened in St. Mary’s 
Church, Shrewsbury, to the memory of the Rev. 
J.B, Blakeway, 31 years ordinary. and official, 


— - 


1828.] 


and 32 years’ minister to that parish; it was 
erected by subscription of the parishioners. 
Died.] At’Stafford,82, Mr. John Kenderdine, 
formerly shoe-manufacturer ; he acted as agent 
for Sheridan in his elections for that borough, 
who called him-always “Dear King John,” as 
may be seen by the following note, inserted in 
Moore’s Life of the orator :—* Cavendish-square, 
Sunday night.—* Dear King John,I shall be in 
' Stafford inthe course of next week,and if Your 
Majesty does not renew our oldalliance, I shall 
never again have faith in any potentate on earth. 
Your's, very sincerely, R. B. Sheridan.” 


_ LEICESTER AND RUTLAND. 


‘The Bishop of Lincoln in his recent visitation 
charge to the clergy at Leicester, gave a descrip- 
tion of the law regarding plurality of benefices, 
residence upon the respective livings, curates, 
&e. &c., and stated that he felt it to be hisimpe- 
rative duty tu enforce the requisitions of this-aet 
with strietness and impartiality ; and he took this 
opportunity of explaining'the law to the clergy of 
his diocese, lest any should incur the penalty from 
want of information! 


WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. 


The tolls payable at Deritend Bridge, and at 
the several other gates in Deritend, leading into 
Birmingham, ceased on August 27. 

‘Several persons have been punished under the 
new ‘Street ‘Act. for having baited a bull, attend- 
ed by a great concourse of people. 


The Committee at Birmingham, established for 
endeavouring to get that town represented in par- 
liament, invited Mr. Tennyson toa public dinner, 
asamark of respect for his disinterested exer- 
tions in ‘the House of Commons in behalf of that 
object; and Mr. Shaw, the high bailiff, wrote to 
him, but Mr. T. politely declined the honour, in 
accordance with what he eonéeived his public 
duty: and in his answer to the high bailiff, avers 
that government must soon yield to the para- 
mount authority of public opinion, notwithstand- 
ing their opposition for a time to their fair pre- 
tensions. 

The expenses for the Western Division of the 
County of Northampton for the last year, amount 
to £7,529. 19s.1d.; out of which £1,044. 10s. 5d. 
were paid for bridges and surveyor, and £5,000 
for the law, viz. vagrants, felons, prosecutions, 
debtors, gaol, judges’ house, county hall, and 
coroners! The disbursements for the Eastern 
Division were, besides, £,3,635. 

The Ladies’ Bazaar at Leamington produced 
upwards of £700, forthe benefit of the General 
Hospital and Dispensary. 

Atthe Anniversary Meeting of the General In- 
firmary at Northampton, for the relief of the sick 
and lame of all counties, it appeared that 79,913 
persons have been cured, and 8,508 relieved since 
its foundation’ in 1774. A sermon was preached 
for the charity, and £70. 7s. 73d collected at the 
church doors. 

At the Ladies’ Bazaar at Northampton, for 
the benefit of the Infant School, the sum of 
£135, 18, 3d. was collected. 

Died.| At Peterborough, 80, Mrs. A. Fox; her 
ancestor, Ross, was in the service of Mary Queen 
Of Scots, at Fotheringay-castle.—91, Mrs. M. An- 
drew, of Long Buckby; she was the mother of 12 
ehildven, grandmother of 63, great-grandmother 
of 113, and great-great-grandmother of 2, making 


- Leicesier, Rutland, Warnick, Northampton, &c. 


445 
in all 190 descendants.—At Birmingham, 84, Mrs. 
Judith Mansell.—At Coventry, Rey. J. Davies.— 
Mrs. Harris, at Coleshill; she had been mistress 
of the workhouse 21 years,—At Leamington, Sir 
P. €. Silvester, bart.; he was son of Admiral 


hesiay and nephew to the late Recorder of Lon- 
on, 


WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 


The collection at the doors of the Cathe- 
dral at Hereford Music Meeting, amounted to 
£775, 98. 33d. 

Died.| At Hereford, J. Wathen, esq.—Within 
the space of four’ months have been interred at 
the parish of Powich, 8 persons, whose united ages 
amounted to 602 years; their names are as fol- 
low: John Penny, 85; Aune Goodman, 99; Tho- 
mas Brookes, 70; Mary Charles, 70; Thomas 
Grainger, 71; Mary Davis, 70; John Lea, 62: 
and Sarah Lawriman, 75. 


GLOUCESTER AND MONMOUTH. 


The expences for paving, pitching, cleansing, 
and lighting the city of Bristol,.and the liberties 
thereof, from January 1 to December 31, 1827; 
amounted to £10,953. 7s. 3d. i 

The disbursements for the county of Glou- 
cester, from Easter sessions 1827 to Easter ses- 
sions 1828, amounted to upwards of £32,000; 
£17,158. 163. 103d. were expended for building 
and repairing county bridges, and .nearly all 
the remainder for criminal jurisprudence and its 
attendants. i 

The collections, at the churches only, for the 
public charities at Cheltenham, have amounted 
during the last eight years to upwards of £5,500: 
The number of children now educating there at 
the public expense exceeds 1,600. - ; 


OXFORD AND BERKS. 


A meeting was held at the Town-hall, Thame, 
August 28, to take into consideration the propriety 
of making a navigable canal from Aylesbury by 
Thame, to join the Wilts and Berks Canal at 
Abingdon, when a committee was formed for that 
purpose, as well as for an inquiry into the pro- 
priety of forming a railroad also instead of a 
canal. It was voted to raise a fund of £200,000 
by shares of £25 each, : 

As one of the small boats which ply at and near 
Windsor was returning home, September 3, from 
Egham races, loaded with the extraordinary num- 
ber of 19 persons, it struck on some stakes in the 
river, filled with water and sunk, when 9 persons 
perished. 

The Bazaar, held at the National School, Ban- 
bury for the benefit of that institution and ‘“‘ The 
Visiting Charitable Society,’ was kept open two 
days, for the sale of fancy works, and produced 
upwards of £125. ‘ 

An elegant school, for the gratuitous education 
of children, has just been completed at Walling- 
ford, in the Gothic style, by public subscription. 


HERTFORD AND ESSEX. 


The new Corn Exchange at Bishop’s Stortford 
will occupy a space of 126 feet in length, and 63 
in width. The Exchange is at the north end, 
with counting-houses under a colonnade, support- 
ed by iron columns, which opens to an area in the 
centre, communicating to which is the hall, 60 by 
25 feet, with entrances to the east and west. At 
the south end of the building is the butchers’, fish, 


446 


and poultry market. Over the hall will be a cof- 
fee-room of the same dimensions, and 20 feet in 
height, with magistrates’ and other rooms adjoin- 
ing, the whole of which are so constructed as to 
be used for assemblies, concerts, or other public 
meetings. The building, when completed, will be 
an elegant specimen of the Grecian Ionic order. 


Died.) At High Willows, 34, Henry, son of W. 
Thomson, esq. 


KENT AND SURREY. 

At a meeting held at Queenborough, of the 
fishermen of that place, to take into consid¢ration 
their miserable situation, thanks were voted to 
the subscribers to their relief, and to Mr. Capel 
(one of their representatives in Parliament), who 
detailed to the meeting the efforts he had made to 
get a bill passed for their relief, but which, on the 
ground of informality, had at present failed—still 
he had every assurance, and from many circum- 
stances, he firmly believed that justice was at 
hand. “We ask,” said Skey, the fisherman, and 
defendant in the prosecution by the Mayor, “ for 
the possession of what we received from our 
fathers, and what 2 jury declared to be our just 
inheritance.”’ He concluded by a resolution, una- 
nimously agreea to, ‘‘ That in the midst of their 
privations, they looked forward with hope and 
confidence, that the nation would not, in their 
ease, be presented with an instance of the pros- 
perity of a town being destroyed, its source of 
industry annihilated, and its loyal inhabitants 
dispersed, for the sake of usurped authority and 
unconstitutional interest!” 

A handsome new stone dock was recently 
opened in Chatham Yard ; itis said to have cost 
£200,000! 


Died.] At Dover, Forbes des Voeux, esq., son 
of Sir C, des Veeux, bart. r 


HANTS AND SUSSEX. 

The Commissioners for the better Regulating, 
&c,. the Town of Brighthelmston, haye published 
their account ef disbursements for the last half 
year, by which it appears that the sum of 
29,521. 17s. 8d. has been expended for that pur- 
pose. The expense for lighting and cleansing the 
streets amounted to £1,051. 9s. 4d., and upwards 
of £2,200 were paid for groynes and sea wall. 

Married.{ At Milbrook, the Rey. J. C. Ebden 
to Eliza, grand-daughter of the late P. P. Pow- 
ney, esq., M.P. Windsor.—At Southampton, Sir 
R, Williams to Mrs. Bingham.—At Hastings, the 
Hon. G. F. Hamilton, son of Viscount Boyne, to 
Emma Maria, daughter of the late Matthew Rus- 
sel, of Brancepeth-castle, Durham, esq. 


DORSET AND WILTS. 

At the Salisbury Music Meeting, the sum of 
£1,790 was received at the six performances, 
leaving only £140 for charitable purposes, to which 
should be added the profits of the dress ball. 

Died.| At Poole, 73, Mrs. Forrestal ; she mar- 
ried 40 years ago, and a few hours after the 


ceremony, her husband left the town, and has 
never been heard of since. 


SOMERSET AND DEVON. 

The new school rooms erected at Honiton for 
the children of the Daily and Snnday Schools on 
the National System, have been opened ; tlie two 
rooms are capable of containing 150 children 
each. Itis not a little gratifying to know that, 
since its establishment, the young ladies of Honi- 


Provincial Occurrences: Kent, Surrey, Hants, &c. 


[Ocr. 


ton have principally instructed the female children 
themselves. 

There are now 600 Portuguese exiles at Ply- 
mouth, among whom are magistrates, doctors of 
laws, physicians, merchants, officers, and some 
non-commissioned officers and privates, the greater 
part of whom are without resources. Every at- 
tention has been paid to these unfortunate fo- 
reigners by W. Fox, Esq., the Brazilian Vice-con- 
sul.— Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post. 

Died.| At Wiveliscombe, Mrs. Abigail Slowly ; 
her death was occasioned by the overturning of 
the Barnstaple mail-coach!—At Sidmouth, Mrs. 
Cator.—At Wells, 80, Mrs. Jane Pulsford.—At 
ae 102, Mrs, Calvert—At Tiverton, Mr. W. 

alter, 


CORNWALL. 


The pilchard fishery has beenmore successful 
this season than it has been known to be for many 
years. At St.Ives, about 3,000 hogsheads have been 
secured by the seans; and at Fowey, upwards of 
1,000 hogsheads of fish have been taken. A plan 
for curing them has lately been put in practice 
by Sir Isaac Coffin, and they turn out to be supe- 
rior in flavour to the best red herrings. 

Subscriptions have been entered into for re- 
building the Crown and Nisi Prius Courts at the 
Guildhall, Launceston. 

A great number of Portuguese refugees haye 
within the last ten days arrived at Falmouth. 
About 100 of these unfortunate foreigners landed 
from a Spanish brig, in which they embarked from 
Ferrol; a Swedish brig landed about 420 from 
the same place; a Spanish ship, a schooner, and a 
lugger, arrived with 616 refugees; and about 60 
passengers came by the Marlborough, and 24 by 
the Stanmer. There are also at that place be- 
tween 300 and 400 Germans, who arrived in the 
early part of the year in a vessel, in which they 
embarked for Brazil, but having put into. Fal- 
mouth in distress, they refused to proceed, and 
have since remained there supported by the in- 
habitants !—Western Flying Post, Sept.15. 


Married.) At Fowey, Mr. Cowling. to Miss 
Collings. 


WALES. 


We have heard much of the excellence of Scotch 
morals, generally ascribed to the influence of su- 
perior education ; but we believe the Principality 
of Wales, if we are to take the amount of criminal 
offences as a fair criterion of the moral state of a 
country, furnishes fewer cases of judicial pro- 
ceedings than the kingdom of Scotland, the re- 
spective number of their population being taken 
in the account. If in Wales there is not the re- 
finement of England, neither are there the vices 
of England.—In Denbighshire, there are only 3 
criminals in a population of about 70,000.—At 
Brecon, 2 for trial—At Merioneth, not one pri- 
soner for trial—At Carnarvon, 4.—At Flint, 2.— 
At Cardigan, there was not one prisoner for trial! 
On. this very cheering occasion, the officers’ wands 
were decorated with white ribands !—At Carmar- 
then, the sessions were postponed in consequence 
of Mr. Justice Heywood having been attacked 
with paralysis. : 

At the late visitation dinner at Brecon, the 
Rev. Avehdeacon Davies declared his intention of 
founding two scholarships of £25 each, at the 
College of St. David’s, at Lampeter, from the pro- 


1828.] 


ceeds of his archdeaconry. After an elegant ser- 
mon, preached by the bishop, £436. 17s. were 
added to the fund of that institution. 

Denbigh Eisteddfod and Musical Festival was 
attended with the most exalted in rank and im- 
portance in the Principality. His Royal Highness 
the Duke of Sussex was present, and received the 
freedom of the borough. The usual distribution 
of prizes took place. 

Died] At Wenvoe Rectory, Glamorgan, the 
Rey. T. Davies, upwards of 51 years the resident 
minister of that parish!—At Tenby, Pembroke, 
Mr. Serjeant Heywood, chief justice of the Car- 
marthen circuit. 


SCOTLAND. 


At a late hour yesterday evening, we received 
notice of a most distressing and melancholy acci- 
dent which occurred on Loch Lomond that after- 
noon, whereby thirteen lives were lost. The Lady 
of the Lake, steam-boat, was on her return from 
her usual voyage to the head of the loch, and had 
lainto opposite Tarbet, to receive on board those 
passengers who had landed there, or such other 
visitors as were waiting for her at that place. 
The small boat, which belongs to the inn, imme- 
diately put off. The boat was crowded ; there were 
from 20 to 25 crammed into the small coble. The 
lake was smooth, and shining as a mirror, and 
the steam-boat was not much more than thirty 
yards from the shore. A person, who was stand- 
ing onthe beach, described to us that the boat 
wabbled on, from one side to another, till it came 
close to the steamer ; it then made a ‘‘creen” to- 
wards the steamer, so alarming, that most of the 
passengers rose up and clustered to the other 
side, when the boat completely heeled over, and 
floated keel uppermost. It was a moment of in- 
tense agony. Few shrieks were heard — one 
or two piercing ones could be distinguished — 
and thirteen unfortunates were stifled with the 
waters instantly! Where the accident took place 
there was about five fathoms of water. Every 
exertion was made by those on board the steamer, 
and by those on shore to render assistance.— 
Paisley Advertiser, Aug. 30. 


~~ 


nao~ -* 


4 A beautiful new Light House is erecting on the 
_ Mull of Galloway. The tower will stand 85 feet 
f above the base, which, added to an elevation com- 


pletely natural from the level of the sea to the 
apex of the rock, of 270 feet, will render the 
beacon one of the highest and most commanding 
in the whole kingdom; it will cost £8,060. 


Died.) At Perth, 106, Mrs. Margaret Mac- 

peaels she had a distinct recollection of the Re- 
_ bellion, and had twice seen the unfortunate Prince 
Edward in his wanderings. 


; 


IRELAND. 


_ The Lord Lieutenant has recently visited his 
estates at Carlingford, when his tenantry met 
him by appointment in the lawn, and he thus ad- 
dressed them:—* My friends, I have long pro- 
mised myself the pleasure of coming amongst 
you; various causes deprived me for a time of 
that pleasure, [fl health, for which I am sure 
you were all sorry, first detained me ; again, when 
on the eve of coming, I was called to assist in the 
councils of our Most Gracious Sovereign—the call 
‘came from a quarter too high to admit a moment’s 
hesitation. At length an opportunity offered me, 
which brought me, not to visit, but reside amongst 


Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 


447 


you. Iwas always an admirer of the Irish cha- 
racter, and I most unaffectually declare, that in no 
part, either of England, Scotland, or Wales, have 
I found a tenantry more upright, more just, or 
more punnctua), than inthis part of Ireland. I 
am aware that I am addressing a mixed assem- 
biage of Protestants and Catholics; but I came 
not here in the capacity of either, but as a friend. 
I care not at what altar a man worships, or under 
what form he sends forth his prayer to his Cre- 
tor, but the honest man is the man I respect—he, 
and he alone. shall find a place in my confidence. 
I have never asked, nor I never will ask, any man 
to change his religion. In my relation to this 
country, Iam called on to deeide between parties, 
and I shall always endeavour to° support -that 
principle which I first professed, and which I made 
a condition of, when I-aceepted the government of 
this country—to know no man by his religion—to 
be guided in my decision only by the justiee of 
the cause. If every man in his situation in Tre- 
land would act on the same principle, prosperity 
would soon be restored to this country, proof 
would be given that the surplus capital of the 
sister kingdom could be safely transferred to this, 
and your shores, which now present a scene of 
beauty unequalled, would then show. an increase 
of wealth unexampled.—Freeman’s Journal. 


Perhaps on no other assizes in the recollection 
of any person living have there been so few eases 
for trial on the Irish Circuits as this year. This 
has been attributed by some to the influence of 
the Liberator and the Catholic priesthood ; but 
we have no doubt that tle real cause of the 
change is the improyed condition of the working 
classes; and the increase of the Irish revenue for 
same time past puts this almost beyond a doubt. 


It appears from the Report of the proceedings of 
the annual meeting of the friends ofthe “Irish 
Sunday School Society,” that there are 173,613 
scholars attending these schools,and that 28,853 of 
them are above 15 years of age; in the last 18 
years there had been an increase of 2,000 schools, 
and even since January (this year) 183 new schools 
had been formed. It appears that “education 
was given at a cost of no more than fourpence a 
year for each child.’ Last year there wasa 
goodly army of nearly 16,000 teachers ranged un- 
der the banners of the Society, and although 
fully the one-half of these were women, “ yet,” 
said the Rey. R. Daly, “he was sure this army 
would do more to tranquillize and civilize Ireland, 
than twicethat number of the stoutest soldiers 
ever led by the Duke of Wellington.” The Earl 
of Roden, in acknowledging a vote of thanks, 
said, “I consider it the greatest honour of my 
life to be the president of this Society. My sove- 
reign has been pleased to bestow many honours 
upon me, for which he has my humble gratitude ; 
but Iwonld tell him as I tel! you, that I consider 
the honour of my nomination to my present oftice, 
as far superior to them all!!!” 


Married.] At Inch Bridge, Clare, widow 
O'Kelly, 94, to a hearty young fellow, named 
M’Namara, 24!—At Dublin, the Key. J. Hobson to 
Sarah, daughter to the late Right Hon. A. 
Browne. 


Died.| At Collon, Louth, 88, Lord Oriel; his 
lordship commenced his Parliamentary career in 
the first year of George IL. 


NSSeERges | August. 


Sec | Rain Gauge. 


08 


[ 448 J 
DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 
From the 26th of August to the 25th of September, 1828. 


“ ‘Bank [3 Pr. Ct.|/3 Pr. Ct./34Pr.Ct.|34Pr.Ct.|N4Pr.C. Lon India | India | Exch, 

s Stock. | Red. |Consols.}Consols.| Red. Ann. Annuities. | Stock. | Bonds,| Bills. 

26 | 213} = 3 | 87 962 § | 964 8 1014 2| 20 1-16 242 | 98 100p| 7374p 

a7 | — | 87% 83)) 87 962 | 96 1013 % | 20 1-16 242 3 | 99 lulp| 7374p 

2g | 2133143) 884 | 87 964 |. 96 1014 2 | 20 1-16 242 {102 104p|. 73 75p 

29 | 214215] 88. 87. 964 962 101% 24 20 1-16 =o 103 105p} 4475p. 

30 | 214315 | 884 3 | 87 — | 963 | 102424] 20 1-163 — 103 106p| 75 76p 
31 = = = = — — — = soos! f 

Sep. 7 
1 |. 2153 | 884 2] 872 §| — | 963 97 | 1023 § 20 1-163 _ = 7577p 
2| a = = = =i = = = a es | 
3 | 2143153] 885 87 96% 973] 972 3 1034 3 | 20 1-163 242/107 108p| 74 76 : 
4|‘214315 | — | 878 3] 97 97 023 2 = — {108 109p| 74 75p 
5 ikewtass — | 87 97% = 1024 =: — |108 109p| 74 76p 
6} — = 885 = — =| 1025 - 243 109p | 7475p . 
a ae — _ — _ = — _ —_ = . 
ot aes a, 972 — 1023 = 243 lo7p | 7476p 
9); — _ 97$ — | 102 == 243° |100 105p| 7375p 

10 = = = _ 1023 § | - — 102 103p| 73 75p 

1] _ _ _ _ 1023 — = 84 87p| 7274p 

1}. — - _ _- oat ~ 2433 | 87 89p| 7273p 

13 — _ _— - 1024 # — _ 88 90p| 7374p 

14} — _ - — — _ - = = 

15 —_ = — - 102 + _ = 8 9p} 7375p 

16 be == = = — | 102 — 2433 | 91 lu3p) 7475p 

17 = — = — 102 _ _ 5 97p| 7476p 

18 —_ _ _ - 102 — — 95 96p| 7477p 

19 7 — _ _ 1024 4 — 2434 | 95 97p| 75 77 

20; )o0 = — — | load _ _ 96p | 7677 

2a; — — —- - _ _ - — — 

Poel fe = _ — | 102 = o 94p | 757Zp 

23 — —_ — _ 102 _ _ 94p 76 77p 

24 _— _— - - 102 _ _ 94p 7677p 

on | jak ae = — | 1023 — ~ 94p | 7677p 


E, Eyton, Stoek Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street, 
Eg 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 
From August 20th to September 19th, 1828. 


By Witriam Harris and Co. 50, High Holborn. 


7 
Therm. Barometer. a one Winds. Atmospheric Variations. 
:|4 Ss 15 
ae BE (hg ya.M.{1op.m.| = |= | 9 a.m. | 10 P.M. {9.4,M.| 2P,M. } 10 P.M. 

o}] 4 3 a <j & 
Slaolals ; ala 

66 | 70 | 60 | 30 00} 29 88} 49} 49 WNW Ww 

66 | 67 | 58] 29 76) 29 66) 49 | 49 w NW 

64 | 63 | 544 29 62) 29. 70} 49 |} 49 WNW N 

61 | 62 | 51} 29 88 {| 29 96 | 49 } 49 NW N 

61 | 66 | 63 | 30 07 | 30 08 | 49 | 49 NW NW 

O]}| 69] 72} 71.730 14) 30 18] 50) 51) NW NE 

74 | 73} 55} 30. 21 | 30 20) 5b | 51 s SE 

72| 71} 59130 18} 30 14] 50) 50 SE SE 

72| 73 | 59 | 30 11! 30 v8] 50 } 50 SE SE 

69 | 72 | 60 | 30 07 | 30 05] 50} 50 SE SE 

65 | 70 | 57 | 30 06 | 36 04] 49 | 50 E NE 

66 | 69 | 56 | 30 01) 29 89} 49 | 50 ESE ESE 

ESE ESE 

SE NE 

E E 

E SE 

SE SE 

SE SE 

SE SSE 

s SE 

Sw WSw 

SSE WSW 

w Ww 

Wwsw Ww 

NW NW 

NW NE. 

E ENE 

NE SE 

SE SE 

SE SE 

ESE SE 


THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


Neo Series. 


Vou. VI.] NOVEMBER, 1828. [ No. 35. 


INSANITY.* 


So frightful a thing to contemplate is insanity, that most men sedu- 
lously turn from the subject. It is left almost wholly to professional or 
philosophical handling. Ignorance is more generally spread on this 
tremendous malady than on any cther topic within the circle of human 
_ inquiry. Scarcely any body without the pale of the profession ventures 
to exercise his understanding, or hazard a judgment on the causes, work- 
ings, treatment, or cure. The doctor has thus an undisputed monopoly 
of the matter, and must be blindly trusted. 1t is an act of presumption 
to question his claims to intuitive superiority. So entirely at a loss, 
indeed, are the embarrassed connexions of the insane—so alarmed—so 
utterly incapable of directing, that the first impulse is to remoye the 
afflicted individual from his home, and place him under the superin- 
tendence and dominion of strangers. Receptacles for numbers are thus 
in demand—for few can command the exclusive services of professional: 
men—and the reception of the insane is thus a trade distinct for the most 
part from the cure; and the discipline adopted becomes almost, nay, 
quite irresistibly, not what is best calculated to cure, but what will give 
the least trouble, and be the least cost. Force and violence are the cheap- 
est expedients ; and severity, and augmenting severity, is the sure con-~ 
_ sequence. For a while these are successfully concealed ; but, by degrees, 
they get wind. Harrowing tales rouse our indignation—our sympathies 
_ kindle—the victim must be rescued. The plea of necessity, which of 
course is vehemently urged, then gets thoroughly sifted. Inquiry soon 
shews that cruelty is more convenient for the keeper than serviceable 
to the sufferer. A little farther scrutiny as irresistibly proves that cruelty 
exasperates and confirms the malady ; and we are thus led, step by step, 
to inquire into the causes of madness—convinced that, if these are acces- 
sible—if these can be once defined, we are, in proportion, likely to dis- 
cover the cure, or at least shall be better able to judge, with some intelli-~ 
_ aa of the applicability of the remedies proposed. The doctor, though 

le must still be the agent and manager, will no longer be the despotic 
controller ; he will no longer be able to play the quack, and silence 
remonstrance by authority. The general grounds and modes of treat- 
ment will be understood by the laity; and the practitioner must no 
longer lay his account upon confiding ignorance, or consult his sole con; 


= Commentaries on Insanity, by Geo. M. Burrowes, M.D. 


M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 35. 3 M 


‘ 


450 Insanity. [Nov. 


venience. No attempt to hoodwink the public will be any longer of 
service. 

And, in the name of common sense, why should the subject of insa- 
nity be supposed within the reach of one set of men, and out of the 
reach of all others? What is there supposed to be in insanity, or in any 
thing it concerns us to know, which we may not, as to all general princi- 
ples, understand as well as the professional craftsman? Governors and 
priests have each, in elder times, wrapped their craft in mystery, and 
would still willingly withdraw from the public gaze the machinery of 
their labours. These, however, have at length become open subjects ; 
and though every body does not—simply because not every body cares 
about them, or because most people are otherwise engaged—every one 
may understand them. The pursuits of the scholar and the man of 
science, in like manner, are now every where accessible. Every body 
knows that clues to wind the labyrinths are within his grasp, though he 
may not actually thread them. The general anatomy and physiology 
of the human frame—its uses and purposes—may be as well understood 
by the unprofessional as the professional—or to what purpose is the mul- 
titude of books, which are every day published expressly to instruct and 
inform? Distinctly and ably as many of them are composed, we have no 
manner of doubt, the matters thus communicated are often as thoroughly 
comprehended by the reader as the writer. 

Why, then, should not insanity be regarded as equally intelligible as 
any other subject, which once exclusively engaged the attention of pro- 
fessional persons? ‘To them we must look mainly for facts—to the men 
who have the more opportunities for observing ; but why the professional 
man is better able to combine these facts, and infer from them, than 
another, it would puzzle any body, perhaps, to establish. An inference 
is not always matter of sagacity—of penetration—springs not up, we 
mean, as an effect of the will. Put two or more facts together ; and their 
several relations, if any exist, present themselves spontaneously, we know 
not how. All that we, apparently, can do, is to place things together— 
and observe ;—and what. is there here that one cultivated man may not 
do as well as another? The superiority of one man over another—sup- 
posing the organization equal, which, though perhaps never precisely the 


case, is often sufficiently so for rough equalities—consists in observation. — 


The more observant, in short, will know more than the less observant— 
every truth comes at last to a truism. 

It is our intention to throw a glance over this appalling, but most 
interesting subject, mainly as to the causes which originate or lead to its 
development. We profess no close, no minute, no complete, no technical 
analysis ;—we shall draw together facts, the reality of which every one, 
on being reminded, will recognize ; and these are the only bases on 
which the medical man himself has to build. If once causes are tho- 
roughly ascertained, and found to be at all within human control, we are 
forthwith put in the way of discovering how to guard against the out- 
break of those causes, and shall, moreover, surely be better qualified to 
check and thwart their operation, when they do break out, and better able 
to construct and apply the possible remedy. The process of cure will cease 
to be merely tentative on the part of the professor, and of stupid wonder 


on that of the laity. What is the final object of all inquiries and discus= _ 


sions, but to increase the individual’s knowledge, and, of consequence, 
his “ power ;” and thus to take the management of himself and his 


4 


| 


1828.) | Insanity. 451 


affairs, as much as possible, into his own hands? Why shouid we volun- 
tarily throw ourselves, blindfold, into other people’s power ? 

Is madness a disease of the mind or the body? Of the body, doubt- 
less. But let us get into no metaphysics—much less into the doubts and 
difficulties of theology. We know nothing, physically, of the mind, but 
through the body. For any thing we actually know, the mind is the 
sheer result of admirable mechanism. Of the union of an independent 
body and an independent mind, we know nothing. We affirm nothing, 
certainly, of the mind, uninfluenced by the body. We enter not into the 
question of materialism: it is unconnected with the view we take of the 
subject. We must, however, speak popularly—the mind and the body. 
Mental disease, uncaused by external impressions, is scarcely intelligible. 
Sensations are excited from without and within; and in both may, in 
excess, become the cause of insanity. The process is shortly this— 
External impressions—in proportion, of course, to constitutional suscep- 
tibility—act, through the senses and nerves, upon the feelings ; and the 
feelings re-act upon the brain. The impression is, in fact, double: first, 
upon the senses, next upon the heart—almost, perhaps quite, simulta- 
neously. The nerves and the circulation are thus both implicated ; 
and thus, by excess of action, moral irapressions of all kinds may 
become causes of insanity. But the moral is not the immediate cause— 
it is productive of a physical one, which is in reality the immediate—the 
proximate cause of derangement; and to the physical effects must we 
direct our main attention. 

Now these moral causes are within every body’s observation, and every: 
body can estimate the first effects. Some, without weighing the force 
of their expressions, have denied the influence of mind on matter ; but 
the fact of effects upon the body—of even diseases, both of structure and 
function, produced by mental emotions—is established by a thousand 
proofs. The heart, stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, &c. are often 
violently affected by the gonsequences of passion. The ancients referred 
particular passions to particular viscera—courage to the heart, anger to 
the liver, joy to the spleen, &c. ; and even modern physicians of great 
eminence have done nearly the same. But we have nothing to do but 
with recognizable facts. : ! 

Sensations, emotions, passions, are all accompanied by bodily changes ; 
yet these are all excited by impressions from without—that is, are all 
instances of mind acting upon matter, before matter acts upon mind—are 
all moral causes. 

Modesty betrays itself by a stmple blush, which vanishes with the 
exciting cause, and scarcely produces any farther perceptible effect ; but 
shame shews a deeper suffusion—a more permanent one ; the blood is, 
in a peculiar manner, retained in the vessels nearest the surface, as if the 
veins had suffered some sudden constriction, and refused to return it. This 
sensation, in its excesses, is known to have produced other physical effects 
of an extraordinary kind—suppressions, insanity, death. Esquirol, a 
French physician, records his attendance upon a “ lady, who became 
insane on the wedding night, from shame, on sleeping with a man; and 
also another, who, though she loved her husband to excess, was deranged 
at the nuptial approach.” f 
_ Diffidence is another modification of modesty, which has brought on 
mental derangement. Cowper the poet is quoted by Dr. Burrowes as 

3M 2 


452 Insanity. . [ Nov. 


an instance of melancholy, from apprehension of inability to execute with 
propriety a very simple and honourable, but public duty. 

Terror and horror produce similar effects. But here the face is pale 
—the blood is driven from the extreme vessels back upon the heart—the 
motions of the heart become thus embarrassed—a violent struggle ensues 
—and the organ may suddenly cease to beat, or may burst. In the 
reaction, too, the functions of the brain may be overwhelmed by the 
force of the blood rushing back into its vessels; and then insanity 
ensues. 

In anger, again, the blood flies to the capillaries, and reddens the sur- 
face ; but sometimes the effect is just the contrary, and the cheek is per- 
fectly blanched. In the latter case, it is of the more deadly, though less 
impetuous character, coupled perhaps with the chilling checks of hatred 
and revenge—a sudden and forcible control, effected partly perhaps by 
the promise of future and more effective vent. But madness may follow, 
in the one case, the accelerated movement of the blood ; and apoplexy, 
in the other, the violent reaction upon the exhausted vessels. 

The effects of fear, and terror, and anger, even upon the muscular 
powers, are equally obvious. Anger augments them prodigiously—fear, 
on the contrary, paralyses. Sudden alarms, as we learn from physicians 
of respectability—and we may safely trust to such facts—by their chilling 
effects, have removed the symptoms of incipient fever. Fear, again, may 
check, as well as cavse insanity. A pail of cold water dashed on the 
patient by surprise, has been known to cure mania; but there must 
always be danger of the reaction destroying the equilibrium between the 
nerves and the circulation; and thus producing fatuity or apoplexy. 
Terror, again, may stimulate, as well as paralyse. It will rouse to 
extraordinary efforts of self-preservation ; but the ultimate effect may 
work the subversion of the mind. Dr. Burrowes records the effect of 
terror upon a British naval officer, who had an intrigue with the wife of 
a native of Monte Video. Returning from an interview, in the night, 
he was attacked by assassins; the sudden fright and peril acting as a 
powerful stimulant, he defended himself so vigorously, that he escaped 
unhurt, and took refuge in a place of safety; but scarcely had he 
reached it, when he was seized with furious mania. The reaction de- 
stroyed the equilibrium—the circulation had been too much quickened 
to calm quietly down to the point of steadiness. 

The tendency of excessive grief to force blood to the brain, and con- 
sequently to bring on madness, is familiar to every one—tears give 
relief. Sudden joy, again, and more likely, apparently, than grief—it 
has no natural vent like grief. Transitions from joy to grief occasion 
the greatest shocks, and produce the most durable effects. Yet actual 
losses, or disappointments, in pecuniary speculations, do not appear, 
observes Dr. Burrowes, to occasion insanity so frequently as unexpected 
or immense wealth. In the six months succeeding the numerous failures 
of the winter of 1825-6, there were fewer returns to the commissioners 
for licensing madhouses, of insane persons in the London district, than 
in any corresponding period for many years before. 

Distinct effects, again, are produced on particular organs, by particular 
passions. To give an instance or two—the smell, or even the expectation of 
food, excites the saliva—maternal feelings, the secretion of milk—dislike, 
both inthe woman and the brute, prevents the flow of it—fear excites the 
intestines, kidneys, and skin, producing diarrhoea, incontinence of urine 


rod 


“aii an teria 


1828.] Insanity. 453 


and sweat—grief affects the stomach and lachrymal ducts—compassion, , 
the bowels—anger, the liver—terror, the nerves, sometimes even to 
paralysis—extreme hope, the respiration. 

And generally, whenever strong emotion and passion stimulate the 
brain to extraordinary exertion, the action of the heart is responsive, and 
varies with the force of the impression. Joy, anger, desire, &c., acce- 
lerate the circulation, and bring on, in its excesses, mania, palsy, &c. 
Fear, horror, &c., on the other hand, by retarding, or rather by reflecting 
back the current of the blood upon the larger vessels, produce fainting, 
and even absolute suspension of the action of the heart, and on the 
recovery of its force, so violent a reaction, that life is often extinguished 
in the conflict, or the intellect deranged. 

Intense thought, or abstraction, has a powerful influence on the circu- 
lation. Mathematicians have been known, says Dr. Burrowes, to pass 
days and nights without sleep, from being teo deeply engaged in some 
intricate calculations. This absence of sleep is obviously the result of 
excessive action of the brain, which, if not relieved, must soon run on to 
delirium. Extraordinary wakefulness is the signal of nature, therefore, for 
suspending such pursuits. 

Other effects in abundance may be collected, not usually assigned 
among the results of the action of the mind upon the body, and yet as 
indisputably such as any that have already been noticed. Dr. Burrowes 
marks the charming of warts as an instance. The rapid change of the 
hair to white, is plainly another. The very temperature of the body is 
changed—lust heats—fear and aversion cool. The mal de pays arises 
from a moral source—producing, on the evidence of physicians, positive 
organic effects—the lungs are found adhering to the pleura, &c. 

The moral causes hitherto enumerated originate in the individual ; 
but there are others, which seem to spring from the existing condition 
and circumstances of society. The more artificial is the state of society, 
the more active are such causes—the more extensively they multiply and 
operate. Indulgence, indolence, the vices of refinement, make men 
more susceptible and irritable—more sensitive to impressions, and of 
course more liable to insanity. Intense pursuits of any kind—high cul- 
tivation—morals, religion, politics, produce intellectual disorders. The 
lower classes, too, though exempt from these concomitants of habitual luxury 
and intense cultivation, provoke disease by excesses—drunkenness and 
intemperance—producing thus the very effect which extreme refinement 
and fastidiousness do, among the higher—that is, greater susceptibility. 

A very striking relation, moreover, is observable in insanity to public 
events. Great political revolutions are great excitors of enthusiasm ; the 
passions ferment—extraordinary vicissitudes occur in the fortunes of 
numbers—and, in proportion as the feelings are actually wp, will insanity 


prevail. The effect upon the human frame has been often observed by 
physicians. Pinel speaks of the immense numbers of insane, during the 
‘more violent fervours of the French revolution; and Dr. Halloran ob- 


served the same in the last rebellion of Ireland. Something very like it 
is visible at this moment, but more particularly among the Orangemen. 
Dr. Rush, again, has recorded many effects of the American revolution, 
both on the mind and the body. Inthe beginning of a battle, the enthu- 
siasm of both officers and men excited great thirst ; and at the first onset, 
a glow of heat, even in the severest cold, was perceptible in both ears. 
Soldiers were found dead in the field at the battle of Monmouth, without 


454 Insanity. [ Nov. 


any sign of wound, injury, or exhaustion—apparently from emotion. 
Diseases, unobserved before, he says, appeared on the sudden cessation 
of the war. Some among the royalists, of a desponding character, he 
describes specifically under the name of revolutiana ; while others, which 
were observable among the revolutionists of an opposite cast, he classes 
as anarchia. Among the women, hysterical and other complaints were 
suspended, and new disorders apparently generated. Similar effects. on 
females were observed during the Scotch rebellion of 1745; and the 
siege of Paris, by the allies, in 1814, occasioned, according to the report 
of French physicians, much irregularity of the same kind, and apoplexy 
and mania were more frequent. 

Among the moral causes of intellectual derangement, religion has been 
enumerated, mainly because so many insane persons have been possessed 
by religious hallucinations. Excited to excess, every emotion and passion 
is capable of bringing on madness—if so, religion, calculated as are its 
tremendous considerations to influence our feelings, may well be sup- 
posed, by possibility, to be a cause of insanity. But still, though the 
hallucination be a religious one, the real source of insanity may be the 
very reverse of religion, and thus the religious hallucination itself, rather 
be the effect, than the cause of insanity. Generally, those who go mad 
through religion, as it is called, are people of susceptible temperaments, 
or very weak heads. Injudicious preachers, addressing themselves, as 
they chiefly do, to the weak and uninformed, may readily shake an 
addled understanding. It is quite idle, to impute the effect, as most 
people do, to the mysticism of the tenets inculcated, or to the intense- 
ness, with which abstract theology is cultivated, or to the subject of 


religion. being impressed too ardently on persons too young or too much 


informed to comprehend it. It is obviously much more to the purpose 
to look to the condition in which the perceptive and reasoning powers 
actually were, before religion appeared to bring on derangement. Dr. 
Burrowes’ great experience goes to shew that the effect springs imme- 
diately from some perversion of religion, or the discussion or adoption of 
novel and extravagant doctrines, at a juncture when the understanding, 
from other causes, is already shaken. Nor does he recollect one instance 
of insanity, arising apparently from a religious source, where the party 
had been undisturbed about opinions. It appeared to him, always to 
originate during the conflict between opposite doctrines before convic- 
tion was determined. While the mind is in suspense from the dread of 
doing wrong in matters of conscience, and the balance is poised between 
old and new doctrines, involving salvation, the feelings are excited, 
says he, to a morbid degree of sensibility. In so irritable a state, an 
incident, which at any other time would pass unheeded, will elicit the 
latent spark, and inflame the mind to madness. Dr. Halloran, who had 
capital opportunities for observation, remarked, that in the Cork Lunatic 
Asylum, where Catholics in proportion to Protestants are ten to one, no 
instance of mental derangement, from this cause, occurred among the 
Catholics, but several among protestant dissenters. The fact is—and 
very important it is to the present purpose—Catholic ministers will not 
permit their flocks to discuss the subject of doctrines—distrust in these 
matters—doctrines or discipline—is denounced at once as stark heresy. 
The moment of peril—as to insane effects we mean—is when old opinions 
im. matters of faith are wayering, or the adoption of new ones recent, and 
not yet quietly subsided ; and from this peril the Catholic is obviously 


1828.] Insanity. , 455 


protected, whilst the Protestant, with our freedom of discussion, is pre- 
eminently exposed to it. The Methodists are charged with making more 
lunatics than any other sect ; but the truth seems to be—which explains 
the matter very satisfactorily—their converts are more numerous than 
those of any other sect, in the class to which such doctrines are mainly 
directed, and they have had, besides, we take it, almost a monopoly of the 
weaker heads, in that class. 

Emotions, then, of every kind, are capable of disturbing the organs 
and functions of the body, and thus causes, in their origin moral, become 
physical in the course of their operations. These, all of them, in their 
excesses, lead or may lead to insanity ; not by direct impressions, but 
through the morbid changes which they gradually bring about in the 
organs of the body. The more frequent the impressions, the greater, 
of course, is the effect in producing the tendency to derangement. 

But these moral causes—numerous as they are, and capable of excit- 
ing lunacy to a fearful extent—are very far from being the most general 
causes of insanity. It is only where the frame is highly susceptible, or 
where the cause is vehement or excessive, that morbid effects are pro- 
duced by them. The direct physical causes are far more extensive in 
their occurrence, and among these the very chiefest is hereditary predis- 
position. Esquirol—a man of no slight authority in these matters— 
assigns 150 out of 264, in his private practice ; and Dr. Burrowes—of 
at least equal weight and experience—says, he has clearly ascertained 
this predisposition in six-sevenths of the whole of his patients, and 
scarcely seems to doubt its existence in many of the remaining seventh ; 
but the difficulty of ascertaining the hereditary source is often great, 
from the perverse concealments of the friends. And, indeed, so gene- 
ral is the internal conviction, if not the professed belief of the reality 
and extensiveness of hereditary influence, that nothing is more frequent 
than the remark, when eccentricities are observed in individuals, “ there 
is madness in the family—the father or mother was insane.” Constitu- 
tional peculiarities, which physicians, after their learned manner, call 
idiosyncracies, are, in numerous respects, of the commonest occurrence, 
and need only to be alluded to, in a few particulars, to convince us they 
are more extensive than seems to be generally supposed, though every 
body’s actual experience must furnish him numerous instances. Shell- 
fish are offensive to some stomachs—some fruits in like manner—the 
odour of particular flowers—and these peculiarities are known to descend 
through successive generations. It is quite a common thing to hear a 
person say—I cannot bear such or such a thing, nor could my father 
before me. One man, again, inherits gout, another consumption, another 


_ serofula, another apoplexy, and propagates it. Peculiarities of form, 


feature, complexion, are all notoriously transmissible. “ Whatever 
> y : 
assumes a constitutional character,” said John Hunter, “ may be given 


_ toa child, and then it becomes what is called hereditary.” That insanity, 


also, is hereditary, is equally well established, nobody, now-a-days, pro- 
bably doubts. Every day’s experience brings to the observer new con- 
victions. Diseases, too, propagate themselves—the case of syphilis is 
an obvious instance. Liability to mania, fatuity, epilepsy, in successive 
generations, is an opinion confirmed by the experience of all ages. Some 
physicians have encouraged the notion that hereditary disorders, and 
Insanity among them, appear only in every other, that is, in every third 
individual in lineal descent, but apparently without authority. Here 


456 Insanity. [Nov. 


and there, in an individual, the disease may not develop—but no such 
rule, remarks Dr. Burrowes, is observable. 

No fact, indeed, is more incontrovertible than the hereditariness of 
insanity, and no where is the effect more decisive than among tribes or 
families, where, in the well-understood language of the cattle breeder, 
they breed in and in. In our own country, hereditary insanity is more 
common in the higher ranks than in the lower—taking, we mean, num- 
bers for numbers ; and they confessedly mere frequently marry with 
those of their own rank, and often among their own families. Examples 
are said to be most numerous in old Scotch families ; and insanity is 
known to be more common in Scotland than in the rest of the country. 
Some centuries ago, the Scots were aware of the tendency, and provided 
against it—when a Scot was afflicted with a disease capable of being 
propagated, the sons were emasculated, and the daughters banished, aud 
any female affected by such disease, and pregnant, was burnt alive.* 
Of all people, perhaps, the Jews have most pertinaciously intermarried 
with each other, and hence insanity is believed to be more frequent 
among them. One of the youngest patients Dr. Burrowes ever had 
under his “care, was a member of a respectable Jewish family ; both 
father and mother were insane, and six brothers and sisters, like himself, 
became deranged as they arrived at the age of puberty. The Quakers, 
also, intermarry very much, and among them insanity is more than 
usually prevalent. Mr. Tuke, of the York Retreat, computes one in 
two hundred, and apparently, in a great degree, from this cause. 

Medical men distinguish insanity into types, or forms, or species— 
mania, melancholy, hypochondriasis, &c., but these several forms appa- 
rently propagate indiscriminately—that is, the maniac may beget a 
melancholic, and the contrary. Several forms of insanity, with various 
degrees of intellectual capacity, are sometimes developed in a large 
family. Of one, Dr. Burrowes observes—“ one son has transcendent 
talents, the second is inferior, the third has been for years in a state of 
fatuity, and the fourth is an idiot. That great wit and madness are 
nearly allied is not a poetical fiction—but the one is rarely, the other 
generally, an inheritance.” 

Sometimes it shews itself merely in eccentricities. Individuals are 
often distinguished by singularity of ideas or pursuits—or by equipage 
or dress unlike any body else. Generally there must be some obliquity: 
in the perception and judgment of such persons—“ they certainly,” says 
Dr. B., “do not perceive the difference between themselves and the 
generality (he is not speaking of mere fops), and many of these eccen- 
tricities, it is observable, if unnoticed or unchecked, grow more decided. 
with time, and ripen at last into perfect insanity.” 

Nor does the hereditary tendency, or predisposition, always break out 
into actual madness, nor are the offspring always inevitably doomed to 
experience the calamity to the full extent. It will sometimes also lie 
dormant till old age, and then appear ; and generally some pretty strong 
excitement seems required to develop it. But there are apparently the 
seeds and the soil, and there must always be danger of these seeds taking 
root, and maturing their fruits. It is, however, more decidedly in cases 
where there exists insanity, or the tendency, in both parents, that the 
effect is most inevitable. Where only one parent is so disposed, the 


* Boethius de Vet. Scot. Moribus. 


1828.] Insanity: 457 


whole of a family are rarely affected. Some of the offspring, in other 
matters plainly, and, no doubt, in this respect, partake more of one 
parent than the other. The child that resembles the insane parent in 
features or complexion, will probably resemble him in constitution and 
disposition. Dr. Burrowes speaks of questions being put to him, pro- 
fessionally, by parties contemplating marriage, when it was known 
insanity had existed in the progenitor of one or the other—whether, for 
instance, a person born of parents descended from an insane family, but 
not themselves insane, was capable of propagating it—to which, sup- 
ported by his own experience, he answered, yes. And, again, whether 
a child, born before insanity had been developed in either parent, was as 
liable to become insane as one born after it had been developed—to 
which he replied, of course, yes, if the insanity were hereditary, but no, 
if it were adventitious, that is, originating with the individual. Dr. Burrowes 
hesitates about the child born after the development of adventitious mad- 
ness. Yet why he should, we see not. All hereditary insanity had a begin- 
ning, and was then adventitious. And in the same page of his most 
valuable work, of which we have made so liberal use, Dr. Burrowes must, 
haye thought so, when he himself remarked the predisposition must 
have originated in some one—it could not have run to the creation. 

Now we must turn for a moment to other causes of the physical kind, 
for which we must depend almost wholly upon the evidence of physi- 
cians, because such matters do not come in a manner sufficiently direct 
and obvious before the cognizance of unprofessional persons. Many of 
these, and indeed the chief of them, pass under the name of sympathies, 
by which is meant, in plain terms, where one organ is injured, and. 
another, somehow or other, is simultaneously or consecutively affected. 
A blow on the head will disturb the functions of the liver, and even dis- 
organize it; and vice vers?, the injury of this organ will sometimes 
occasion mental disturbance—so will secretions of morbid bile—obstruc- 
tions of the biliary ducts by gall stones—spasms, &c. In the Cork 
Asylum, Dr. Halloran found 160 out of 1,370 insane from drunkenness ; 
the liver is confessedly affected by ardent spirits, and thus apparently 
by sympathy—for want of a better name—the brain. In the hospitals 
of Paris, also, 185 out of 2,507 were insane from drunkenness, and of 
these 59 women—notwithstanding the supposed comparative sobriety of 
the French people. 

The morbid state of the viscera occupied in concocting the chyle is, 
again, sympathetically, a cause of mental derangement. Irritations in 
the stomach, through the same mysterious agency, is a more frequent 
cause than is usually imagined. Long continued nausea—and violent 
_ sea-sickness have produced mania within Dr. Burrowes’s own know- 
ledge in three instances. Irritations of the intestines, also—worms— 
d diet—apparently, are frequent causes of sympathetic irritation of the 
ain. Reciprocal sympathies between the brain and the uterine system 
are frequent and better known. Puerperal mania is quite common, 

Of 57 cases, not more than half were connected with hereditary predis- 

position. Scrofula is a frightful cause of insanity, and of the most inve- 

terate character—for scrofula is almost the despair of medicine. 

Different temperaments appear to some physicians to predispose to 
particular species of insanity—the sanguine, to mania—the nervous, to 
both mania and what is termed monomania—the dry or melancholic, 

characterised by timidity and inquietude, to melancholy—the moist and 
M.M. New Series —Vou.VI. No.35. 3.N 


458 Insanity. | Nov. 


choleric, to mania and melancholy, and sometimes to fatuity—the apo- 
plectic, with a large head, to fatuity ; but this seems putting the matter 
too generally, though, doubtless, constitutional peculiarities announce 
the nature of approaching diseases. 

Of the influence, again, of the planets and the moon—notwithstanding 
the name of lunatics, and the vulgar impressions—no proof whatever 
exists. Yet physicians of eminence—Mead even—have said, “the 
ravings of mad people kept lunar periods, accompanied by epileptic 
fits.” The moon, apparently, is equally innocent of the thousand things 
ascribed to her. Whenthe paroxysms of mad people do occur at the 
full of the moon, Dr. B. inclines to explain the matter thus—“ Maniacs 
are, in general, light sleepers; therefore, like the dog which bays the 
moon, and many other animals, remarked as being always uneasy when 
it is at the full, they are disturbed by the flitting shadows of clouds, 
which are reflected on the earth and surrounding objects. Thus the 
lunatic converts shadows into images of terror ; and, equally with all 
whom ‘reason lights not,’ is filled with alarm, and becomes distressed 
and noisy.” 

But there are still other physical causes which demand our notice, 
and among these the most conspicuous are disorders of circulation— 
totally distinct from disorders of circulation originating from without— 
when the blood is either excessive or defective. Of the likelihood of such 
extremes to produce madness, nobody will feel disposed to doubt. 
Blood may be driven to the head with extraordinary velocity, but be as 
readily returned by the veins—this is simply accelerated motion, and is . 
called determination ; or it may be sent with the natural velocity, or 
greater or less, but, from obstructing causes, not wholly or duly returned 
by the veins, and then there is accumulation—this is plethora.. The 
latter tends to apoplexy, and indirectly to insanity ; the former directly 
and originally to insanity. 

External heat—coups-de-soleil—violent exercise—spirits—stimulating 
aliments, and medicines—mechanical injuries—all excite the circulation. 
Any of these stimuli are capable of producing the diseases usually called 
nervous—most of which probably originate in a disordered state of the 
circulation, and lead, first or last, to perfect insanity. On the other 
hand, if the circulation be defective, the functions of the brain cannot 
properly be performed. Such is the condition of those who are in a 
state of fatuity. All extenuating diseases—excessive or long-continued 
evacuations, from hemorrhage, diarrhoea, urine, perspiration, or saliva, 
predispose to this lamentable condition. The deficiency first deterio- 
rates the corporeal, and then the mental faculties, and finally extinguishes 
both. 

Here then is a view—imperfect confessedly—of the main causes of 
insanity—consisting, first, of moral causes, that is, chiefly of excessive 
emotions, which operate, sooner or later, upon the circulation, and are 
thus eventually physical ones; next of what are originally physical— 
hereditary predisposition, which seems to amount to constitutional sus- 
ceptibility—sympathies, that is, local and organic disorders, which con- 
secutively affect the brain—and, finally, disorders of the nerves and the 
circulation. 

The medical man, who contents himself with observing—above all 
who renounces the mental theory, and gives up the expectation of 
curing madness, by reasoning is apparently in the right course. The 


1828.] Insanity. 459 


proximate cauise—so far as we can see and act upon it—is always physi- 
cal—always deranging organs—and anatomy—morbid anatomy and 
physiology—is thus of more importance than philosophy. No mental 
remedies are to be hoped for. We know not how the intellect is gene- 
rated—its ideas furnished, or multiplied, or modified, independent of 
corporeal agency. The disturbance of the brain proceeds from the same 
source. The exciting disease must be attacked in its seat and station— 
what will cure there, will probably cure the insanity, which appears to 
depend upon it. Be the cause moral or physical, the body—the organs 

—the constitution, in whole or in part, is the diseased point, and the sub- 

ject of medical treatment. 

Upon those who are yet sane, and upon those who are the subject of 
hereditary taint, the necessity for caution should be early and perse- 
veringly inculcated ; and the more the cause is understood and felt, surely, 
the more irresistibly will such caution operate. Avoid exciting occa-~ 
sions. The offspring of the insane has double motives for shunning 
them ; and if he must marry, let him match with a sane person, though, 
as Rousseau said, “he be a king, and she be the hangman’s daughter.” 
Useful lessons may be taken from the cattle-breeder—judicious crossing 
will wear out the taint. 

But though nothing is to be done, mentally, with the actually insane, 
moral discipline is as indispensable as medical treatment; for external 
objects, according to circumstances, are all calculated to exacerbate or 
to soothe: and here, accordingly, is an ample field for the employment 
of the best intelligence either of the professional or unprofessional atten- 
dant ; and of course the more sensible and intelligent will be the more 
effective agent. Few rules can be laid down—every case requires its 

_ own treatment. No individuals are precisely alike, and in insanity, less 
than in any other disorder, apparently, are assimilations to be looked for. 
“ Never, however,” says Dr. B., “exercise the mind of the insane in the 
sense of his delirium—never oppose his morbid ideas, affections, or 
_ inclinations—but rather by diversity of impressions, give rise to new 
_ ideas and feelings, and thus, by exciting fresh moral emotions, revive 
_ the dormant faculties—and never commit yourself by promise ; but if, 
inadvertently, a promise be given, adhere to it, unless the fulfilment 
will obviously be attended with worse consequences than the breach 
bof, it.”’ 

The critical period is when the bodily disease is giving way. Gene- 
rally, returning reason follows, as an effect of its cause ; and if it do not, 
the case becomes hopeless. The least glimmer of reason should be 
cherished and encouraged ; but the common mind and the cultivated 
will not bear being treated alike. This is the moment to reason with 
patient—to talk to him as to a rational person—to assist in expel- 
ling fading illusions—to soothe remaining irtitations—to repress his 
impatience for freedom. 
Z the worst cases, the first symptom of returning reason is usually 
some sense of the decencies of life—the dropping of some pertinent 
_ remark, or asking some appropriate question, though hesitatingly, rela- 

tive to his own situation, or that of his family, or giving way to his 
former obstinate defence of delusions. Sometimes convalescence an~ 
 nounces itself by the gradual revival of the moral affections, and the 
_ feelings are often moved to tears. “No augury,” says Dr. B., “is 
more favourable than such emotions ; though feeble and transient, they 
3.N 2 


460 Insanity. [Nov. 


should be encouraged, and every effort of returning reflection be guided 
with a gentle and imperceptible hand. No mistakes should be noticed, 
lest the exposure shock and discourage him. If painful recollections 
rise on reasoning on any remaining delusion, the subject must be 
changed, and resumed on a: more favourable occasion. All questions 
relative to domestic matters should be answered promptly, where 
there is nothing to excite, but discreetly and shortly. The very flood 
of reminiscences endangers, and the difficulty, of course, is in hitting the 
medium. 

The memory is more impaired than is generally suspected. Lunatics 
recognize readily ; but that appears to be the only pari of memory unim- 
paired. But the difference in individuals is immense—to some,. the 
retrospect is a perfect blank—to others like a dream—whilst others are 
in possession of all the realities of it ; some refer to it with indifference— 
some with thankfulness for escape—others with pain and abhorrence. 
Of course they must be treated accordingly. The most satisfactory sign 
of convalescence is the fading of long delusions, and not replaced by 
new ones—especially if the patient allows them to have been delusions. 
To reason with a lunatic is folly—to oppose or deny his hallucination 
is worse, because it is sure to exasperate. If we wish to make an 
impression on him, it must be by talking at him, not to him. Though 
he will not listen to what is addressed to him, he will readily ap- 
ply what bears upon his own situation, more forcibly than any body 
else can do. To break the chain of morbid ideas by fraud, trick, terror, 
or surprise, is always hazardous. The chances are greatly against suc- 
cess, and failure makes matters worse. Nothing is found of equal effect 
with engaging the confidence of the patient. A cheerful, encouraging, 
and friendly address—kind, but firm manners—patient to hear, but 
prudent in answering—never making a promise that cannot safely be 
performed, and when made, never to break it—vigilant and decided— 
prompt to control when necessary ; and willing, but cautious, in remov- 
ing it when once imposed—* these are the qualities,” says Dr. B., — 
« which will always acquire the good: will and respect of lunatics, and 
a command over them that will accomplish what force can never attain.” 

From all which it must be evident that great personal and individual 
attention is indispensable. No hope, generally, can there be of success, 
where patients are huddled together, and treated, in classes, all on one — 
system. There must be great separation, and constant vigilance and | 
inspection, and this involves great expense. Asylums, supported by 
contributions, or by counties, well attended to and superintended— ~ 
where money-making is not the object of the institutions—seem to be the 
only means of effecting material good, and especially among the poor. 
These institutions are every where spreading Liberal, but not extrava-_ 
‘gant remuneration should be given to conductors—rewards in propor- 
tion to cures—every encouragement given to personal care and kind= 
ness—all useless and severe’ restraint forbidden—and the forbiddance 
‘rigorously enforced by the authority of superiors. 


1828.] [ 461 ] 


A TALE OF THE PYRENEES, 


Tue fair of Oleron, though attended by a concourse of al the neigh- 
bouring rustics, was reputed duller, and more brief in duration, than 
on any former occasion. The bright May-day on which it was held 
served little to animate the crowd ; and long before the customary revels 
by moonlight, Dominic Etchegogen had packed up his little basket, and 
grasped his stout staff, on his road homewards. It would be idle to seek 
any certain cause for that stagnation of entertainment which resulted 
solely from accident. - Where scattered people, without common grounds 
of pleasure or interest, fall together at the hazard of being lively, or the 
reverse, it will often happen, as on this day, that they require the aid of 
more social sympathies and’ personal attachments to secure the happy 
end for which they have assembled. In vain the puppets doled out their 
proper parts ;—in vain were put forth the little stalls, on which were 
gorgeously displayed the famous handkerchiefs from Pau, and the linens 
still farther brought from the factories of Tarbes ;—in vain were the 
choicest hams of the district suspended in goodly array, and the 
renowned mountain-mules made to caracole in the exercise-ground. Sun- 
set seemed the signal for an almost general retreat ; and Etchegogen, as 
before mentioned, was one of the earliest seceders. 

He was an honest and substantial householder of the little town of 
Barcus, seated, as every one knows, in the department of the Bas Pyre- 
nees, and not far from one source of the pleasant river Adour, of which 
the two principal streams, taking their origin in the same mountains 
which give rise to the Gallego and the Arragon, finally coalesce near the 
town of Peyrehorade, and fall into the ocean between Bidart and Ordres. 
He proceeded on his way, meditating much as concerning the degeneracy 
of men, and the sluggishness of the market ;—he thought to have been 
more fortunate in his sales and purchases, and to have met a pretty face 
or two, which, for lack of smiles, seemed to have lost their prettiness. 
Every now and then a word of mongrel French would escape his lips in 
testimony of his ill-humour ; and the premature dimness brought on by 

__ the early sinking of the sun behind the hills of Larreau seemed to annoy 
him still more, as if he half-regretted that he had come away from the - 
_ fair, the dulness of which might now be remedied by twilight freaks and 
festivity. Without pursuing farther the current of his peevishness, he 
may now be fancied as having arrived within a short distance of his native 
place, the small town of Barcus, and had reached the old wooden bridge 
that connects the two banks of the principal stream that gives its tribu- 
tary waters to the Adour. It seemed to him, in spite of the increasing 
kness, that he could distinguish a human form skulking among the 
_ brushwood on the left, as if with the intent to watch his own route. The 

‘strangeness of this sight provoked his curiosity rather than his apprehen- 
ion. He shouted lustily, and in a friendly tone, to the unknown ; but 
an answer far different to any that he had expected was returned to him 
before his own words had well issued from his lips. A slight movement 
among the leaves was the prelude to the report of a rifle, levelled too 
truly at the honest farmer. The shot struck him, but in no vital part ; 
he rolled along the bridge to its very parapet, and had not recovered his 
consciousness before a number of villagers, startled by the sound, had 
collected around their wounded friend. The aggressor had fled, or still 


462 A Tale of the Pyrenees. LNov- 


lay concealed hard by ; and the discovery of his name was left to the con- 
jectures of the curious. 

Dominic having been carried home, was examined minutely concerning 
the circumstances of this event ; but the nicest sagacity of the village 
sages, who did not fail to attend his sick-bed, doubtless from pure cha- 
rity—the inquiries of many, and scrutiny of a few—all were insufficient to 
explain away the mystery of so unprovoked an attack upon a harmless 
wayfarer. The night passed; and the next morning, which served to 
summon home the general mass of those who had attended the fair at 
Oleron, shewed that one at least, and not an inglorious one, was still 
absent from his usual haunts. Etchehon, a name pronounced but seldom 
in accents of unconcern—a name associated with many suspicions, many 
opposite feelings of pity and terror, marvel and hostility—Etchehon, the 
wild, the desperate, the wretched—he stood not amongst them as he used 
to stand—the leader of a few careless spirits—the cast-away, the aban- 
doned of the majority! He was watched, he was hunted for—not from 
love or anxiety for his welfare, but from the mischievous and cruel 
longing which unkind tempers manifest to affix on some one, even though . 
he be a familiar companion, the authorship and unravelment of a 
mystery which might else pass away and be forgotten. But this neigh- 
bourly care for his discovery was all without its reward ;-—he came not 
—he was not heard of ; and the disaster of poor Dominic was imputed 
to the scape-gallows wretch, whose memory was treated with even less 
of charity than his conduct when present and in the midst of them. 

The character of Etchehon, the miserable subject of so much village 
talk, was involved in contradiction, but unhappily darkened by suspi-< 
cions which almost wore the aspect of certainty. Those who remem- 
bered him in his younger days spoke of him as a strange, flighty, and 
daring man ; but kind in his disposition, capable of the loftiest sentiments, 
tender and benevolent. The rough inhabitants of Barcus could trace 
the progress of his character, without detecting the reasons for its 
changes. They found him more and more lost in fancies and abstrac-~ 
tions: he became restless in his habits ; and for a charge of forgery, ill 
substantiated, he was doomed to a long imprisonment, from which he 
issued more gloomy and disturbed than ever. Whispers, dark and ter- 
rible, were passed respecting his course of life; his home was rarely 
crossed by his heavy foot ; and the credulity of the neighbours, fed by 
rumours studiously circulated, at length invested him with attributes 
almost fiendish. These short-sighted creatures made him what he was. 
The imputations thrown upon him were felt, though not heard perhaps ; 
and Etchehon’s spirit fell beneath the host of ill-will, in itself adopted 
as a defence against him—like the warrior who lay overwhelmed by the 
shields and bucklers of his enemy. What has truth to say in vindication 
of this imputed sinfulness? His whole story must be recounted. 

At an early period of life, the enthusiastic temper of Etchehon urged _ 
him to an inconsiderate marriage with a peasant girl of the neighbour-— 
hood. His bold and manly bearing at first pleased the child; but the 
disproportion between their characters soon estranged him from the 
heart of her hearts, and another was admitted to the sanctuary, in which 
he still breathed, and hoped only to live, as in the temple of his idol. 
Whether his own waywardness or her inconstancy served rather to expel 
him from her love, I cannot say. There are those who, having a loftier 


1828.] A Tale of the Pyrenees. 463 


and wider range of thought and feeling, yet can be content to anchor alk 
their hopes on some poor creature moving in a lower sphere, and count- 
ing, as the sum of her homely emotions, that which would be no consi- 
derable item in the calendar of her worshipper ;—and this simple, 
unadorned mortal may be less satisfied with an adoration the magnitude 
of which she cannot comprehend, than with the natural regard of an 
equal friend, moving, thinking, and feeling as she herself has done. 
Such was the pitiable lot of Etchehon. Doating more and more on his 
unworthy wife, he had the torture of beholding her, little by little, 
abandoning the post she had formerly held ; he saw her confidence pass 
into distrust—her warmth become chilled. She smiled languidly on him, 
and sought him no longer for her associate. Her beauty, courted by 
many, was not satisfied with the adoration of one, and in a short time it 
was evident that she preferred another. The name of this other was 
Eguiapal—a man destitute of all principle and moral restraint ; cruel, 
hard-hearted, sensual, and mean. He had contrived to ingratiate himself 
with the wife of his friend; and, partly by advancing his own suit, 
partly by detraction of Etchehon, he succeeded in gaining over the heart 
of the wife. At first secretly, but in progress of time without a show of 
concealment, these two were accustomed to meet, and pass their guilty 
time in a manner which could not be misinterpreted by the quick eye of 

Etchehon. He knew himself deceived—he thought himself dishonoured. 

His strong love for his wife lay at the bottom of his heart so firmly, that 

eyen her infidelity could not shake it from its place. The passion with 

which it was accompanied was that of hot revenge upon Eguiapal, for. his 
present state of degradation ; and the intensity of the one regulated the 
activity of the other. Many strange schemes, in which he became 
involved, were the issue of this desire of vengeance. Others were 
charged upon him by his wife and her paramour, to drive him, if possi- 
ble, from the country, by imputed crimes, or by the wretchedness which 
awaited him at home. No means were left untried that might conduce 
to either end. He was provoked and enticed to acts of violence. If he 
resisted the temptation, the deeds were nevertheless presumed to have 
been done, and busy slander was employed to criminate him. Thus his 
friends fell away, and his foes became numerous. His temper became 
_ more and more wild under the pressure of so much misery ; and when 
he found himself nearly outlawed by mankind for his misfortunes, his 
_ only solace was to indulge in fanciful dreams, and communings with the 
dull objects of nature, and to meditate on defensive acts of blood, which 
would never have had birth in his original and unaltered character. 

The acute reader will readily perceive that he was the concealed per- 
son who had fired on Dominic Etchegogen. He will also conclude that 
he had mistaken the object, and had in reality his foe Eguiapal in his 
mind when he plotted this mode of removing a fellow-creature from the 
Id. Ignorant of the final issue of this transaction, he skulked for a 
ort time among the low trees on the bank ; and, when the night closed 
in, he fled from the scenes of his youth and his distresses, and made for 
_ the mountainous district of Larreau, where he hoped to gain a shelter 
among the simple and hospitable shepherds. He was not disappointed. 
He found them willing as they were able to receive and assist him. They 
adopted him amongst their own tribe; and he strove to forget, in the 
quiet pastoral pleasures of an innocent course of life, the series of wretched 
and evil thoughts that had so long distracted him. He took his share of 


» 


464 A Tale of the Pyrenees. [Nov. 


daily labour ; he watched the flocks, and engaged in the natural interests 
of his new associates. He was calmed, but not forgetful. On the moun- 

tain-tops his spirit became elevated, and the sadness of a despairing man 

clothed itselfin the rich attire of poetical feeling. As he wandered over 

the unbeaten tracks of that region, tending the herds committed to him by 

his employer, his thoughts wandered far and free—more purely than 

heretofore, but not less wildly, or less peacefully. Solitude, that turns 

the current of our common sentiments, drew off from his their dross and 

vileness, but deepened and strengthened them. In such.a mood, he 

composed, from time to time, many rude and irregular songs referring to 
his own condition, and used as the interpreters and relief of his strong 

emotions. Lying beneath the forest-shade, or gazing down upon the 
surface of the fair world, it was then he used to sing his unheard plaints, 
inspired only by that innate feeling which is the soul of poetry. One of 
these singular compositions, preserved by himself in writing, and after- 
wards produced as a document of legal evidence, furnishes some idea, 
though inadequate, of that sweet music which in a few minds is not 
produced by culture or imitation, but seems whispered at the hour of 
birth by some angel of heaven, ere the spirit which receives it has 
become perfectly human. 


“The animals of the desert,’—(thus he sung)—“ fly from before the face 
of man, which inspires them with terror ; and I also, miserable and in tears, 
imitate them to lengthen my desolate life. : 

“ The unfortunate are enough in the earth, but none so unfortunate as me; 
I have been driven from my own hearth for attempting to sit alone thereasa 
master. 7 

“ I lay in ashes—in chains ; but was it not my own madness? Of my life, 
one-half has passed in a dungeon—the other half, in a dungeon of the soul. 
Why did I love so truly? She cared neither for my prayers, nor my sighing, 
but for another. 

“I see the sun’s rising and its sinking; I count the shadows as they | 
diminish to specks, and lengthen again as they were in the morning. They 
change the surface ; but the earth is always what it was. I believe neither 
the smiles nor any countenance of a woman; it is evil underneath. 

« My home! my home! ~The wind passes by me here in louder gusts, but 
not so sweetly to mine ear. I did not wander here before the days of my’ 
sorrow. Oh, my home! thou wert a garden of blessedness ; but I am sen- 
tenced away. ' 

“ Ye who pursue Etchehon, seek him not at Barcus, for he is composing 
songs at Eginton, the fairest of the pasturages of the Pyrenees, inhabited by 
the shepherds of La Soule.” 


That Etchehon was for a time soothed by the simple tenor of his pre- 
sent life, is very probable. But that he soon felt an inquietude under the 
very stillness, and a longing to see once more the familiar things of his 
native place, is pretty evident, from the querulous tone that occasionally 
creeps into these fragments of his verse. This feeling, indeed grew 
upon him more and more; he would make little excursions from his 
proper beat to catch a glimpse of some neighbouring height and over- 
hanging forest; and, after a few weeks, he determined to steal once — 
more into some of his old haunts, and learn correctly what had followed 
upon the death of Eguiapal. 

It was a dark, cold night, and the villagers of Barcus were for the — 
most part collected in their homes; when -some one coming from the 
fields later than was usual, discovered a heavy mass as of a cloud passing 


1828. ] A Tale of the Pyrenees. 465 


low above the house-tops, and followed by little sparks and rays of 
light shot up from no distant object. He aroused many of the neigh- 
bours, and without loss of time proceeded to the source of this illumina- 
tion, which proved to be a burning cottage, the property of Eguiapal. 
The fire had seized too surely the rafters and frame-work of the wooden 
building, and all their efforts were ineffectual to prevent the deathly 
erash which was heard not an hour afterwards. The owner himself of 
this ruined place took no share in the attempt to extinguish the confla- 
gration. Where he was detained was not inquired until all remedy was 
past. Then some one, curious beyond the rest, betook himself to the 
house of Etchehon, where, as was not uncommon, he might possibly 
have retired with his false paramour. The door fronting the village 
highway was closed against intrusion, the windows barred from without, 
and the wicket-door at the back of the house was held firmly by a 
stranger, who stood like a spectre, heedless of the cries and entreaties 
from voices within, and from the rustics who now came up. 

« Who keeps this watch ?” cried the latter. 

Silence was the only answer. 

« Is Eguiapal in the cottage?” 

Still no answer. 

« Speak! pray, speak! If Eguiapal be within, let him know at least 
that his dwelling has been set on fire, and. x 

« Consumed °” uttered a low, concealed voice. 

“<'To ashes !” was the reply. 

« Then tell him so!” cried Etchehon, in his natural tone ; and, with 
the word, thrust open the door, which he had held tightly grasped, and 
in spite of all the efforts of the party under the roof. 

«* Tell him of his ruin, and let me see his agony !” 

The tale was a short one; for the expiring flames were a sufficient 
voucher, and the cracking of timber was heard distinctly, though at some 
distance. Eguiapal rushed from the house, beseeching the villagers to 
seize and detain Etchehon, the author, as he supposed, of his misfortune. 
The order was willingly obeyed ; for those who cared little for the dis- 
covery of the perpetrator of this last act had still that vague notion of 

_ Etchehon’s romantic character which rendered his capture a matter of 
‘moment. He made little or no resistance, was delivered over to the 
police, and finally committed for trial, not on this charge of arson, which 
_ could have been supported by no evidence whatever, but as the person 
guilty of that assault upon Dominic Etchegogen which was related at the 
commencement of this narrative. 
___ The grounds of accusation were numerous, and apparently substantial. 
His former character, as an ill-doer and infringer of law, went through 
the entire charge, as a prior argument in its behalf. Then it was 
eclared by one of Eguiapal’s labourers that he had concerted with him 
kill not only his master, but some half-dozen others, who were 
' obnoxious to him. On the morning of the fair, he had been seen casting 
_ slugs, similar in shape and size to that one which was extracted from the 
_ wound of Dominic ; and, moreover, he had been heard to inquire earnestly 
whether Eguiapal meant to attend the fair that day, and had himself 
_ been seen walking in the direction of Oleron. ‘To the questions of the 
president of the court, he answered. with great precision and confidence. 
Te gave a rapid history of his life, coloured with all the enthusiasm 
natural to him, and enriched by the poetical phraseology of the Basque 
M.M. New Series —Vou. V1. No. 35. 30 


466 A Tale of the Pyrences. [Nov. 


language, with which he seemed more conversant than with French. 
From the old treasury of this primitive tongue, he drew the copious 
expressions and illustrative imagery, which, as a bystander has witnessed, 
gave to his defence a loftiness and beauty not often reached by the most 
graceful of poets. The tone was eloquent, but restrained; and the flights 
of passion, which sometimes whirled him into a species of phrenzy, were 
completely escaped until the appearance of Eguiapal as a witness to sub- 
stantiate some of the allegations. Then his moderation expanded into 
excesses of feeling, for which language seemed to have no adequate 
expression. 

« Villain!” he exclaimed, “ would you not be content with the ruin 
you have already inflicted? Have I not already suffered worse than 
death by your machinations? Your head was on the pillow of my mar- 
ried bed when I lay in the straw of a dungeon! You drank my wine, 
and ate my hams, when all that I had was water, and bread moistened by 
my tears. You are not yet satisfied! Oh, murderous villain! you have 
spat upon me, and kicked me, and none else has brought me here !” 

The trial lasted two days. A host of circumstantial evidence was pro- 
duced ; but the presumptions of his guilt, however strong, amounted to 
no proof ; and he was finally acquitted, on this score principally—that 
nothing was admitted to convict him of having had fire-arms in his pos- 
session at the time of the transaction. The sympathy of the court with 
the prisoner was extreme. His singular appearance, and rugged untaught 
bearing—his imposing language—and, beyond the rest, the unfortunate 
story of his life, which in itself would have palliated many an error—all 
won over the interest of the audience ; and the verdict of acquittal was 
received by acclamations of the heartiest approval. He was discharged 
from the bar, to be once more exposed to the afflictions of his destiny. 

His home was still polluted by the occasional visits of his enemy, who 
with his wife conspired to the utmost to torture and tempt him. For 
awhile he seemed careless of Eguiapal, and tolerated his presence, if 
they chanced to meet, without any manifestation of that ardent hate which 
was rankling in his heart. Only on one occasion did he exhibit his 
natural sentiments. He was returning to his house, after a day of labour, 
and was met at the threshold by one whom he did not fail to recognize. 
He seized him fiercely by the throat, and prevented his egress. 

« What, Sir !” he cried, “are you so uncourteous as to pass me without 
one evening valediction? Whose hospitality have you been enjoying? 
Not mine, surely, or you would have the grace to thank me for it ;— 
and if not mine, then my wife’s. Come in, thou hate! and thank her 
for it before me.” 

And so saying, he dragged the almost passive coward into the room 
he had just left. The lights were still burning, and the remnants of the 
evening meal lay on the round table ; but his wife either dreaded or was 
ashamed to appear before him. 

« You have eaten together, I see; you have laughed together; you 
have Oh! God! that I should say it! Here, villain! down on thy 
servile knee; and, if thou hast fear of God, who hast no love of man, 
pray to him for the repose of thy soul. What! is that incomprehensible ? 
Here, then, take this staff, and defend thyself as thou mayest: I would 
not kill thee unarmed.” 

He rushed upon his victim ; and few minutes would have intervened 
between that and his dying minute, but for the shrieks of a woman, who, 


1828.] A Tale of the Pyrenees. 467 


issuing from an inner room, threw herself between the combatants, and 
effectually stopped that conflict which would have so assuredly terminated 
in death. 

« For the Virgin’s sake, Bertin!” she exclaimed; “ for me—for your- 
self—as you hope for happiness—spare him, and take my heart as the 
return !” 

« Your heart!” he said, looking at her sorrowfully. “ If I could 
believe that, Marie But my hopes are as chaff upon the wind: I 
cannot trust again.” 

* Yet, for the love you bore me, do not shed his blood! As a testi- 
mony of that love—perhaps a last act—Bertin, do not refuse me !” 

She clung to his arm, and gazed at him with that eloquent look, which 
no mortal can resist from the object of his worship. He bent in silence 
his eyes upon her fair face, and slowly answered— 

« Tt is not that I trust the future—not that I can now be moved into 
reliance upon you, who have so deceived me ;—in memory of the past I 
listen to you—for your voice has the softness of other days, Marie, and 
I am not so changed but I must yield to it—Go, wretched villain! and, 
if this lesson can teach thee aught, let me never see thee more.” 

Eguiapal obeyed the word, and days passed before he again ventured 
to seek the partner of his stolen pleasures, or dared run the risk of encoun- 

tering the fiery Etchehon. But he could not wholly abandon so con- 
firmed a habit and system of life ; and Etchehon again had knowledge 
of his renewed intercourse with Marie. His determination was now 
taken, and executed as follows. 

It was on the same narrow wooden bridge over the Adour which has 
before been mentioned, that Eguiapal had to pass, on his return home- 
wards from a marriage-feast a few miles off. The winter’s first snow lay 
on the ground, partly liquified, partly congealed, by the alternate changes 
of thaw and frost, which succeed each other in that climate often only for 
a duration of a few minutes. Picking his way slowly and deliberately, 
Eguiapal moved on to the bridge ; now humming a scrap of a_ bridal 
song—now letting fall a word or two of his thoughts, which had been 
rendered rather more volatile than usual under the magic of copious liba- 
tions. The name “ Marie” fell from his lips more than once with an 
emphasis of considerable tenderness ; and just as he reached the centre 
of the bridge, he was uttering the words,— 


“ Toujours fidelle a toi, Marie, 
Fidelle toujours a toi,”— 


when his progress and his song were stopt in an instant by the appear- 
ance of Etchehon, who, springing up from the other bank, darted upon 
him, and made a bound to clasp him in his arms. The other, urged 
q possibly by despair, possibly animated by the liquors he had swallowed, 
was not now irresolute in his conduct, but opposed himself stoutly to his 
aggressor. They struggled for a while together, and the superior strength 
of Etchehon had at last succeeded in giving him an advantageous hold 
of his antagonist, when his foot, sliding along the treacherous surface of 
snow, failed him at the crisis, and both fell headlong to the earth. Their 
combat was here renewed: neither could regain his footing ; but still 
Etchehon had the mastery in the conflict. He contrived to shift a little, 
from time to time, towards the edge of the bridge ; and, at last, seizing a 
momen favourable to his purpose, Ls collected his whole strength— 


« i 


468 A Tale of the Pyrenees. ‘Nov. 


thrust from him, in the direction of the parapet, the ‘stunned body of 
Eguiapal—and rolling and scrambling himself to the same point, com- 
pleted his work by urging him onward with his own legs, whilst with 
his hands he clung to the bars and side-rails of the bridge. A loud 
splash in the waters told of the end of Eguiapal. Etchehon himself, 
exhausted, but triumphant, shouted aloud in that his perilous situation, 
and thanked Heaven that the hour of retribution had at length come. 
His shout was overheard, and by none other than Dominic Etchegogen, 
to whom that bridge had before been so nearly fatal. Coming up at the 
moment, he then witnessed the exultation of Etchehon on the scene of 
his murderous success. He charged him with the deed—he warned him of 
his crime. Convicted now of mortal sin, nothing would save him from 
the vengeance of that law which he had so often outraged. He was 
proceeding to seize the criminal, whilst others were flocking to the spot 
to secure him ; but their intentions were frustrated. Still hanging by 
his arms, and but little supported by the buttress that swelled out 
beneath him, Etchehon suddenly lifted himself upwards, and, bounding 
towards the level of the bridge, effected a secure footing. Then, loudly 
entreating a moment’s pause, he uttered these words :— 
' Friends! I have not offended you willingly: the cause of my error 
lies low beneath those waters. You say that death is at hand for me also: 
you speak truly. If I do not again see my wife, tell her that we may 
meet in heaven, if she now can repent of her cruelties to me. Her good 
is at my heart ; I love her still; I love her for ever. Let my name pass 
away from your traditions, but not from her memory. Bid her weep 
for me, as she will do for the sinner whom she preferred to me. I fol- 
low him !” 

He leaped from the bridge ; and the waters, which were ruffled with 
his fall, soon passed quietly and smoothly over his stiffened nn ! 

VAH. 


MIDNIGHT: A SONNET. 


’Tis Night, deep Night! the moon is up, the stars 
Are watching in the sky, and the quick ear 

Can catch no'sound, save where its lone career 
Through Elle’s* witch cavern, diamonded with spars, 
Rolls the young laughing rill: this is the hour 

For thought, when memory rears the awful ghost 

Of buried youth ; hopes chilled, affections crossed, 
Again, in this new spring, put forth the flower, 

Till the whole heart is softness ;—how serene, 

How chastely cold, yon moon pursues her track 
Through space! her mild but inexpressive mien 
Smiles ali undimmed by sorrow’s rude attack ; 

While man’s sad brow, the sable throne of gloom, 

Is veiled in clouds from childhood to the tomb. £9 


* An old name for the cave of Crerig-cennan, near Llandilo-Vawr, South Wales. . 


a 


- 


' 


. 


1828.) ai 469° J 


WELSH JURISPRUDENCE.* 


As nations conquer to extend the sweets of patronage to their rulers, 
and not the blessings of civilization to the vanquished, it seldom happens 
that the latter derive much benefit from the more-improved institutions 
of their conquerors. Such, at all events, has been the eventual history 
of English aggrandizement ; and, if the state of its jurisprudence be 
taken as an indication, the fate of Wales is but the repetition of a twice~ 
told tale. 

In their petition to Henry VIII. to be admitted into the laws and 
privileges of Englishmen, we find the Welsh complaining “ But as the 
kings of this realm, weary of their attempts in person against us, did 
formerly give not only our country to those who would conquer it, but 
permitted them, jura regalia, within their several precincts, so it was 
impossible to come to an agreement, while so many that undertook this 
work usurped martial and absolute power and jurisdiction in all they 
acquired, without establishing any equal justice; and that all offenders, 
for the rest, flying from one lordship marcher (for so they were termed) 
to another, did both avoid the punishment of the law, and easily commit 
those robberies, which have formerly tainted the honour of our parts.” 
It is true, that in answer to this petition, a more regular system for the 
administration of justice through the principality was attempted to be 
provided, by the establishment of Courts Baron, Hundred, and County 
Courts, and the institution of the Court of Great Session. The three 
first are distributed about the country pretty much in the same way as 
our own petty courts of the same denomination. The last is an itinerant 
court corresponding with our courts of assize—possessed of powers 
equally ample for the trial of civil and criminal causes, with the addition 
of an equitable jurisdiction—and administered by judges appointed by 
the government. But this, in the one instance, was to leave the dispen- 
sation of justice to a description of tribunal which has never proved 
especially competent to its discharge: in the other, instead of embracing 
the country within the circuits of our judges, to trust it to the care of 
such inferior functionaries as it suited the purposes of patronage to 
bestow—and in both to turn the principality into a mere local jurisdic- 
tion. We do not indeed deny that a distribution of local tribunals 
throughout the whole face of a country, may be the best system of 
judicial organization it can adopt. Indeed, when we know that this has 
been recommended by so high an authority as Mr. Bentham, and hear its 
practical operation so loudly extolled in France, we wish devoutly that 
the current of popular attention set more strongly towards it—In Eng- 

d, however, a local tribunal is synonymous with an incompetent one ; 
and though sharing most of their defects, both the petty courts and 
courts of Great Session, are very far behind our own courts, both in the 
ability and impartiality of their officers. 

« Practice makes perfect,” saith the adage ; and, if that wise saw of our 
grandmothers were an universal truth, most perfect indeed ought to be 
the county and baronial courts of Wales. From the parliamentary 
returns to the committee of 1821, it appears that the number of actions 
instituted in these courts for the county of Carmarthen, during a period 


“ Letter to Lord Lyndhurst on the Administration of Justice in Wales, by Earl 
Cawdor. 3 


470 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Nov. 


of no more than nine years, actually amounted to thirteen thousand nine 
hundred and thirty-six (and this, be it remembered, independent of those 
tried in the Court of Great Session), which was just about ten’ thousand 
more than the county of Monmouth (a county of very similar area and 
population) could muster during the same period. ‘That these courts, 
however, are anything but “ modern instances” of the saw, we believe 
no very elaborately-wrought chain of evidence will be required to prove. 
The goodness of a commodity is indeed apt to be measured by its cost, 
and courts in which the attorney of one year becomes the judge of the 
next—and a judge paid by thefees of the suitors—are not like to have 
the scale of their expence reduced to a degrading minimum. Beyond 
this, however, they appear to possess but few recommendations. They 
are characterized as vortexes for dragging the unwary into litigation, 
rather than as sanctuaries of justice ; and we dismiss them with Lord 
Cawdor’s sweeping observation—“ Instead of a simple and expeditious 
manner of recovering small demands, intelligible to those who would 
generally be amenable to their jurisdiction, suits for the most trifling 
amount are protracted from year to year, and all the intricacies of special 
pleading, and legal chicanery resorted to, for no other purpose than to 
swell the costs of suit, and delay the administration of justice.” —page 26. 
The judicial apparatus of the Court of Great Session most assuredly 
does not suffer from any narrowness or contraction in its scale. Actuated, 
we suppose, by the love of Philosopher Square’s “ eternal fitness of 
things,” our legislature must not only erect the principality into a 
separate jurisdiction, but must actually subdivide into four independent 
and original judicatures, each the subject of a separate circuit, with its chief 
judge and second judge, its attorney-general, and corresponding grada- 
tions of officers—its judges receiving salaries to the tune of eleven hun- 
dred and fifty pounds each: indeed, the chief justice of Chester pockets 
sixteen hundred and fifty pounds per annum, and the second judge. 
twelve hundred and fifty pounds; but as they have the additional busi- 
ness of that county to transact, we set the difference down to that account. 
Only conceive it, ye people, “who put your trust in princes,” twelve 
judges are thought sufficient for holding assizes for the whole of Eng- 
land—trom John-o’-Groat even unto the Land’s End—but for this little 
nook of the kingdom, these “barren regions of Venedotia,” which, in 
the year 1811, did not, according to census, contain altogether a popula- 
tion equal to that of the West Riding of Yorkshire, nothing short of a 
judicial establishment of eight dignitaries, and minor officers in propor- 
tion, will content the rapacity of aristocratical patronage. Now when 
we see a vast number of powdered lacqueys forming the establishment of 
some small residence, and receiving exorbitant wages to boot, if we 
speculate at all in the matter, we generally come to two conclusions—. 
first, that there is but little work in that house to be done ; and secondly, , 
that that little will be badly performed. Of the manner in which the. 
work is done in the judicial establishment of Wales, we shall presently 
present our readers with the materials of judging. Of the quantity, 
and of its cost, they may form an idea from an amusing calcu-- 
lation we have made for their instruction. Now it appears from the 
parliamentary returns, that the number of bills filed in the various Courts : 
of Great Session during the preceding eleven years, ending in 1823,. 
amounted to no more than six hundred and eighty-nine, the number of 
common law causes to thirteen hundred and seventeex, and the criminal » 


1828.] Welsh Jurisprudence. 471 


trials to eleven hundred and seven ; but as the decrees pronounced in 
the various bills filed did not exceed two hundred and fifty-six, and the 
orders were only seven, the aggregate of causes actually despatched, but 
just reaches two thousand six hundred and eighty-seven. This divided 
over a period of eleven years, will give an average of two hundred and 
forty-four and a fraction, for each year; and this again distributed 
among the eight judges, the share of each will be a fraction more than 
thirty. Their wages, however, for trying thirty causes, amounting to 
eleven hundred and fifty pounds, it follows that the cost of judgment in 
each cause is somewhat more than thirty-eight pounds—So much for 
the cost to the public. Let us next see what the proportion of payment 
is to those who receive it. Now both circuits together never occupy 
more than six weeks in the year, three in the spring, and three in the 
autumn ; and, as there are but six working days in the week, there can 
be but thirty-six for the adjudication of these thirty and a fraction 
causes. From this we may fairly strike off the odd six for the days 
idled away in cpening commissions, going through the farce of session 
sermons, grand jury charges, and all the parade of wasting time, and the 
estimate will therefore be for each judge one cause per day—and that, 
be it remembered, at the rate of thirty-eight pounds per cause. There 
are, however, just three hundred and thirteen working days in every 
year ; if then the Welsh judges were in actual employment all the year 
round, at the same rate of business, and at the same scale of wages, 
each of these inferior functionaries would just receive the trifling salary 
of eleven thousand eight hundred and ninety-four pounds, which is only 
one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four pounds more than the chief 
Justice of all England. But this is by no means a fair way of putting 
the estimate. On the English circuit, at the very lowest, we apprehend 
the daily average of causes cannot be less than six ;* and, as all Welsh 
causes of importance are, for obvious reasons, carried to the next county 
within the English jurisdiction, and those left for the Court of Great 
Session, on the whole considerably less intricate and difficult than Eng- 
lish ones, the Welsh causes ought probably not to consume above half the 
time of the latter in their trial. Taking, however, the average of busi- 
ness from the English, and the pay from the Welsh circuit, this would 
give the trifling rate of payment for each individual Welsh judge of 
seventy-one thousand three hundred and sixty-four pounds per annum ; 
which, it cannot help being observed, is below the mark by a few thou- 
sands at least ; and this for a little more than an easy drive through one 
_ of the most romantic countries in the world, twice in each year—once 
when the voice of spring is ringing through its mountains, and again 
when its magnificent vales are embrowning with an autumn sun. 

Some little difference between a Welsh judge and the worthy Parson 

Adams, who, “at the age of forty-five, found himself possessed of the 

handsome income of twenty-three pounds a-year, with which, however, 
he was unable to make any great show, because he lived in a dear 
country, and was, moreover, a little incumbered with a wife and six 
children.” How close must the legal population be pressing upon the 
means of subsistence. Yet with all this in their eyes, the Finance Com- 
mittee on Courts of Justice, of 1798, quietly report “among other 


* In the Hints for more Speedy Administration of Justice, page 21, the annual average 
_issaid to be 2,090, ¢ 


472 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Nov. 


reductions of expenditure which might possibly take place without any 
detriment, and even much benefit to the public service, is the retrench- 
ment which might be effected by the gradual consolidation of the four 
judicatures of Wales into one circuit,” &c. We wonder when the people 
of England will cease to be treated as “ husks for swine to fatten on.” 
To the usual evils of local jurisdictions (the want of power to compel 
the attendance of witnesses within them, or to enforce obedience to 
decrees without), an act which passed in the session of 1824, affected to 
apply a remedy. The remedies for the first are appropriately described 
by Lord Cawdor “to be almost as curious as the grievance.” One 
_ would naturally have supposed that the shortest way of getting a witness 
into any court of justice (next to carrying him in on the shoulders), was 
to render the summons of that court imperative on him. Our legislature, 
however (perhaps thinking travelling a wholesome exercise to its subjects, 
and by way of extending their principle of encouragement to mail-coach- 
men), in order to get a Welshman into a Welsh witness box, prefer 
making the requisite summons issuable from the Court of Exchequer at 
Westminster ; and though, in certain excepted cases, they trust the pro- 
vincial court, with the exercise of this weighty authority, they neverthe- 
less provide, that, with reference to all, the penalties for disobedience are 
only to be obtained in the Exchequer. “ This is legislation,” says his 
lordship, “‘ beyond my comprehension. You render the Court of Ex- 
chequer, in the first part of this clause, ancillary to the Court of Great 
Session, and compel it to issue process in a case not before it. In the 
second, you authorise the Marshal of the Court of Great Session to issue 
the same process in a particular case, which, if he can do with propriety 
in that case, he might assuredly do in all. Then having issued the 
process in the name of a justice of the Court of Great Session, you deny 
him all jurisdiction as to the contempt of it ; and, for the ease of parties 
residing in the country, and to shew what value we ought to set upon 
having justice administered at our own doors, the remedy for disobedience 
is to be sought in Westminster.”—pages 31, 32. The clause empowering 
the judges to issue commissions for the examination of witnesses out of 
the jurisdiction, leaves it “entirely at the option of those persons to 
answer, or not, as may be found most convenient”—page 33; and the 
provision for enforcing decrees against parties who have submitted to the 
jurisdiction of the courts “ is not in the shape of power to the Court of 
Great Session, but of authority to the Courts of Westminster to issue 
process, on the production of certain certificates and office copies of pro- 
ceedings, in order to enforce rules and decrees made by another court.” 
In addition to this, each jurisdiction has its own peculiar and varying 
standard of practice, which the rest refuse to recognise ; and, either out 
of deference to the mutual jealousies of attornies, or from some other 
cause, the attorney of one circuit is restricted from practising in another, 
without a previous admission, to the great detriment of all who, hap- 
pening to have suits without the limit of their own attorney’s practice, 
may be driven to resort to strangers for the conduct of their causes. 
The first is an evil which can be removed only by a fundamental change 
in the whole jurisdiction ; and to the latter, the act to which we have 
alluded did net even affect to provide a remedy. 
The proceedings of the court exhibit the most anomalous compound of 
indecent hurry and ruinous delay. The Court of Great Session only 
occupies three weeks in its circuit ; and it is during the progress of this, 


ss 


1828.] Welsh Jurisprudence. 473 


that the whole circuit business of the county, including therein equity, 
has to be settled. The entire sitting, however, of the court for actually 
dispatching the business of the session, at any one place, does not exceed 
four days, and, accordingly, it frequently happens that causes of the 
greatest importance—causes involving great nicety in the construction 
of the law, and the arrangement of the pleadings, or requiring the testi- 
mony of numerous witnesses in their elucidation, may have to be insti« 
tuted and decided within the space of those four days. On the other 
hand, if the want of preparation drive either party to the alternative of 
postponement to some future session (to say nothing of this not being 
always attainable), or, as must frequently happen, the limitation of the 
session equally prevents a decision, the delay becomes perhaps even 
more destructive than the previous scramble and confusion, so that, says 
Lord Cawdor, “ The general result of all this is, that where there is despatch 
in the Welsh courts (i.e. in new issues), it is, in almost every instance, 
harassing to the suitors, counsel, and solicitors ; whereas in old issues, 
or causes which have been commenced at a preceding sessions, six months 
have necessarily elapsed. In those instances in which causes are not 
tried till the second or third sessions, the delay is as great, or greater, 
than in England”—>p. 43. 

But it is in the equitable jurisdiction of the court that these opposite 
ingredients are most sweetly blended. Mr. Bentham, in his Rationale 
of Judicial Evidence, while with his usual quaintness, he alludes to 
“the Great High Court,” as “a sort of sloth, which, though at its own 
pace, keeps on crawling almost the whole year round,” describes “the 
little Welsh Equity Court, as-a sort of dormouse, that must generally 
sleep ten or eleven months of the year.” We confess, however, that 
when, after its long slumber, it does awake, it seems less like a dormouse 
than a giant refreshed with sleep—or a comet loosened from its orbit, 
for there never was any thing equal to the rapidity with which, when 
once in motion, it whirls itself through the whole Principality. Alluding 
to the “former practice of the court, to consider the legal jurisdiction 
as confined to the county in which the cause of action arose,” Lord 
Cawdor remarks, “ The equitable jurisdiction, on the contrary, was sup- 
posed to travel post, and to extend through the three counties, of which 

_ every circuit is composed ; so that a bill may be filed at one stage, 
_ answered at the next, and the case, perhaps, argued at the third; then 
a delay of six months, when the rapid proceeding commenced again,” 
p- 44. And truly it would appear, that if the suitors of the court ever 
osted with less than six horses, they could scarcely keep up with it ; 
ber Lord Cawdor relates in detail, and in a manner very illustrative, the 
case of a gentleman, who, at eleven o’clock in the morning, was served 
at his usual place of residence, with a writ to appear at Cardiff, forty- 
_ seven miles distant, on the same evening, and posted there accordingly” 
_ —we presume under fear of being committed for a contempt. 
The phenomenon of a court of justice sitting barely two months in 
the course of a year, did, however, attract the attention of the legisla- 
ture ; and to the long intervals between the sittings of the Court of 
Great Sessions, the act of 1824 also extended its care. But juris- 
prudential legislation is, in England, only a species of state quackery 3 
_ and the whole of this precious sample appears to be about as efficacious 
in its rernedies, as a quackish prescription for “ causing magnanimity 
and curing the stone,” which we remember to have met with in an early 


M.M. New Series —Vou. VI. No. 35. 3 P 


474 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Nov. 


pharmacopeeia, published under the sanction of our Collége of Physi- 
cians. The fact presented to the consideration of the legislature was, 
the demand of the inhabitants of Wales for the establishment of a 
supreme court of justice there, which, if not permanently open to the 
resort of its inhabitants, might at the very least be sitting a large propor- 
tion of the year. The measure adopted was the extension to the judges 
of the Court of Great Session, “in all cases, both at law and in equity, 
when the said courts shall not be sitting in Wales, to hear motions and 
petitions, and to make such rules and orders thereon in vacation, and 
out of the jurisdiction of the said courts, as to them the said judges shall 
seem meet, and occasion shall require.” But where will it be supposed 
that these extraordinary sittings of the judges were to be holden? Our 
readers, “ good easy souls,” will naturally enough exclaim, oh, in some 
incommodious court, built expressly for the purpose, at only double its 
necessary cost, planted possibly at no further distance from the centre 
of Wales than on the outskirts of one of the boundary counties, and so 
far open to the public as it pleases the dignity of javelin men to tolerate. 
No such thing. This vacation court, with the charming ubiquity of 
the King’s Bench, disdains to be confined to one wretched spot. To 
day it may be taking the tour of the Highlands—to morrow, it may be 
steaming it from Southampten to Cowes—or the next day be visiting its 
great relative of Westminster—it follows its judges while they are shoot- 
ing over preserves—it is at their heels again when they are gorman~ 
dizing at the bench table of inns of court—nor does it forsake them when 
in the Lethean waters of some fashionable Spa they are whiling away all 
remembrance of ermine, save its profit. In short, the sitting of the 
court at all depends upon the good fortune of the attorney in getting two 
judges together at any spot throughout Great Britain, which may happen 
to suit their convenience; and as no other is allowed to practice in 
Welsh courts, this attorney must be a Welshman, a whole Welshman, 
and nothing but a Welshman. This collection of the judicial forces is, 
as Lord Cawdor observes, no easy matter— For instance,” says he, 
“one of the judges of the Carmarthen circuit resides in Denbighshire, 
the other in London ; and there is nothing to compel the one to come 
from Denbighshire to London, or the London one to go into Denbigh- 
shire.” Suppose this difficulty, however, surmounted, the next is to hit 
upon a place of sitting. This is, of course, discretionary with the judges 
selected ; and, embued with the requisite quantity of veneration for the 
institutions-of their ancestors, they might take a fancy to re-enact the 
part of thé Druids, and fix the judgment seat on Stonehenge Crags— 
we find nothing in the act to prevent it. Indeed, we would recommend 
the scene to Cruikshank. It would form an admirable subject for a 
sketch under the title, “ Welsh Administration of Justice at your own 
Door.” But suppose they are resident lawyers in London, or, which 
is an even chance, country gentlemen resident on their own estates, we 
apprehend neither the chambers of the one, or the libraries of the other, 
are exactly the fittest place in the world to make courts of justice of. 
‘To crown the whole, there is nothing in the act imperative on either 
party to a suit to submit his cause to the judgment of this vacation 
court ; and the advantages -it presents are not quite so obvious as to over- 
come all reluctance on the subject. 

Thus much for the outward framework of the Welsh Courts. As to 
the lustre likely to be shed upon their proceedings, from either 


= 
* 
” 
4 


- 


1828.7 Welsh Jurisprudence, 475 


judges, advocates, or attornies, our readers shall have an opportunity of 
seeing. 

The qualifications of the first are the common qualifications of sine- 
curists—great interest and little knowledge; and we can assure our 
readers, that a “mere Irishman” is not an animal of less respect to an 
Orangeman, than is a Welsh judge to an English lawyer. In addition 
to little original aptitude to their situations, these gentlemen, when they 
descend from the dignity of the bench, are usually left but to one of two 
courses. They must either fall into the ranks of practising advocates, 
or relapse into occupations altogether foreign to the administration of the 
law. In the former case (in addition to the sensible observation of the 
present Justice Littledale on the subject, “that the habits of a counsel 
and judge are very distinct, the mind of the one being in some respects 
differently arranged from that of the other”), it may happen, and Lord 
Cawdor states it actually to have happened, that the judge may have to 
pronounce in judgment on the very case on which he has advised as coun 
sel ;.in the latter, most assuredly, the law, like Acres’s courage, will 
rapidly “ooze out at his finger’s ends.” There is not a private prac- 
titioner, who, in the desertion of the active exercise of professional study, 
does not feel his familiarity with the law gradually crumbling away 
from him. To be even passably acquainted with its subtleties, a man 
must, to some extent, be mixed up as it were with the law and its admi- 
nistration—he must be constantly on the watch for every variation or 
extension of its principles ; without this, a party affecting to preside as 
a judge, must become embarrassed with the feeling of his own insuffi- 
ciency. He will deliver himself up to the guidance of the most dex- 
terous advocates ; and, what is even worse, perhaps, than the loss of his 
confidence in himself, the loss of others’ confidence in him will come to 
complete the exhibition of his incompetence. His lordship states truly 
enough. that it must require “some courage in a Chancery barrister to 
come fresh from his practice in the Court of Equity, to sit in judgment 
on the lives of his fellow creatures ;’ but we think it would be even a 
still more absurd exhibition to see a lounger at-watering-places, or a 
gentleman-rustic,* coming fresh from their ease, to expound knotty points 
of seisin and disseisin—pleadings and demurrers—or questions of tithes 
and moduses. Moreover, we quote the language of Mr. Brougham,— 
« another and a greater objection is, that the Welsh judges never change 
their circuits. One of them, for instance, goes the Carmarthen circuit, 
another the Brecon circuit, and a third the Chester circuit—but always 
the same circuit. And what is the inevitable consequence? Why, they 
become acquainted with the gentry, the magistrates, almost with the 
tradesmen of each district, the very witnesses who come before them, 
and intimately with the practitioners, whether counsel or attornies. 
The names, the faces, the characters, the histories, of all those persons 
are familiar to them ; and out of this too great knowledge grow likings 
and prejudices, which never can by any possibility cast a shadow across 
the open, broad, and pure path of the judges of Westminster Hall.’’+ 

With respect tothe advocates, we did not want his lordship to inform 
us, “that few barristers of eminence find it worth their while to go into 
Wales.” Indeed, the dearth of barristers, of all descriptions, frequenting 


* An animal better known as a country gentleman. 
+ Speech on the present oa of the laws, pp. 21, 22. 
3P2 


476 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Noy, 


the circuits of the Court of Great Session is so great, that, in the Equity 
Court, the same draftsman is sometimes obliged to prepare both bill and 
answer, “to the great satisfaction,” doubtless, as his lordship observes, 
«of all parties concerned.” The politeness of lawyers is, however, a 
thing not to be taken for granted on such slight authority as our own ; 
and we must, therefore, quote the authority of Lord Cawdor, that the 
inconvenience of all alternate deficiencies of equity and common law 
counsel is, as far as in them lies, remedied by the great good manners 
of the barristers, who, “in the most obliging manner, are, in general, 
ready to practice in law or equity at a moment’s notice.” 

Assuredly, the lack of counsel is not met by any corresponding defi- 
ciency of attornies. A statute of Henry VI., setting forth, that not long 
before that time there had not been more than six or eight attornies in 
Norfolk and Suffolk, “ que tempore (it remarks) magna tranquillitas 
regnabat,” but that the number had then increased to twenty-four, to the 
great vexation and prejudice of these counties, enacted, that for the 
future there should be only six attornies in Norfolk, six in Suffolk, and 
two in the city of Norwich. This “ great vexation and prejudice,” 
sustained by Norfolk and Suffolk, could scarcely be equal to that occa- 
sioned to all the counties of Wales, from the overwhelming excess of its 
attornies—an excess so great, that Lord Cawdor estimates the average 
of business in one of the circuits not to exceed one cause to every pair of 
attornies. Westley, however, used to say, “that the devil never found 
aman idle but he gave him a job,” and, accordingly, as the dearth of 
business in the Court of Great Session leaves plenty of leisure on hand— 
and as the job is pleasanter than starving, the devil finds employment 
for the Welsh attornies, in raking up all sorts of petty disputes, and in 
driving the poor Welshmen about like cattle into all the petty provincial 
courts in the principality.. The following morceau will convey some 
faint idea of the manner in which these precious labourers execute the 
work intrusted to them. Lord Cawdor states it to have been addressed 
to a labouring man, to recover payment for the mending of a pair of 
shoes, and to be copied from the original:—. ~ 


« Sir, 
. Having been directed by A. B. to apply to you for £0. 1s. 0d. due to him, 
} have to request that you will pay me that sum, together with my charge of 
five shillings, on or before Saturday next, as I shal] otherwise be obliged to 
commence an action against you for the recovery thereof without further 
notice. 


“Fam 

** Your obedient servant, 

; “Cn 

_ In a proclamation of the Emperor of China, called forth a few years. 
back, by the troublesome increase of appeals from the provinces, His 
Mightiness enjoins “strict search to be made to discover all law-suit 
exciting blackguards, who fatten on feuds themselves have created, and 
when found to punish them severely.” Fortunate is it for the Welsh 
attornies that the Emperor of China does not get among them with his 
bastinado. With the great learning in the art of suit-making, but, 
little other education would seem to fall to their lot, and, somehow or 
other, they have ever borne a large share of that general obloquy which 
seems to attach upon the whole administration of justice in Wales. At 
a meeting of the county of Pembroke, in the year 1818, for the purpose 


1828. ] Welsh Jurisprudence. 477 


of taking into consideration the practice of the County Courts, was a 
resolution—“ That we have observed with considerable alarm the increase 
of litigation, destructive of the public tranquillity, and highly injurious 
‘to the prosperity of the county of Pembroke: That not only have the 
legal charges been of late greatly increased, but repeated and cruel 
instances have come to our knowledge of suits being carried on in the 
most expensive manner that legal ingenuity could suggest for the reco- 
very of the smallest.debts, or in obtaining redress for the most trifling 
injuries, thereby making the law of the land the instrument of the grossest 
oppression.” 7 

On the subject of juries we do not find much in print ; but there is 
an old story in circulation of a Welsh trial, in which a prisoner, tried 
for forgery, was brought in guilty of sheep stealing, as the foreman 
declared, to save the criminal from being hanged ; and another. in which 
a witness, who had prevaricated in his evidence, is represented as being 
brought in guilty instead of the culprit. “How say ye, gentlemen of 
the jury, guilty or not guilty ?”— Guilty, my lord, against the witness !” 
The act of the present reign affected to improve the character of the 
jurymen by giving them a qualification. Upon what principle of phre- 
nology it is that a man’s brains expand with the expansion of his acres, 
we have not yet had the good fortune to be instructed, though the 
English jury law seems to proceed upon its assumption. We have yet, 
however, to see how much the verdicts of Welsh jurymen will be 
improved under the operation of this wisdom-bestowing act. 

Such is the paradise of law which English government has provided 
for Wales. But the “labours of love” have not stopped with the esta- 
blishment of the paradise ; bars must needs be devised to keep its happy 
inmates within its walls. Fearful lest the Welsh suitor should escape 
with his cause into any neighbouring English county, which such par- 
tial, ignorant, incompetent judges, as my Lord Tenterden, or Mr. Jus~ 
tice Bayley, might happen to be taking in their circuits, the legislature 
has enacted, “ That all actions upon the case for words, action of debt, 
trespass, or the case of assault and battery, and other personal actions 
(which, be it observed, comprehend the greater part of all the actions 
brought) which shall be brought in any of His Majesty’s Courts of 
Record out of the Principality of Wales, and the debt in damages, found 

_ by the jury, shall not amount to the sum of fifty pounds ; and it shall 
_ appear that the cause of action arose in Wales, and that the defendant 
‘was resident there at the time of the commencement of the action, a 
i judgment of nonsuit shall be entered against the plaintiff, and he shall 
pay to the defendant his costs of suit.” This is confining the Welshmen 
_ in their paradise with a witness to it. Unluckily, however, like Rasselas 
in the happy valley, they do not seem quite so contented with their 
_ situation as some people may imagine they ought to be; though, for 
_ ourselves, we confess we are not much surprised that the dissatis- 
_ faction which appeared to the Committee of 1818, to be “ felt in dif- 
_ ferent parts of Wales, with the existing state of the courts, by means of 
which justice is there administered,” should survive the miserable abor= 
tion which was provided as a remedy—the act of 1824. But when a 
country begins to mistrust either the purity or the sufficiency of its 
courts, it is high time, if it be not sought, to let it waste itself into “a 
voice crying in the wilderness,” to put all considerations of power 
and patronage aside, and yield to the national lament. It is atrocious 


% 
| A 


478 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Nov. 


that justice should receive even the suspicion of a stain—the wants of a 
country be left unheeded—and its moral advancement kept back, only 
that the judicial cushion may be turned into a pillow of repose, to 
reward the political subserviency of a few unlearned, untalented, 
unknown lawyers. The system has indeed found an excuse in the 
cheapness with which it provides justice to the suitors. Thirty-eight 
pounds per cause, we humbly suggest, is, however, rather a dear rate at 
which to purchase the species of adjudication which the Court of Great 
Session doles out ; and with respect to the whole, we cite the authority 
of Lord Colchester.—“ If it be urged, that all or any of these disad- 
vantages are compensated by the cheapness with which justice is so 
administered, the fact itself may be well doubted, as a general propo- 
sition, and the reverse of it may in many cases be demonstrated: and 
if the fact be admitted, there still may remain a doubt whether the pur- 
chase of injustice (in so many instances) even at a cheap rate, be an 
advantageous privilege.’”’—Preface to the Companion to the Chester Cir- 
cuit, p. 29. 

The Committee of 1821 reported,—-“ It appears to your Committee, 
after a diligent consideration of the evidence taken before them, and of. 
the objections which have been urged against the judicature in its present 
form, that, although some of the minor difficulties might perhaps be done 
away by new regulations, yet that others, most essential to the right 
administration of justice, could not, without such fundamental changes as : 
would amount to the institution of a new jurisdiction.” With this strong 
declaration in their teeth, how idle was it, in the legislature, to put forth 
their late statute as a remedy! When all is rottenness, little good is to 
be expected from palliatives—a system which hangs together only by 
the harmony of its evils, must be revolutionized and not patched up. 
But what is true with respect to the component parts of this lesser 
system, is an equal truth with that larger one of which it is only a mem-- 
ber—the judicial organization of the whole kingdom ; and so many are 
the obstacles which ignorance, prejudice, and interest conspire to oppose 
to the renovation of this larger whole, that, in urging the remodelling 
of any of its fractional parts, the jurist always feels that sickness of the 
heart which arises from the consciousness of wasted effort. He resembles 
the surgeon, whose utmost skill can scarce achieve the care of a few local 
sores, while he beholds his patient wasting away under the influence of 
an aneurized aorta. To abolish the whole jurisdiction of the principa- 
lity as a separate jurisdiction—to consolidate it with that of England— 
to include Wales within the circuits of our judges, and to make all its 
proceedings triable only in our tribunals—are, however, the measures 
which have been recommended for the improvement of the Welsh sys~ 
tem: and consistently with the existing frame-work of the rest of our 
judicial establishment, we confess they appear to be the most rational 
that can be adopted. Lord Cawdor’s proposition for the arrangement 
of the circuit is, by dividing the Oxford circuit, to make two new 
ones, to one of which South Wales, to the other North Wales might be 
annexed—to take Lancaster from the Northern Circuit (which he says, 
truly enough, is now too large), and to add Oxford to the Midland, so 
that the two circuits would stand thus :— 

1. Lancaster. Shropshire, 
Lancashire, Staffordshire, 
Cheshire, North Wales. 


1828.] Welsh Jurisprudence. 479 


2. Gloucester. Worcestershire, 
Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, 
Herefordshire, South Wales. 


Independently of the obvious benefit of the substitution of a better 
for a worse system of judicature, there are many advantages which 
would ensue from this consolidation of jurisdictions. The increased 
intercourse which would thereby be engendered with this country—the 
greater resort of the suitors of Wales to our courts—the progress of our 
judges through its counties, with its necessary result of an extending 
identity of language—would all conspire to promote the advancement of 
our less civilized neighbour ; while we believe what Lord Cawdor tells 
us as the result of one part of the existing system, is equally applicable 
to the whole—that it actually operates to deter individuals “ who would 
otherwise be tempted to invest capital in Wales, either in the purchase of 
land or in commercial and mining speculations.” 

It may be gratifying to learn, that in the discussion of any projected 
improvements in this matter, we may hope to be spared a little the sound 
of that disgusting werd “ compensation” —a word which, we apprehend, 
would never have found its way into the glossary of any government 
whose grand agency was not corruption. That, instead of being compelled 
to disgorge a little of the past, men should have to be bought off from 
the means of future robbery on the public, is a system so absurd, that 
we cannot imagine how it could ever have been tolerated for an instant. 
Yet to such an extent is this claim now urged by every place-holding 
vampire, that we should not be surprised if fellows transported to 
Botany Bay for pick-pocketting, should not soon put in their claim to 
compensation, for being forced to relinquish their profitable walks on the 
London pavement. Lord Cawdor, however, states, that the four last 
judges appointed in the Court of Great Session, have, he believes, 
accepted their offices under the express understanding that they were to 
have no compensation in case of any alteration in the court. He adds, 
“nor is there any reason why they should have it”—a proposition, we 
apprehend, which would be readily assented to by all but the parties them- 
selves, even had his lordship not added the qualification, “on account 
of any sacrifice made by them; for a Welsh judge (unfortunately he 
has to state) unlike an English one, does not give up his practice on 

_ coming upon the bench ; his income as judge is entirely additional.” 
Still, whoever imagines this to be the only obstacle—or a very con- 
siderable one in the way of reform—will, we apprehend, be grievously 
mistaken. Patronage must take care that it is not injured in any way 
before government is like to set very heartily about the work ; and 
it would seem that Lord Cawdor had some secret misgivings on the 
subject, for he thinks it necessary in concluding a work—the simple 
object of which was “to show that the remedies which have been applied 
to the grievances felt in the administration of justice in Wales, by no 
means meet the evil,” to issue the formal manifesto, that he has done so 
« from no feeling of hostility to the government.” 

In addition to this, there are, most probably, other sinister interests 
to be grappled with; and sinister interest, like an American sharp- 
shooter, is, in this country, indued with a presence so universal, that 

_we only discover him by the ball of his rifle. 


[ 480 J | Nov. 


COLONEL ROCHE FERMOY ON THE MORAL AND PAYSICAL FORCE 
OF IRELAND. 


IRELAND, it is said in some of our newspapers, attracts much of the 
notice of the Continental politicians, and her strength or weakness is 
matter of anxious calculation abroad. We believe, if we say that the 
expatriated Irish are very anxious to impress the importance of the fac- 
tions to which they belong, and the great interest which they ought to 
be in Europe, we shall have said what is nearer the truth. Without at 
present entering into the question as to the causes of the fact, it is matter 
of history that Irish exiles, from the earliest days that the history of 
these islands begins to dawn, have been painfully conspicuous for their 
anxiety to call in foreign aid. Almost the very first notice of Ireland in 
the annals of the civilized world, occurs in Tacitus’s History of Agricola, 
and there we find a banished Irish chieftain proposing to the Roman 
commander to invade Ireland, and assuring him that half a legion, about 
three thousand men, would be amply sufficient for the conquest Ten or 
eleven centuries later, Dermot McMurrough called in the assistance of 
the Anglo-Norman knights, and it is rather whimsical to perceive that 
almost exactly the same number of men* as that proposed to Julius Agri- 
cola, was eventually required for the successful accomplishment of the 
purposes of their invasion. 

During the long wars of the Lords of the Pale against their rude 
neighbours, the European powers were too much torn in pieces by intes- 
tine dissentions of their own to afford assistance to the descendants of those 
whom Mr. Moore has designated as the ragged, royal race of Tara. 
But as soon as nations began to consolidate, as soon as the present political 
relations, or at least outlines of them, commenced to get into play, viz. 
in the sixteenth century, the application for foreign interference begins 
to be as regular a feature in discontented Irish policy, as in the days: 
of the Cesars or the Plantagenets. In the reign of Elizabeth Spain 
was the leading continental power—the first in all the arts, and strongest 
in all the sinews of war. She was mistress of the Netherlands, of Por- 
tugal, of the Indies, the head of the Catholic interest, allied with all the 
great courts of Europe. To Spain, therefore, the eyes of the Irish in- 
surrectionists were turned, and Spanish intrigue, Spanish dollars, and at 
last Spanish troops, (a small army commanded by Don Juan d’Aguilar, 
united to a large tumultuous force of Irish, was defeated in the end of 
Queen Elizabeth’s reign, near Kinsale) were employed in exciting the 
hopes or supporting the cause of the last barbarian princes of the Milesian’ 
descent. In the next century the ascendency of Spain had departed, and. 
the insurgents of 1641 looked to France, to Louis XIV. ; and as the tem- 
poral power of the Popes, or at least their treasury, was even then of 
some importance, the assistance of his Holiness and his exchequer was 
not deemed unworthy of attention. Modern Rome has however been as 
sparing of bestowing gold on foreign nations as antient—both have been 
much more active in gathering tribute than in returning any part of it ; 
and the Urbans and Innocents sent bulls and nuncios, instead of men 
and money. French troops, however, and they too troops of the finest. 
days of France, made their appearence upon the Irish soil, when James IT. 
made his last struggle for his dominions ; but with the surrender of Li- 
merick they departed. France, in some few years after, had enough to 
do at home, without meddling with the territory of her neighbours. 


4 
: 


1828.] The Moral and Physical Force of freland. 48] 


From the date of their departure to our own times, the French armies 
have been filled with Irish, and a favourite measure, recommended by the 
puny courts of the Pretenders, and sometimes dreamt of by the French 
cabinet, was another invasion of Ireland. Numberless are the memoirs 
and plans of campaigns, drawn up by various military O’s and Mac’s exist 
ing on manuscripts lying in the French archives, in which it is demon- 
strated that the most obvious and prudent policy for France to adopt, 
would be the immediate invasion of their native country. Many causes, 
however, prevented their patriotic wishes from being carried into execu- 
tion. After the peace of Utrecht, France had no power of moving offen- 
sively for some time, and when her strength had _ recovered, the policy 
of her minister, Fleury, was essentially pacific. When she appeared in 
arms in the middle of the last century, she was more occupied, (and not 
very succesfully) in the affairs of Germany than of England ; and though 
the young Pretender turned her attention, languidly, however, to Great 
Britain, his views were of necessity primarily confined to Scotland, 
where his chief connexion lay. In the American war France thought 
more of the West Indies than any thing else ; but the Irish in her service 
continually pressed Ireland upon her attention. In vain, however ; that 
was not her game. The Bourbons felt that they had done quite enough 
in fostering resistance to regal power in America, without bringing it 
into Europe, within easy sail of their own dominions. The revolu- 
tionists had no such scruples, and to them the prayers of the United 
Irishmen were addressed. Tone asked from Carnot—as his countryman, 
1,700 years before, had asked of Agricola—half a legion for the conquest 
of Ireland. We need not bring our history down farther : the attempts 
of Hoche and Humbert are matters of newspaper chronology. 

This propensity to look abroad, is, we believe, unparalleled in the history 
of any other people ; at least, in no other people has it become so dis- 
tinctive a national mark. If Russia attains the ascendancy, which is 
expected, or was expected before this last campaign, she too will, in all 
probability, be supplicated for aid in the internal quarrels of Irish 
faction ; and, we perceive, indeed, that there are some hints thrown out 
already. The reasons for this propensity lie somewhat deeper than the 
trading politicians and journalists of this country would so flippantly and 
unhesitatingly assign.. : 

_ The book before us is devoted exclusively to the purpose of showing 
that Ireland contains in herself all the means, physical, military, financial, 
moral, and political, of being independant of England, and its author 


labours hard to prove that it should look to her own means for working 


out this desirable object. He distinctly exclaims against expecting 


foreign aid :— 


_ © Tfany nation think itself aggrieved, and seek relief, let it look at home for 
cultivation of those powers, which may be equal to the end. Let it not 
_ Fepose upon foreign asisstance—the elements which human sagacity or human 
force cannot direct or control—the winds and the waves—fire—or by its 
absence, frost, may destroy the best calculated hope. Foreign expeditions are 
ever precarious.—The Spanish armada—Deus afflavit, et dissipantur.—Charles 
the Twelfth.—Napoleon arrested by frost—Cambyses and his million buried 
in burning sand— 
“ a while the living hill 
Heaved with convulsive throes—then all was still.”’ 


Without wishing to dispute this most disputable of all positions, one 
M.M. New Series —Vou. VI. No. 35. 3Q 


on 


482 Colonel Roche Fermoy on the [Nov. 


which has been contradicted a thousand times in the history of the 
world, it is amusing to remark, that this gentleman, who disclaims all 
foreign assistance, publishes his book in Paris, and appeals, from begin- 
ning to end, to the passions of the French people. A lurking feeling 
possesses him, that all his calculations of internal Irish strength are not 
entirely to be relied upon. In this he is national. 

The author is a Colonel Philip Roche, who, from the place of his birth, 
we suppose, calls himself Colonel Philip Roche Fermoy. Of his history 
we know nothing, but it is probable that he was in the French service. 
The warm praises which he bestows upon the Prussian armies of 1813, 
are something against this supposition, we confess ; but then the praise is 
given principally for the purpose of bolstering up his theory of the 
superiority of a tumultuary over a regular force. His editor informs us, 
that his book, which is most voluminously entitled, “A Commentary on 
the Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone, Major-General in the Service of 
the Republic of France ; in which the Moral and Physical Force of 
Ireland to support National Independance is discussed and examined 
from Authentic Documents,” is published from his posthumous papers— 
but that they were perfectly prepared for the press. The editor gives 
some slight sketches of the history of Colonel Roche’s family, but is 
studiously silent as to the colonel himself—perhaps, therefore, it is merely 
a nom de guerre. ‘This is, indeed, of little consequence. 

The work, which, if we may believe the Courrier Frangais, the Journal 
des Debats, or our Morning Chronicle, and some other journals of the 
same politics, has made some noise, commences by a dedication to “ All 
the Blockheads, Civil, Military, and Ecclesiastical, in the Service of His 
Britannic Majesty,” which is not very valuable, on the score either of 
wit or information, and may be safely passed over. The introduction 
which follows, consists principally of a warm panegyric of Theobald 
Wolfe Tone, whose abilities appear to be here not a little overrated ; and 
this again is followed by a discussion of some opinions on the state of 
Ireland, chiefly by Sir James Mackintosh, who is treated with no great 
civility. These portions of the work, also, present nothing worthy of 
notice. : 

The second chapter undertakes to prove that “ Ireland, in her position, 
and in her forms, exterior and interior, is a fortress of the first order,’— 
and this gives a coup-d’eil of the military position of Ireland, considered 
for the purposes of defence, which may be worth reading :— 


*« The northern district—mountainous almost throughout—many portions of 
these mountains rocky—other portions boggy—others again rock and bog 
intermixed—full of intersections from rivers and lakes—these intersections 
pointing out, to the most inexperienced eye, lines of defence, peculiarly fitted 
to the mode of warfare adapted to irregular troops. In the interior of these 
great aquatic and mountainous intersections, the surface, where it is not bog 
or rock, is, from the minute divisions of farms in Ireland, laid out in small 
portions of arable and pasture lands, the boundaries of which are all formed 
by hedges and ditches, every one of these, from the embankment raised by 
sinking the ditch, forming a defence against musketry; and, if the defenders 
should avail themselves of rear columns of pikes, capable, not only of resist- 
ing, but of punishing the temerity of a charge of bayonets—the hedges forming 
shelter for cattle, that, in a climate, but lightly visited by snow or frost, are 
seldom housed—the ditches being absolutely necessary to carry off the super- 
fluous water, in an abundantly moist climate. 

“ The southern division of Ireland presents, as to its military aspect, “but 


1828.7] Moral and Physical Forcé of Ireland. 4183 


little difference from the northern. Its arable and pasture lands are much 
more fertile. In many places they are as minutely divided. In others, not so 
much—affording extensive feeding for cattle. But its mountains, its interior 
waters, and its sea-inlets, are as strongly marked with defensive features as 
most portions of the globe. 
« There remains, of Ireland, a centre portion, which presents a different 
‘ surface from either the northern or the southern divisions. Although not so 
_. level as the States of Holland or the Netherlands, the space from Dublin east- 
: ward, to Galway westward, does not produce the bold and rocky eminences 
which have been already described. Where the district approaches to a 
level, it is extensively boggy, as in portions of the King’s and Queen’s Coun- 
: ties, and the County of Kildare: or where it rises into firm ground, becomes 
' a tissue of intersections, from the divisions of what is called the cottier popu- 
‘ lation. Add to these artificial intersections, that, even with the arable and 
pasture grounds, are minutely interwoven small ramifications of the greater 
bogs—all these boggy portions impervious to cavalry and to artillery, and, 
if not totally impassable, extremely embarrassing to any infantry, attempting 
to act as regulars. Cavalry, from the intersections of ditches, and the fre- 
qpeney of bogs and mountains, may be considered as an almost useless arm in 
reland. 

“ Travelling still westward, new forms and new modes of division arise. 
The river Shannon may be said to insulate the western province from the 
rest of Ireland. Rising, towards the north, in the Leitrim mountains, those 
mountains, presenting insurmountable difficulty to a regular army (preserving 
at least its regular formations), it surrounds the whole western province to 
Loup-Head, its southern termination on the Atlantic. The western side of 
the Shannon presents, in many places, a surface for defence, to be seen in very 
few countries. A spectator, standing on the level, sees before him an exten- 
sion for miles exhibiting nothing but a stony continuation of that level. Upon 
advancing into the apparently stony desert, he finds it composed of inmumerable 
detached pieces of rock, almost all of equal height (evidently of alluvious 
formation), rising above the level of the soil, and inclosing, in their inter- 
stices, small patches of ground, covered with the richest pasture of the king- 
dom. Here, almost innumerable flocks of sheep are nourished by the inter- 
stitial herbage, and sheltered by the surrounding rocks. No regular army 
could, in its advance, among the stony defenders, preserve its formation, either 
in line or in column. It seems as if these surfaces were formed by the genius 
himself of modern and western war, for the exercise and safety of the rifleman. 
In these interstices, each rifleman would find a little redoubt, fitted by nature 
for the traverse of his rifle, and for the security of his person. No artillery 
can, in point-blank range, touch him at all. If howitzer practice with shells 
should be made use of, an accidental shell may fall within the little fortress 
of a rifleman: but, even from its explosion, it can carry its mischief no fur- 
ther—a moment of time, also, would give to the rifleman an opportunity of 
evasion into another and adjoining barrier.” 


+  ) ee ae VE 


The rivers, lakes, valleys, roads, come next under observation. We 
select the remarks on the roads :— 


“The roads through Ireland are numerous and excellent. This circum- 
_ stance, at the first contemplation, would seem greatly to facilitate the march 
ofa regular army, with all its matériel. But these roads are of a peculiar 
character. They resemble not the old Roman structures of the Appian and 
Flaminian ways, nor their modern imitations on some parts of the continent— 
viz. a strong and heavily paved causeway in the centre, with open spaces at 
the sides. The Irish roads are raised from a softer material—small limestone 
gravel, or limestone rock, broken into a gravel size. The plan of the road- 
makers of the modern roads in Ireland, has been to carry them, as much 
as possible, through the level parts of the island—through the inter- 
mingled bog and arable of the 6 a winding with the course of the 


484 ~ Colonel Roche F ermoy on the [Nov. 


valleys through the mountains. In these lower parts, through which the 
roads run, the superabundant moisture of the climate requires that drains to 
carry off the water should be run parallel to each side of a road. Sinking 
drains necessarily produces embankments: hence a road in Ireland may, ina - 
military sense, be considered as a defile, where the march of troops can be 
annoyed, if not commanded, from every side—ditches and embankments run- 
ning continually parallel, and, at small distances, being met by other ditches 
and embankments, intersecting the parallel ditches at different angles. All 
these afford protecting positions to troops, capable of rapid movements, and 
trained as good marksmen, to impede in front, and to attack in flanks and rear, 
any bodies of regular troops: more especially, if they should move with their 
usual impedimenta. 

“ There is scarcely occasion to state that the roads running through the val- 
leys of the mountainous districts are, each of them, a natural defile, as the 
roads on the levels are artificially so. 

~ On a defensive system, one advantage attends both. Various streams of 
water, fed by the moisture of the climate, cross, at very short intervals, both 
these classes of roads: they are generally conveyed through low arches, level 
with the surface of the road, and are called gullets. To impede the march of 
regular troops, no other instruments are necessary than the pick-axe, the crow- 
bar, and the shovel. Break down these low arches, and a short way of the 
bed of the road—stop the water below, and the line of passage becomes inun- 
dated. Even if the dam below should be removed, the previously submerged 
portion will remain (especially in bog) an impassable mass of mud. 

“ The art of inundation (see Vallancey’s translation of Clairac) should become 
in Ireland, a branch of general study. ‘“ Out of the roads, the country can 
hardly be passed, its inclosures are so frequent and so strong, ani the soil so 
deep. The manceuvres of a regular army would be much impeded. The 
ditches are deep, and cast up so as to form breast-works, and upon every 
road, there are many places ¢étes de pont might be established to excellent pur- 
pose. It would be difficult to bring on a decisive action here. The troops which 
could move with the greatest celerity, must have the advantage. ‘Their operations 
would be similar to fighting in trenches. or continuous traverses, where the 
enemy is scarcely ever seen—here no imposing masses, no brilliant charges of 
cavalry, no regular deployments from moveable columns ; but a war of con- 
stant fatigue to the troops, constant enterprizes, and occasional capture of 
prisoners. 

«* An improvement in the agricultural system of the country, would, with 
equal steps, improve the defensive system. Increasing the depth and width of 
the ditches, would increase the strength of the embankments. Planting those 
enlarged embankments would increase their military strength, and would add 
to the profit of the tiller of the soil, by increasing shelter, and providing a 
stock of timber, in a country, where, from the protecting influence of England, 
for 600 years, it seems to be the only natural want. Taking off portions at 
the angles of the field divisions, planting those cut off portions, as has been 
already done in some places, would form works, similar in effect to bastions 
or flanking redoubts, to the curtains already formed by the banks and the 
ditches. Breaking up, at intervals, and inundating the direct roads, would, 
from the intersections of the country, deprive any body of infantry, disciplined 
according to the present European system, of its two main arms, cavalry and 
artillery. But European battalions, deprived of these adjuncts, are, of all 
military bodies, the most imbéciles. Some weapons of a defensive military sys- 
tem, the Irish peasant is in complete possession of, and well inured to wield. 
—The spade, the shovel, the mattock, and the crow-bar, are, to any other 
weapons of war, aids of the first necessity.” 


The physical capacity of the garrison of this great fortress is highly 
extolled in the next chapter ; and it is contended, that the Irish, from 
their poverty and general wretchedness, ought to be the finest troops in 


1828.] Moral and Physical Force of Ireland. 485 


the world. Their moral character, from its degradation, is considered 
equally advantageous. The agricultural and manufacturing population 
of England are declared perfectly unworthy of being compared with 
them; and we have no doubt that the remarks on the misery of our 
potteries, manufactures, poor-laws, &c., will be considered as very con- 
clusive authority on the continent.. The financial strength of Ireland is 
extolled, strange to say, over that of England ; but, all wonder on this 
head will cease, when we find that he reckons the Irish debt, funded and 
unfunded, and an advance made by England of 6,300,000/., as part of her 
ordinary and annual revenue! This is, indeed, Irish financiering witha 
vengeance. 

‘ Parallels with the power of Holland, in the flourishing period of her 
stadtholders, in the seventeenth century—with Prussia, under Frederick 
the Great, and, again, when roused against Napoleon—and, of course, 
with the States of America, follow. In this latter case, he finds, how- 
ever, that the parallel does not fit, and the allusion which the passage 


contains to the heroes of the Roman Catholic Association is not un- 
amusing :— 


“ But as the differences between the conduct of America and Ireland have 
been stated, it may be right to advert to a difference of circumstances, in the 
situation of the two countries, which might have produced this difference of 
conduct. F 

* In‘Treland all officers were there immediately dependent, and removable at 
pleasure. From the proximity of Ireland, its government, although not 
domestic, was enabled to keep better watch over the conduct of its functionaries, 
than it could in America. The American colonies were remote, and the officers 
(native) generally more disposed to please the people, than the king or his 
representative. 

“Tn Ireland there was always the ultima ratio (a standing army).—The 
colonies were almost destitute of it, and the civil magistrate not prone to direct 
the use of it. Here then are differences—difference as to servility of public 

Sunctionaries ;—the cause of that servility, the advantage taken ofa difference 
in religious creeds—of supposed difference in descent of blood, to confine the 
civil magistracy to a small but ascendant class—the servility and the exagge- 
rated fears of that ascendant class, rendering it prone, even to flippancy, to 
direct the use of a standing army, which, since the union, has been doubled in 
numbers and in vigilance An army divided into above four hundred 
different stations, shows what military attention has been given, to enforce a 
civil union. 

« But there is another difference, which it is difficult to class—the differ- 
ence in individual characters, which times of commotion and change in every 
country throw forward on the public stage—the frame of such individual 
characters, often determining the fate of national contests. 

“ Among the great instruments of American independence, General Wash- 
ington was not a speech-maker. 

“ Doctor Franklin was not a speech-maker. General Gates was not a speech= 
maker—nor was General Green a speech-maker. Yet these were the men whose 
labours wrought out the American independence. 

“Since that period, and in the late (1813) attack made on American inde- 


_ pendence, by her early, and, indeed her only enemy, General Jackson was not 


a speech-maker ; nor was Commodore Mac Donough, nor one of those naval 
heroes, who, on the waters, nerved the force of America, a speech-maker. 

“Tn the talents of these men—the nature of their talents marking the nature 
of their designation—America, without theleading aid of one speech-maker, first 
achieved, and afterwards defended her independence and her happiness. 

“But as the declaration of independence produced, in America, heroes, 
statesmen and legislators ;—so, the act of union, being the reverse of the decla- 


486 Colonel Roche Fermoy on the [ Nov. 


ration of independence, produced, in Ireland, the reverse of heroes, statesmen 
and legislators—i. e. nothing but speech-makers. 
¢ A nation of abortive men, 
Who dart the tongue, and point the pen, 
And at the back of Europe hurled— 
The base posterior of the world.’ 


« A remark of Colonel Napier, in his history of the war in the Peninsula, 
illustrates the effect of this tendency of feeling in any nation. “ Their 
(the Spaniards’) tardy abortive measures demonstrated, how wide the space 
between a sophist and a statesman, and how dangerous to a nation is that 
public feeling, which, insatiable of words, disregards the actions of men, esteem- 
ing more the interested eloquence of a wit and an orator like Demades, than 
the simple integrity, sound judgment, and great exploits, of a general like 
Phocion. 

“ As the differences subsisting between the courses which Ireland and 
America have been touched upon, it may be necessary to observe upon the 
effects, which these different courses have, in the different countries, produced. 

“In America, the relief sought was in the declaration of independence. 

“In Ireland, the relief, not sought, but by pretence of which she was, in 
purpose, overlaid, was the act of wnion. : 

“In America, the declaration of independence was framed by a body of 
men, calling itself a congress, composed almost entirely of traders and 
farmers. 

“ In Ireland, the act of union was framed by certain Noblemen and Gentle- 
men, who received, among them, under one act of Parliament alone, and of 
their own making, the sum of £1,500,000, for their trouble in knocking down. 
their country to the highest bidder. 

“From the Jife of the American congress arose two men, whose names are 
now interwoven with all of whatever history records of the brave, the wise, 
and the virtuous among the active spirits of mankind—Washington and 
Franklin. 

“ These two names are mentioned but as samples of that sagacity, and that 
spirit, which animated the first American congress. 

« From the death and subsequent putrefaction of the body of the Irish Par- 
liament, sprung up divers assemblies or associations, calling themselves by 
divers names ; but have any or have all of these assemblies put forth such 
samples as Washington and Franklin ?—-samples of the mere gristle of the 
then youthful America. 

«‘ These two men did not, perhaps, understand how to ‘ marshal assets’ in 
a court of equity, or to conduct a pitched battle for an old cow in replevin, as 
well as some other leaders ; but they had deeply studied the problem of The- 
mistocles, how to make a small state a great one. Of the labours of these 
American leaders, in order to form a just estimate, it will be necessary to sur- 
vey the materials with which they began, and the building, which has, on the 
foundation laid by them, been erected.” 


The colonel has a soldierly disdain of spouters: the very last sen- 
tence of his book is—< The school-master is abroad ; he will have his 
military as well as his civil schools ;” and the business to be taught by 
the learned pedagogue is the best method of severing Ireland from Eng- 
land. The example of Prussia, in 1813, has taught eight propositions, 


which prove the possibility of putting the lesson into practice :— 


“ First.—From the two instances which the transactions of Prussia have 
afforded, it may be inferred, that it does not require more than five millions 
of people, and a revenue, amounting to four millions sterling, for any nation 
to maintain an independent position, and ‘to equal, in her exertion, a power in 
Europe, perhaps not the first, but certainly of the first order.’ 

“Secondly.—That such independence may, with such resources, be main- 


1828.) Moral and Physical Force of Ireland. 487 


tained, notwithstanding the territories, unfruitful in themselves, were scat- 
tered at such distanees from each other, that it was most easy to attack, 
and most difficult to defend them. 

« Thirdly—It may be maintained (d fortiori if the above rules be truly 
founded in the instances of Prussia) that a nation, containing actually 
7,000,000 of inhabitants mostly agricultural, compacted into one mass, with 
a territory so fertile as to be able to treble its population, the position of 
which territory constitutes it a natural fortress of the highest order, and whose 
ordinary revenue would, if due management were introduced, and waste 
excluded, amount to nearly £7,000,000, may maintain an independent station 
amoug the powers of Europe. 

* Fourthly—That a nation, without any greater resources, may vindicate 
herself into a state of dignity and independence, although she may have pre- 
viously groaned under the most atrocious tyranny that ever disgraced the his- 
tory of mankind. 

“ Fifthly—To a nation so vindicating her rights, it does not seem necessary 
that she should be led by legitimacy: on the contrary, by the example of 
Prussia, we are taught, that two or three officers of activity and popularity 
were able to raise their country to that station, from which she had, under the 
protection of legitimacy, fallen :—that they were able to raise raw troops, who 
immediately overpowered the veterans of France. 

“ Sixthly—It appears that the military head of one bourgeois, [alluding to 
Bernadotte’] self-educated, is more worth than the heads of all the legitimates 
of a Holy Alliance, and all their regularly trained officers put together. 

“ Seventhly.—It appears from the speech of Lord Liverpool, that, in the 
modern constitutions of Europe, there are two distinct political powers :—that 
of the government, and that of the people ; and that agovernment may make war 
without the people, and the people without the government; and that a people 
may make war upon a government, and a government upon a people distinc~ 
tively. 

« Kighthly.—From the same authority it appears, that wherever a separa~ 
tion has taken place between those two political powers, ‘on whatever side 
the PEopLE have taken part, vicrory has settled.’ ” 


These last propositions refer to a speech made by Lord Liverpool, in 
which his Lordship had used the remarkable words, that— 


<< Yn the former coalitions, it was a war of the governments of Europe 
against the people of France. In the present coalition, it is a war of the people 
of Europe against the government of France. On whatever side the people 
have taken part victory has settled.’ ” 

To sum up in a few words—the gist of this book is, to prove that Ire- 
land has a population of 7,000,000, which she can treble—a revenue 
adequate for all purposes—an impregnable position—a most marvel- 
lous people—who may safely defy England. 


The colonel forgets one thing. Even supposing all that he takes for 
granted to be true, there happens to be no small portion of the Irish 
garrison, as he calls it—and that not the least brave, or the least influ- 
ential—to be beaten by the remainder before the experiment is tried: 
when that is done—and the Orangemen will not admit that it will be 
easily done—we shall begin to think about what England is to do. The 
book, however, is a curious one. It is not concluded. 


L 488 ] [Nov. 


LINES WRITTEN BESIDE THE BANKS OF TOWY. 


Is this the glen by wizards trod, 
By hostile arms invaded ? : 
Is this the bonny stream that flowed ; 
Where Freedom bloomed and faded ? 
Yes, still the stream flows gaily on, 
Its glen still charms the rover ; 
But Freedom’s day is past and gone, 
The wizard’s power is over. 


A stranger age, to fancy blind, 
Has dimmed Tradition’s glory, 

And rudely scattered to the wind 
Each old romantic story : 

No more the Fays are met at eve, 
By shepherd sore affrighted ; 
No more the Baron’s halls receive 

The wandering bard benighted. 


The days-are gone of high romance, 
The Druid oak’s deserted, 
Rust dims the border-chieftain’s lance, 
The Elves have all departed ; 
O’er grey Dynevor’s castled height 
The moss of age is creeping, 
And ravens whoop where squire and knight 
Beneath the sod lie sleeping. 


A change hath fallen on heath and hill, : 
A change On peer and peasant, 
The unheeded Past hath had its will, 
And bows before the Present ;— 
But thus it is, from change alone 
This world a charm can borrow ;_ 
Year after year rolls darkling on, 
And nought endures but sorrow ! £9 


1828.] [ 489 7 


THE POLICE REPORT.* 


Tue police system of England, which has been oftener the subject of 
animadversion than of sound investigation, is marked by many of the 
peculiarities which distinguish most of our institutions from those of 
other countries. Comparisons have been instituted between it and the 
more perfect inventions, as they are called, of modern times, which, in 
the continental nations, are said always to ensure the punishment, and 
often to effect the prevention of crime. Every bedy has heard stories, 
more or less miraculous, of the accuracy with which the agents of police 
in France detect crime ; and, whoever believes them, cannot doubt for a 
moment that Buonaparte was a conjuror, and that Fouché and Savary 
both dealt with the devil. We confess that we have not, personally, the 
gift of belief in a very powerful degree. Even on occasions where the 
evidence has been more incredibly strong than on those to which we 
allude, it has failed to convince us; and, when we look at the state 
of crime under the late emperor, and since the restoration of the present 
dynasty, as far as it has been ascertained, we are unable to discover the 
practical proof of that superiority of which we hear so much. The prin- 
ciples upon which the French police was remodelled, under Napoleon, 
were, in some respects, the most objectionable that a legislature ever 
avowed. They involved a multitude of restrictions upon personal liberty, 
and created a power which could not haye been endured in this country, 
at any period of our history, since we have held the rank of a nation ; 
and, although they were suited well enough to answer the ambitious 
projects of Buonaparte, and were in unison with that spirit which 
required the sacrifice of every thing that stood in the way of the accom- 
plishment of his designs, whether for good or for evil, we are no more 
prepared to believe that they tended to the real tranquillity and prospe- 
rity of his people, than that his mischievous policy in other respects 
was culculated to preserve the true interests of the state. Notwithstand- 
ing the praises that have been bestowed upon the French police, and 
which have been repeated in France and elsewhere, until eulogium is 
exhausted, its defects were glaring and monstrous. It acted upon an 
extensive scheme of espionnage, which resorted to the most base and 
infamous means of obtaining information— which encouraged the betrayal 
of trusts the most honourable, and sacred, and rewarded the treachery 
by money drawn from the impurest sourcest—which prohibited the 
press from making public.any of the delinquencies of its agents, even 
when they were convicted and punished—under which the most odious 
vices were permitted to flourish unrepressed—which could neither secure 
private property, nor ensure the safety of the state—and which has been 
well described, by a writer who had witnessed its baneful effects, as a 
contrivance “ unknown to the old régime, and incompatible with the 
new—a monster born of anarchy and despotism, and bred in the filth of 
the revolution.”{ That the system should have been a perfect one, was 
almost impossible. The circumstances of the time were unfavourable to 
its formation ; the hands by which it was put together were, with a few 


- * Report from the Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis, 11th July, 1828. 
+ The minister of police levied, annually, a tax amounting to about £400,000 sterling 
from the common gaming houses and brothels, of his own authority, and disposed of such 
is g 
part of it as he thought fit among his secret and invisible agents. 
+ Chateaubriand, La Monarchie selon la Charte, 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 35. 3 R é 


490 The Police Report. -LNov- 


exceptions, unapt; the time which is necessary to mature any scheme of 
criminal jurisprudence had only began its course ; and the difficulties 
which beset its formation were so strongly felt, that the expression of 
them broke out even in the triumphant bombast with which its completion 
was announced.* 

The police of England differs as much in its nature as in its history 
from that of France. Its main features remain the same as they were 
when, thirteen centuries ago, it was devised by Alfred ; to whom—if to 
any monarch that ever lived—may be ascribed the epithet of a patriot 
king. Perfectly convinced of that first principle in criminal justice, that 
it is upon the efficacy of the laws by which it is regulated that the happi- 
ness of a state must depend, he so formed his schemes of jurisprudence 
that, throughout the stormy vicissitudes which the nation has since expe~= 
rienced, they have ever remained, as they still are, unimpeached and 
unchanged. ‘Their principles are as simple as they are wise and just: 
the first is the entire protection and preservation of personal liberty ; and. 
the next is the repression of crime, by means of an active police, the 
ramifications of which extend over the entire surface of the kingdom, and 
which interests the whole community in the prevention of offences and 
the detection of offenders. The changing circumstances of the times— 
the varying habits, and tastes, and necessities of mankind—the perverse 
ingenuity of the wicked, and the calamities of the weak, have rendered 
it necessary, at various periods of our history, to modify the operations 
of those principles ;—the corruptness of the agents by whom they must 
be carried into execution have compelled the legislature occasionally to 
clear away the imperfections and defects which naturally grow about 
them—but the principles have remained the same ; and the recent inves- 
tigation of the Police Committee confirms the opinion which we avow— 
that, whatever faults or deficiencies may be felt in the operation of the 
system, the true remedy for them is to be found in a recurrence to its 
original principles, and in invigorating the system, by the simple process 
of purifying it. § 

A belief that crime had increased in a monstrous proportion within a 
few years, and the deficiency of the police, which has lately become too 
apparent to be longer permitted with decency, or even safety, having 
given occasion to parliamentary discussion, a Select Committee was 
appointed to inquire into the cause of the increased number of commit- 
ments in London and Middlesex, and into the state of the Police of the 
Metropolis and the adjacent districts. The Report of that Committee 
has recently been made public, and fully justifies the expectations which 
have been formed of it. A large mass of information, the collection of 
which must have cost great pains, has been made public ; and, although 
we are compelled to differ from a few of the conclusions at which the 
Committee have arrived, and to take views in some degree at variance 


with their’s upon several of the topics to which they have directed their _ 


attention, we feel that the country is greatly indebted to the patience, 


* In the Rapport sur le Livre ler du Code d’ Instruction Criminelle, this is plainly 
avowed, although the writer has ingeniously made it the vehicle of a fulsome compliment: 
to the Emperor. After recapitulating some of the difficulties which the importance of the 
task has occasioned, he adds, “ Pour tout dire, en un mot, ce génie extraordinaire, dont 
les regards pénétrent au-dela de tous les obstacles, a hésité plus d’une fois au milieu des 
diffieultés qu’offraient nos lois criminelles.”” ; 


ss 


1828.) The Police Report. 491 


vigilance, and intelligence with which they have conducted the difficult 

investigation that has been submitted to them. 

The importance of such inquiries is as obvious as is their frequent 
necessity. With all due veneration for police officers, we cannot forget 
that their avocation is one which exposes them to many evil influences— 
besides that of occasionally keeping bad company; and even police 
magistrates have so often shewn themselves not wholly exempt from the 
human weaknesses of caprice, ill-humour, and indolence, that we cannot 
bring ourselves to believe but that they are the better for the occasional 
application of that moral check which the certainty of their conduct being 
inquired into supplies. 

_ The Cominittee first direct their attention to an inquiry into the 

increase of crime in London and its neighbourhood, and into the causes 

of that increase. Taking two series of years (the one containing the 
period between 1811 and 1817, and the other that between 1821 and 

1827), in which, having ascertained the number of commitments and 

their results, and also the state of the population during the same periods 

respectively, and having made a proportionate deduction from the whole 
amount of crime in respect of the increase of population, they come to 
the conclusion—which we confess appears to us an undeniable one— 
that the total increase of crime may be stated to be as thirty-six per cent.* 

The Committee frankly avow their inability to suggest a specific remedy 

for this increase ; but they proceed to state the reasons which have been 

assigned for its existence by the witnesses they have examined. 

The first of these causes is the increased population, the effect of which, 
whatever it may be, is limited, and which, asit has been already allowed 
for in the calculation made by the Committee, may be considered as dis- 
posed of ; the others are the low price of spirituous liquors—a general want 

_ of employment—and neglect of children. On the cogency of each, or of 
any of these latter causes, the Committee offer no opinion ; and, indeed, 
_ it seems to us that little weight is to be attached to them (evils as they 
unquestionably are), for the purpose of explaining that enormous increase 

_ of crime which is made out to have taken place. 

The introduction of spirituous liquors at the cheap rate at which, since 
the late reduction of duties, they have been sold in the metropolis, is, no 
doubt, a cause of that demoralization of the lower classes which leads to: . 
crime of every description ; but its influence is not unchecked :—and 
the fact which is next mentioned by the Committee as a cause of crime 
—a general want of employment—the effect of which must be to excite 
_ the industry and to drive to exertion by “ the bare point of sharp neces- 


* As nothing has occurred since 1821 to check the progressive addition to the popula- 
tion, but, on the contrary, much in the erection and construction of new and extensive 
buildings, to stimulate and advance it, there is ground to suppose, that between 1821 and 
1828, the advance on the population, has not been proportionably less than it was between 
1811 and 1821 ; if so, the population may be considered to have again increased little less 
than 19 per cent, making a total increase sinte 1801, amounting to 504,500. 

The result then is, that the criminal calendar exhibits an increase in the annual average 
of commitals of 48 per cent. And in the annual average of convictions of 55 per cent ; 
but, as the population returns show an increase of 19 per cent, within the same period of 
_ time, 19 per cent of the increase of commitments and convictions may be accounted for by 
_ @ proportionate augmentation of population. f 

If the foregoing be a reasonable mode of accounting for 222 of the average increase of 
convictions being 19 per cent, there will remain to be accounted for 420, being the remain- 
ing 36 per cent.—-Report, page 7. 


3 R 2 


492 ‘The Police Report. [Nov. 


sity,” a class of people who would be luxurious and indolent, is of itself 
a most powerful counteraction of the pernicious habit of dram-drinking. 
In a poor conimunity (and want of employment obviously induces poverty) 
it 1s somuch a less weighty evil than in a rich one, that they can hardly 
be said to exist together ; and it may be reasonably doubted whether 

considering the present state of society in the metropolis, the first has 
any such influence as entitles it to be relied on as a cause of crime. Under 
other circumstances, it would be different. There was a time when the 
cheap sale of spirits was felt to be so great an evil in London, that the 
legislature was compelled to put a stop to it ;* but this, it must be remem- 
bered, was when the country was in a state of much greater prosperity, 
as regards the labouring classes, than it is at present : when there was not 
only no want of employment, but when labour was well enough paid for 
to allow of indulgences, which are universally found to be destructive of 
industrious and sober habits. 

That want of employment is a cause of the increase of a certain class 
of crimes, admits of no question : that it exists to a certain and a lamen- 
table extent in London, and that it will almost always continue to do so, 
as equally clear. The supply of labour is greater than the demand ; and 
distress, the parent of crime, is the inevitable consequence. ‘To this 
cause may be with much reason attributed a large portion of the 
increase which has been stated; and this opinion is corroborated by the 
fact, that the increase has taken place more remarkably in crimes affect- 
ing property, and of ordinary occurrence—exactly the sort of crime 
which labourers, out of employment and in distress, are most likely to 
commit. 

To the alleged neglect of children by their parents, which is among 
the causes assigned, we are not disposed to give much weight ; but if it 
does really operate, it is one to which a remedy cannot be applied. 
It would. not only be inconsistent with the spirit of English jurispru- 
dence, but (which is a more conclusive objection) it would be imprac- 
ticable to attempt to compel, by legislative enactments, or by the extra- 
ordinary power of the police, the performance of duties which are 
prompted by nature and prescribed by religion. You can no more 
make aman take care of his children’s, than of his own morals. The 


* The height to which this pernicious practise had been carried in the reign of George I. 
occasioned the passing the licensing act for liquor shops; spirits being before that time 
sold at the corner of every street. Hogarth’s terrific picture of “‘ Gin Lane”’ is familiar to 
every one’s recollection, and the notion which Fielding entertained of it may be seen in 
his tract, ‘ On the Increase of Robbers,” in which he brings all his powers of eloquence, 
reproof, and biting sarcasm, to bear upon a habit which, destructive as it was, he seems to 
have believed rather to be hostile to the decency and happiness of the people, than possess- 
ing great influence as a cause of crime. He says, after recommending the total abolition 
of the pernicious liquor, “‘ But if the difficulty be really insuperable, or if there be any 
political reason against the total demolition of this poison, so strong as to countervail the 
preservation of the morals, health, and being, of such numbers of his Majesty’s subjects, 
let us, however, in some measure palliate the evil, and lessen its immediate ill consequences, 
by a more effectual provision against drunkenness than any we have at present, in which 
the method of conviction is too tedious and dilatory. Some little care on this head is surely 
necessary ; for, though the increase of thieves and the destruction of morality ; though the 
loss of our labourers, our sailors, and our soldiers, should not be sufficient reasons, there is 
one which seems to be unanswerable, and that is, the loss of our gin drinkers. Since, should 
this poison be continued in its present height during the next twenty years, there will by 
that time be very few of the common people left to drink it.’’—Page 22. 


a 


_ 


1828: The Police Report. 493 


power of Parliament stops short of this; but a much stronger power 
begins then to operate—the common feelings of humanity, aided by that 
spread of virtuous habits to which the Committee triumphantly allude, 
and by the influence of education, which is proved, in spite of the old 
women who decry it, to have a most beneficial effect upon all the classes 
of the community to which it reaches, are powerful agents to counte- 
ract the evil complained of, and to those it must be left. It should, 
however, be remembered, that the offences of youthful criminals bear in 
their consequences, directly and personally, upon the parents, and are 
to them so much more immediate and burdensome than those which fall, 
from this cause, upon the state, that the evil, so far as it is produced by 
their neglect alone, can hardly extend very far. It cannot be denied 
that juvenile delinquency has lamentably increased; but we should be 
more disposed to assign as its cause the facilities which a defective police 
afford to the commission of crime, and the natural tendency of youth 
and inexperience to receive the infection of bad example and corrupt 
association. 

Connected with this part of the inquiry is a most wholesome and 
valuable suggestion by the Committee, that a prison should be appro- 
priated for the reception of juvenile offenders, where, besides the 
punishment and coercion to which their offences have exposed them, 
they shall have the benefit of such instruction as may enable them, their ~ 
imprisonment being over, to enter society once more—not as regene- 
rated—not with more profound sentiments of religion, or hearts more 
disposed to virtue, because all such results from imprisonment, however 
desirable, if they could be attained, have been proved to be impracticable 
—but with a conviction of the necessity of honest and regular exertion, 
with their old disinclination to industry removed by the force of a con- 
trary habit, and with the means of procuring by honest labour that 
which they before perhaps knew only to gain by fraud. This is the 
magic by which the Committee propose that the reformation of juvenile 
offenders only (for all attempts on older thieves must fail) shall be tried. 
They propose, too, that the boys shall be taught just so much as may be 
necessary to fit them for the naval or merchant services, to which they 
are to be transferred as soon as may be expedient, and where they are 
to remain for certain periods in the character of apprentices. Every 
body, whose opinion on the subject is worth listening to, has approved 
of the transportation of offenders as the only effectual method of prevent- 
ing the recurrence of crime. The monstrous expense of this system has 
hitherto prevented its being fully carried into practice (and this failure is 
one of the causes of increased crime not adverted to by the Committee) ; 
but if their present suggestion shall be adopted, the same benefit will be 
produced at a very trifling charge to the state. The criminals will 
“ thus be separated from their former associates, weaned from their for- 
mer habits, and a better security against the repetition of their offences 

rovided, than could be hoped for from any improvement of their morals 
that could be effected by the discipline of a prison.” (Report, page 8.) 
This suggestion is not only consistent with the recognised principles of 
all good systems of police, but is obviously wise, and founded upon a 
knowledge of human nature. Is it not clear, that a boy who goes into 
a prison for aflimited time, and who knows that, from the moment he 
enters its walls, his character, if he ever had one, is irretrievably lost, 


494 The Police Report. [Nov. 


and that he has little chance (perhaps less inclination) to do any thing 
but resort again to dishonest courses as a means of living, is at once 
open to all the injurious impressions which are likely to be made by the 
society into which he is thrown: that he makes the best use of his time 
he is to pass in prison, profits, as well as he may, by the advice and 
experience of abler and older thieves, and returns almost invariably to 
the community more competent and better disposed to be mischievous 
than he was before? The only cure for this is, as complete a severance 
as can be effected of the infectious member from the society which he 
would contaminate. 

In a subsequent part of the Report is stated, the result of the Com- 
mittee’s inquiry into the condition of the metropolitan prisons, which 
they find generally to be extremely ill adapted for the reformation of 
offenders. We have no doubt that such places abound with evils of 
all kinds, and it is not only natural that they should do so, but almost 
impossible to make them otherwise. In an abode, the main object of 
which is, or ought to be, not only the personal detention of criminals, 
but that they should be made to experience privations as irksome, and 
as painful as may be, consistently with the preservation of their health— 
from which every thing like comfort should be, upon principle, excluded, 
there must be much to shock the common sensibilities of human nature. 
But this is unavoidable. Prison discipline, with a view to reformation, if it 
be not a fallacy, is obviously impracticable. The first step in it must be 
by a perfect classification of prisoners, and this cannot be taken but at an 
expense which would, perhaps, be very ill bestowed, and which, in the 
present state of the gaols, is unadvisable. To effect a sound cure, you 
must go much deeper ; to deal so with crime, that its commission shall 
not be easy, its detection and its punishment certain, is the true philan- 
thropy, and of all prison discipline, that is the best which makes offenders 
feel all the bitterness of the punishment the law has awarded them. 

The Committee recommend, too, the more frequently holding of ses- 
sions of the peace, which would facilitate the operation of an improved 
system of police. In the metropolis and the adjacent districts, there 
appears to be no objection to this measure; but it would of course 
be difficult of execution in the country, and as it must greatly increase 
the expense of the administration of criminal justice (already burdensome 
enough), without, as we can at present perceive, affording any adequate 
advantage, this seems to be a recommendation not likely to be speedily 
carried into effect. 

The Committee give their’own opinion of the causes which have 
influenced that increase of crime they have found to exist. These are 
the more ready detection and trial of culprits, the facilitating of prose- 
cutions, the allowance of costs to prosecutors and witnesses; and to 
these they might have added the recent alterations in the criminal laws, 
which have simplified their operation, have increased certain classes of 
crimes (receivers of stolen goods, for example), among which a great 
part of the increase is to be found, ensured convictions, and reconciled 
prosecutors to the sometimes expensive, and almost always painful dis- » 
charge of their duties. The difficulty of getting rid of convicted crimi-. 
nals, and of preventing their return to society, at least in the impure 
state in which they quitted it, is a cause of the increase of crime in’ the 
metropolis, the effect of which is obvious. The frequent summary com- 
mitments by magistrates have also a powerful tendencv to increase crime, 


1828.) The Police Report. 495 


the effect of which has been pointed out by another Parliamentary Com- 
mittee.* 

From the facts before them, the Committee are led to conclude, 
that, although numerically the crimes may have appeared to increase, 
yet their nature being less heinous, and the various circumstances we 
have alluded to, having, in greater or lesser degree, operated to produce 
that increase, that no permanent or material deterioration of society can 
have taken place. 

Having disposed of this part of their inquiry, the Committee arrive at 
a topic upon which great curiosity and interest have been excited—the 
compromises which have been openly made between the robbers and the 
robbed, for the restitution of stolen goods of large value, which they 
have ascertained “to have been negociated with an unchecked fre- 
quency, and under an organised system far beyond what had been sup- 
posed to exist.” A more disgusting nuisance, a greater disgrace, to any 
state of society, with even the semblance of a police, never was heard 
of. It is stated in the following terms by the Committee: “ These 
compromises have generally been negociated by solicitors, or police officers, 
or by both, with the plotters of the robbery and receivers ; or, as they are 
commonly called, “ the putters up,” and “ fences.” 

With a police so ignorant, so indolent, or so indifferent, as that of the 
metropolis has proved itself, it is enough for a gang of these thieves to 
propose to themselves the robbery of any place, not guarded by soldiers, 
and they can hardly fail to succeed. For what is to prevent them? 
They put in action exactly the same means as would ensure success in 
any other enterprise. They possess intelligence, activity, and daring ; 
they set about their business like men who know that every thing 
depends upon their own energy ; they have wealth enough to employ 
agents who willingly encounter the immediate peril for the money that 
is paid them for their services, and who have no more interest in the 
produce of their nefarious labours than the skipper of a merchant ship 
has in the freight.t And what is opposed to them? A sluggish police, 


* There can be no greater evil than the abuse of the power of sending to prison for 
triflmg trespasses; so far from preventing atrocious offences, your Committee is of 
opinion, that the mere fact of having been sent to prison is likely to deprive a man of one 
of the greatest moral restraints—the dread of being marked out as a criminal in the face of 
his country. To this evil isto be added, the danger of associating with bad characters in 
prison, and the difficulty which sometimes occurs of finding employment after being dis- 
charged.—Keport of the Committee to inquire into the increase of Criminal Commitments 
and Convictions in England and Wales, June 1827. 

+ The Committee state that “ their inquiries have entirely convinced them, that the 
frequency of these seemingly blameless transactions (the compromises for restitution of 
stolen property) has led to the organization of a system whigh undermines the security of © 
all valuable property ; which gives police officers a direct interest that robberies to a large 
amount should not be prevented ; and which has established a set of “‘ putters up,’’ and 
“ fences,’’ with means of evading, if not defying the arm of the law; who are wealthy 
enough, if large rewards are offered for their detection, to double them for their impunity ; 
and who would in one case have given £1,000 to get rid of a single witness. Some of 
these persons ostensibly carry on a trade; one who had been tried formerly for robbing a 
coach, afterwards carried on business as a Smithfield drover, and died worth, it is believed, 
£15,000. Your Committee could not ascertain how many of these persons there are at 
present, but four of the principal have been pointed out. One was lately the farmer of 
one of the greatest turnpike trusts in the metropolis: he was formerly tried for receiving 
the contents of a stolen letter, and as a receiver of tolls employed by him, was also tried 


for stealing that very letter, being then a postman, it is not too much to infer, that the 


possession of these turnpikes is not unserviceable for the purposes of depredation. Another 
has, itis said, been a surgeon in the army. The two others, of the four, have no trade, 


496 The Police Report. [Nov. 


the executive members of which are not applied to until the mischief is 
pest, who then cannot be induced to move but by the prospect of reward, 
while the reward itself is less than any one of the head thieves would 
give a checque upon his banker for, to induce the thief-taker to walk 
another way. The magistrates evidently do know, or will know 
nothing about the matter. Sir Richard Birnie said, in 1822, “ he had 
heard of compromises between the persons robbed and the thieves, 
through the medium of the officers, but he never could bring it home: he. 
thought the magistrates must have the means of detecting such prac- 
tices.” In his last examination, he says roundly, in alluding to a. parti= 
cular instance, “he believes it to be untrue that a compromise was 
effected through the means of an officer ;’ and Mr. Halls assures the 
Committee, “ that he had tried to ascertain the fact, but he had no know- 
edge of it.” How these gentlemen think they have entitled themselves 
to public respect, from the manner in which they discharge their very 
important functions it would be difficult to guess. The conclusion to 
which the Committee come is so reasonable, so pertinent, and conveys 
so just a censure on the conduct of these magistrates, that it ought to be 
made as public as possible. “ An inquiry also was instituted by the 
Home Office, during the last year, intoa compromise, in which an officer 
was rumoured to have been concerned, without any discovery being 
made, though every officer in the establishment was sworn and examined. 
This ignorance could not, therefore, arise from attention not having been 
called to the subject. Your Committee having discovered, that through 
those years compromises have repeatedly taken place by the intervention 
of police officers, and a regular system to facilitate them has been gra-. 
dually maturing, conceive it is incumbent upon government to exact from 
the magistrates a more vigilant and intelligent superintendence generally, 
and more active inquiries whenever suspicions shall arise.’—Report, 
page 12. 

The fact of the police officers having been repeatedly engaged in 
such compromises has long been notorious to every body who has at all 
looked into the subject : the inquiries of the Committee put the matter 
beyond all question, and even the police magistrates themselves can no, 
longer pretend to be ignorant of a fact which has taken place under 
their very noses,* and which Sir Richard Birnie himself says, he 
believes there is law enough to prevent. The Committee, with a caution. 
which it is difficult to understand the reason of, doubt whether the exist- 


but live like men of property ; and one of these, who appears to be the chief of the whole 
set, is well known on the turf, and is stated, on good grounds, to be worth £30,000.— 
Report, page 14. 

* Suspicion has arisen in one case, that £800 more was received by the officer who 
negotiated, than the thieves asked or received ; and in another, £50 was paid to procure 
restitution of £500, and neither the £500 nor the £50 were ever restored._Report, page 
12. The Committee think it necessary to add, that “‘ it does not appear in evidence that 
any one of them stipulated for a reward before hand ; nor connived at the escape of a thief, 
nor negociated a compromise when he possessed any clue that might lead to the detection 
of the guilty.” Upon which it may be observed, that such facts were not likely to appear 
in evidence; that the reward is always offered before the police officer begins to stir him- 
self; and that, when the non-detection of the thief ensures the officer a large reward 
(while his detection would give him little or none, and the party robbed would inevitably 
lose the whole of his property), we cannot bring ourselves to believe, with all our belief 
for the integrity of police officers, that they would say much about their clwes. But even 
if it were otherwise, the power is too great, the temptation far too overpowering, for the 
principles of such a class of men to be safely exposed to. 


1828. ] The Police Report. 497 


ing law is strong enough to repress a practice so repugnant to justice ; 
and they suggest that, in addition to the 7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, s. 58, 
which makes the taking a reward under the pretence of helping any one 
to stolen goods a transportable offence, any party paying a reward for 
such purposes shall be guilty of a misdemeanour. 

The old law upon the subject was provided for the particular benefit 
of the hero of one of Fielding’s most admirable, though most neglected 
novels.* Jonathan Wild carried on a system very similar to that which 
the “ putters-up” and “fences” of our own times have so profitably 
brought into practice, but in which, for the skill and daring with which 
their schemes are executed, and the value of their booty, they far sur- 
pass that great man. Some doubts have been entertained whether Mr. 
Peel’s Act, which repeals the old law only to re-enact it, but reduces 
the penalty from death to transportation for life, includes money and 
bank notes in its description of “goods ;” but, notwithstanding the old 
decisions, we should like to see some of the worthy gentlemen men- 
tioned in this report waiting the opinions of the judges upon the point, 
having previously been found (as we have no doubt they would be) 
guilty by a jury. If, however, there be any question about the matter, 
as iti Such cases the safer is the better course, five words in an Act of 
Parliament will effectually provide for future offenders. 

One word, however, about the means that have hitherto been taken to 
repress this crime. The duty of the police, even if it were efficiently per- 
formed, hardly extends to prevent such robberies. They are not, as has 
been seen, effected by ordinary, every-day thieves—by men whose sphere 
of action is so limited, that it is easily watched, or whose intelligence and 
activity are so little superior to those of police officers, that the advan- 
fage of numbers and force which the latter possess enable them to coun- 
termine the “ putters-up.” Their plans are matured in secret, and long 
before they are intended for execution ; they lay wholly out of the course 
of the police; the report is not heard until after the blow has been 
struck, and the discovery is always after the fact. It can never be other-' 
wise, unless by the treachery of their agents ; and that the “ putters- 
fe. effectually prevent, by informing them of no part of the scheme until 
the moment for executing it has arrived. The detection is quite another 
matter, and one obviously within the duty of a police which possesses 
sufficient power, and the inclination to exercise it. They know the per- 
sons (for they are not many in number), some of whom must have been 

_ engaged in such robberies as soon as they have been committed. What 
__ is there that should prevent them from establishing a cordon of observa- 
_ tion around them? Why should they not immediately have the right of 
searching, under certain restrictions, and in the presence of proper’ 
officers, the dwellings and the persons of the parties suspected? If it is 
objected that this would be to invade the privileges of a free people, 


* Fielding relates the fact in his own exquisitely ironical manner.—“ Now, as the vast 
schemes of Wild when they were discovered, however great in their nature, seemed, - to 
some persons, like the projects of most other such persons, rather to be calculated for the. 
glory of the great man himself, than to redound to the general good of society, designs. 
began to be laid by several of those who thought it principally their duty to put a stop to 
oe future progress of our hero; and a learned judge particularly, a great enemy to this 
__ kind of greatness, procured a clause in an act of parliament as a trap for Wild, which he. 

_ soon after fell into. By this law it was made capital in a prig to steal with the hands of 
other people. A Jaw so plainly calculated for the destruction of all priggish greatness, that 
it was indeed impossible for our hero to avoid it.”"—Jonathan Wild the Great, vol. i. p. 204. 

M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No. 35. aS 


eae a 


498 The Police Report. [Nov 


and that it would be a sacrifice of constitutional principles, we beg those 
persons who think so to pause for a moment, and to consider whether 
there is not more of sound than of sense in such objections. Those 
privileges are not granted for the benefit of the worst foes of domestic 
security : the protection of constitutional principles is not meant to 
extend to the very cankers of society. Whipping at a cart’s-tail, and 
the punishment of the pillory, are, no doubt, great indignities, and gross 
violations of the liberty of the subject ; but nobody questions their appli- 
cability in certain cases. We would neither advocate such a search upon 
light grounds, nor have it exercised against any but persons whose past 
practices have justly rendered them objects of suspicion—nor even against 
them oppressively, or with more rigour than the ends of justice require. 
But if a robbery be committed to-night, why ought not the police, by 
day-break, or earlier, to have a full inspection of the holes and corners 
of Ikey Solomons, if he were here ; or of his successors, or of the respec- 
table solicitors,* or other ingenious gentlemen, who negotiate the com- 
pipes of robberies, whatever be their station? To the reformed it might 
e inconvenient ; but still not an unreasonable penalty upon their former 
offences ;—so far from hindering their return. to society, if any of them 
were so disposed (a case which we do not believe to exist), it would 
facilitate that end by proving their freedom from imputation ; while, as 
regards the guilty, it must be wholly without objection. 
_ It is not upon these occasions alone, that the right of search ought to 
be conferred upon the police. The inspection of “ marine store shops,” of 
pawnbrokers, of “ flash-houses,”’ and of every other place favourable for 
the escape of offenders, or the concealment of their booty, is not only 
necessary to ensure the successful operations of the police, but it is a pro- 
vision which the safety of society absolutely requires. 'The Committee 
allude particularly to the latter description of nuisance, on the subject of 
which they have collected a great quantity of evidence, which is little 
to be relied on. It requires, however, no evidence to shew that there 
are—for every one knows that there must be—in this metropolis places 
where the profligate and dissolute will resort for the purpose of meeting 
spirits congenial to their own. With these places, save for the purposes 
of inspection, the police have little to do. There must always be a great 
quantity of vice in action there ; but it is not in those places that such 
crimes as are most commonly brought under the cognizance of the cri- 
minal administration are perpetrated. The only danger that can result 
from them is when their orgies are celebrated in secret. To be known, 
disarms them of the means of offending; and to permit, or rather to 
compel, the access of the police to such places at all hours, although it 
would not put an end to them, nor alter their noisome and disgusting 
features, would effectually prevent their becoming dangerous. 
‘The Committee make some suggestions, the expediency of which 
admit of no doubt, for removing certain of the difficulties which, notwith- 
standing recent improvements, still disgrace our criminal jurisprudence. 


One of the chief difficulties in convicting forgers, seems to arise from the: 


necessity of proving either the making, or the uttering, of the instrument 
forged at the place laid in the indictment. An adept in his art, there- 
_ “ © These negociations have frequently been carried on by solicitors (few, it is said, in 
number) of that class whose practice lies chiefly in the defence of culprits, and commonly 
denominated ‘ thieves’ attornies.” Of these, your Committee believe some are respect- 
able.”(!)—-Report, page 11.. 


i ia ae 


1828. ] The Police Report. 499 


fore, fabricates his forged cheque in his garret, with no human eye upon 
him, and employs a ticket-porter, or a simple boy, to present it at the 
banker’s: if it succeeds, he takes the booty ; if it fails, the utterer being 
an innocent person is not prosecuted, and the forger, even if taken (which 
is unlikely) escapes, merely because he took the precaution of working 
in private, and nobody knows where to lay, or how to prove the venue 
in the indictment. It is proposed that this absurdity shall, for the future, 
be removed ; that the law against compounding penal suits shall be 
extended to informations before magistrates, and that warrants duly 
issued, whether for the apprehension of offenders, or for the search of 
suspected places, shall be valid without being “ backed,” although the 
district in which they may be executed shall be different from that in 
which they were granted. Another suggestion respecting the circulation 
of a Police Gazette seems less useful. It has been proved of late, that 
‘the ordinary newspapers have done more towards the detection of crime 
than all the “ Hue and Cry” publications that have yet been devised. 
Their circulation is infinitely more certain and universal than the publi- 
cation recommended by the Committee could ever become; and it should 
seem that all the objects which it can effect would be better accomplished 
at a much less expense, by a publication in the newspapers, which, if the 
advertisement duty were taken off, might be obtained at a small expense. 
The result of the Committee’s inquiry is, that they can suggest but one 
remedy for the manifold evils they have discovered, and that is, such an 
arrangement of the police for the future, as shall give it vigour and con- 
sistency. An avowal as satisfactory as it is frank, and which proves the 
value and excellence of the system, by recommending an addition to, 
but no material change in it. This leads them to consider the particular 
condition of the police of the metropolis as it now exists. They adopt 
that important’ and obvious distinction which exists between the police 
under the direction of the executive government, and that which is vested 
in the various parochial jurisdictions. They have ascertained the manner 
in which the nightly watch is provided, the sums raised under the 
authority of local acts for that purpose ; and while they find that the 
latter is amply sufficient for all necessary purposes, they denounce, as a 
radical fault in the system, the number of separate and independent 
authorities which it comprises, and which they consider unfavourable to 
that unity of action, that co-operation of force which is sometimes neces- 
sary, and always advisable. The space to which our notice has already 
extended, prevents us from going at any length into this topic. Many 
objections present themselves (notwithstanding certain vices which the 
parochial system contains) to transferring the powers they exercise 
from the local authorities, who must possess an intimate knowledge of 
the particulars of their several districts, and who are immediately 
interested, as well in the expenditure, as in the efficacy of the protection 
which it enables them to provide for their own and their neighbour’s 
persons and property. It is not made clearly to appear, either from past 
experience, or from any light which the discoveries of the Committee 
have been able to throw upon it, that any improvement would be effected 
by this proposition. Future opportunities will be afforded, when the 
matter comes, as it soon will, before the House of Commons, to examine 
the details of this part of the subject, and when those opportunities occur, * 
we shall probably consider it farther. In the mean time, this is obvious, 
that any very great increase of expense is unnecessary ; that if the parochial 
38 2 


500 Fhe Police Report. - "ENoy. 


authorities are inefficient in some respects, the police magistrates ap- 
pointed by the government are still more so; and that it is safer to trust 
-eyen to the ignorance and to the exclusive feeling which prevailsin yestries 
and commissioners, than to rely upon the unwilling labours of police 
‘magistrates. Any attempt to deprive the former of the powers which 
nave been conferred on them, and which are, upon the whole, usefully 
administered, will be strenuously resisted by them. With what success 
it is impossible to say; but that there are grounds for the resistance is 
quite clear. The institutions are of that popular nature, that is most 
‘in accordance with the general spirit of the constitution ; they are open to 
inspection and revision, not only from the legal authorities, but by their 
neighbours, who have the means, as well as the inclination, to watch their 
conduct with effect and jealousy. Their services are gratuitous, and, as far 
as appears, earnest and useful. The small share of patronage they possess 
~—if it can be so called—is not to be grudged them, and the main ob- 
jections and evils they present, are a want of unity in their operations, 
and a want of responsibility in the executive part of their duty. These 
evils are not without remedy ; but a much more simple one may be 
provided, than that suggested by the Committee, “ That there should 
be constituted an office of police, acting under the immediate directions 
of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, upon which should 
be devolved the general control over the whole of the establishments of 
police of every denomination, including the nightly watch.” If such an 
office were limited to the business of superintendence, and if such regu- 
lations were made applicable to parishes as would give that consistency 
and unity to their several systems as is suggested by the Committee, all 
that seems to be required would be supplied, and the change would be 
in unison with the other recommendations of the Committee. At pre- 
sent, there is this glaring inconsistency in them, that they propose to 
break up the parochial system, without stating any reasonable grounds 
for the change ; and they propose also, to continue the police offices, the 
inefficiency of which they have exposed. 

The qualifications for a police magistrate, if one may conclude from 
the persons who (with few exceptions*) at present fill those offices, seem 
to be that they should have failed at the bar, and possess influence 
enough with the government to appoint them to a post which suits the 
mediocrity of their talents, and is favourable. to. the indulgence of thex 
indolence. By a comparison with such persons (unexceptionable as we - 
admit their moral conduct to be), commissioners and select vestrymen, 
rise higher in the scale of usefulness and respectability than the Com- 
mittee seem to have considered. 

The main recommendation, however, is one of obvious weight and 
soundness. The excellence of the system of English police is proved; 
the necessity of frequent examination for the purpose of purifying itis 
manifested ; and all that is requisite to confer on it that vigour and 
activity which the Committte justly think is most desirable, isdemon- 
strated to be, in addition to the few alterations which have been, pointed 
out, a vigilant superintendence of its operations by officers more ener- 
getic than those who are now placed. at its head, and less sordid than the 
agents who are entrusted with its lower departments. 


* It is hardly necessary. to say, that the chief magistrate at Bow Street, who occasionally 
makes very extracrdinary displays of his fitness for his office, comes within this exception. 


1828: ~eiteets €0bsck 
- PHE MAID OF €OVADONGA. 


I wap long entertained an ardent wish to see the Vale of Coyadonga, 
so celebrated in the earlier era of Spanish history. A visit which I paid 
to a friend, who lived part of the year at Canga de Onis, at length 
afforded me an opportunity of indulging these wishes, little suspecting 
the sort of adventure to which they gave rise. The distance from my 
friend’s house to the renowned spot was not inconveniently great ; and, 
accordingly, having procured a strong mule—a sort of accommodation 
peculiarly adapted to the nature of the ramble—I set out, full of roman- 
tic enthusiasm, for this my first chivalric expedition. A few hours’ tra- 
velling brought me to the scene of my anticipated delight. As I gra- 
dually approached the hallowed spot, my heart throbbed with unusual 
emotion ; nor could I view the glowing beauty, the wildness, the majestic 
grandeur of the distant scene, without feeling my heart awakened to 
every sensation of awe and admiration. The silence which reigned 
around seemed to reach the inmost soul; a solemn, breathless stillness 
hung over those imposing solitudes, and afforded a majestic picture of 
repose. The irregular variety and beautifully picturesque appearance 
of the surrounding objects excited the liveliest feelings of surprise. 
Here gigantic masses of rock rose majestically through the green foliage 
in which they were embosomed ; and there the vale was fianked with 
numerous mountain ravines. Uncouth and shapeless clusters of wild 
shrubs at intervals met the sight, strikingly contrasting with the trees, 
irregularly strewn over the hill-sides, and added to the wild beauties of 
the prospect. I visited the famous cavern, where the Goths are said to 
have taken refuge at the time of the Moorish invasion, and where a 
chapel of rude workmanship commemorates to this day the stubborn 
resistance made in favour of barbarian independence. 

Having thus paid my devoirs to the genius of the place, I mounted a 
little eminence near the chapel; and there, inspired by the deep silence 
of the scene, my mind insensibly fell into a train of absorbing contem- 
plation. Methought I was carried back to ages long gone by, and that 
the stirring scenes of an epoch so mournful to my country: were rehearsed 
anew. With these ideas of despondency and gloom, came mingled 
others, of vigorous feats and daring exploits, which served to enliven my 
melancholy views. “ Here,” I mentally exclaimed—“ in this sacred 
spot, with mighty efforts of heroism, was commenced that series of 
valorous achievements, destined in process of time to rescue the mother 
country from the usurping grasp of her invading Mahomedan foes. In 
these wild and awful solitudes—fit emblems of the spirit of liberty and 
independence !—slavery and oppression could never take firm root ; the 
soil was unpropitious to its growth ; the mountain-air proved too strong 
for the sickly parasitical tribe. . It was here, indeed, that the renowned 
Prince Pelagius checked the overwhelming and victorious career of the 
Moors. Yes! on this hallowed spot was the first little semblance of a nation 
instituted—a nation which, insignificant in its origin, became, in after- 
times, like the Roman, warlike and powerful, not unworthy to contend 
with the ancient mistress of the world.” 

These thoughts awakened a thousand others of congenial nature ; and, 
insensibly, I fell into a profound reverie, more delicious to intellectual 
consciousness than even the softest slumber. ‘Then the shadows of heroes 


502: The Maid of Covadonga. -[Nov. 


long dead passed in review before me ; they stood out vividly before the 
vision of my heated imagination ; they seemed to breathe with life, and 
I endowed them with new feelings and passions. The forms of Pelagius, 
Alfonso, Truela, and others, passed in awful sadness before my sight ; 
and I hailed with enthusiasm those warriors who had escaped the enery- 
ating influence of the corrupted court of the unfortunate Don Rodrigo. 
In this mysterious trance I had remained some time, when, suddenly, 
my musings were interrupted by a shrill scream, which reverberated 
mournfully along those solitudes: I turned quickly to learn whence the 
cry of sorrow proceeded, and my curiosity was soon satisfied. 

Not far from the place where I stood, I perceived a female form, in an 
attitude of terrific alarm, looking intently upon me, and apparently waver- 
ing what course to pursue. She seemed in the first bloom of womanhood, 
and her wretched attire accorded well with the strangeness of her look 
and her wild deportment. Her arms and legs were bare, and a tat- 
tered garment was the only dress she wore. Long tresses of raven hair 
flowed, unrestrained, along her back, and partly covered her bosom. 
Her countenance was pale and emaciated, and a flash of vivid eagerness 
shot at intervals from her dark eyes. Yet, amidst the disorder and misery 
of her appearance, there were still remains of uncommon beauty in her 
wasted form and features. 

This unexpected apparition startled me from my dream. How sucha 
being could be found in those wild solitudes, was to me a source of pain- 
ful conjecture. That she was deranged, was the idea that most strongly 
occurred to my mind ; but yet how she had contrived to escape from her 
friends, and wander so far from every human habitation, strangely per- 
plexed me. I gazed upon her for some time in silence, and an expres- 
sion of alarm became perceptible in her looks ; I waived my hand in 
friendly token for her to approach; but she retreated, with looks of 
timid apprehension. 

I then resolved to shew her that I came only as a friend, and advanced 
towards her. My intention, however, was baflled ; for, in a moment, 
this strange being vanished from my view, like a phantom ; and I con- | 
tinued some moments gazing at the spot, doubting if what I had seen 
were real. 

Struck at this unusual incident, I felt an intense curiosity to learn far- 
ther particulars, as such an incident could not fail to make a strong 
impression on my feelings. For some time, therefore, I endeavoured to 
trace the course of the fugitive ; but all my efforts proved in vain. Better 
acquainted than I with the secret passes of that complicated wilderness, 
she had baffled my pursuit. I was at length compelled to retrace my 
steps ; the shadows of evening were fast descending, and I felt apprehen- 
sive lest a cheerless night of anxiety and pain would be the probable f 
reward of my romantic adventure. . 

With some difficulty I regained the little eminence, and, mounting my 
mule, I endeavoured to make my way toward Canga de Onis; but the 
animal did not, in any way, seem to enter into my views, and flatly 
refused to advance with the expedition I wished. After an hour’s pere- 
grination, I descried the little hamlet of Riera, chiefly composed of 
several stray huts, sheltered by asmall wood. A thought now crossed my 
mind, that I might learn from the inmates of those miserable tenements 
some particulars concerning the strange female ; and, under this impres- . 


——— ee 


1828. The Maid of Covadonga. 503 


sion, I proceeded towards the place. On arriving at the entrance of the 
first hut, I found an old and a young goatherd, who appeared as much 
surprised at my visit there, as I was with their uncouth dress and be- 
wildered looks. I hastened to remove their suspicions. 

« My good friends,” said I, “ you seem startled at my approach ;— 
what alarms you? Surely there is nothing very terrible in my appear- 
ance to excite this dread ?” 

« Your appearance, Senor,’ 
but there are so many rogues, that 

« Hold your peace, good man; I am no gentleman robber : no—for 
I merely come to demand——” 

The word demand did not tend to remove the anxiety of the simple 
goatherds, and they evinced unequivocal signs of mistrust in their still 
lennthened visages. _ 

« Gently, gently ; you quite misapprehend me ;—what I wish to 
demand of you is only information—a cheap commodity, I imagine, and 
which no doubt you can conveniently spare, if it indeed be that you 
possess it.” , 

« Well, Senor,” said the elder goatherd, somewhat reassured, “ such 
I may contrive to bestow.” 

« That’s rightly spoken. Now tell me, do you know any thing con- 
cerning a strange being that seems to haunt these places ?” 

« Strange beings, Senor! I don’t quite understand what you mean. 
Sure enough, there’s no lack of strange beings hereabouts. In the first 
place, there’s that wicked tia majura, as great a witch as ever deserved 
to be burnt. Ah! Senor, did you but see her chin! Virgen Santa! 
what a suspicious chin! Then her mustachios, and her unnatural-looking 
eye! Well, I always cross myself whenever she comes into my mind ; 
and I can assure you I am constantly thinking about the witch.” . 

« Why, then, my honest fellow, your time must be, if not very pro- 
fitably, at least very piously occupied, in prayer against her spells.” 

The old man returned no comment, but fervently made the sign of the 
cross—in which devout operation he was joined by his younger com- 
panion, whom I concluded to be his son. After a short pause, the 
speaker continued. 

_ “ Then there is the cripple tailor, who came from Oviedo—a very 
ugly little man ; and then such things as he tells of the foreign parts he 
has visited !—and a great kingdom, called Madrid ; to which, no doubt, 
he arrived in some large ship! Oh! Sir, he is a very learned man ; but. 
Heaven preserve me from all his wisdom !” 

« Hold, my honest fellow ; I mean not to dispute the claims of those 
whom you mention to be called strange beings ; but the person of whom 
I speak is neither the witch with the long chin, nor the learned cripple 
tailor.” 

_ © Then,” quoth the son, “ mayhap you mean, Senor, the mischievous 
hunchback who made his appearance amongst us some days ago. He 
was full of tricks, the wicked, deformed monster! But he is no longer 
here. Some say that he returned to Oviedo, seeing how roughly he was 
treated, and how carefully shunned, by all honest people. For my part, 
Senor, I verily think he was carried away by the devil, one of whose 
imps he surely is. Certainly, his sudden coming and going was very 


’ replied the old man, “is comely enough; 


” 


_Inysterious.” 


504 The Maid of Covadonga. [ Nov. 


« Well, well, if his Satanic majesty got hold of his promising subject, 
and carried him to the tegions below, it is not likely he should send him 
back to a place where his first mission was attended with such indifferent 
success. Besides, the strange being to whom I allude is neither old, 
ugly, nor, do I believe, mischievous—but a young, beautiful female, 
whose suddeti apparition in these wild passes, no less than the strange- 
ness of her demeanour, have naturally excited my deepest interest and 
curiosity to learn the particulars of her history.” : 

The son retreated in visible dismay as I pronounced these words. I 
perceived that I had touched upon a very tender topic, and this cireum- 
stance only tended to heighten my curiosity. 

« Ah! Senor,” cried the young goatherd, crossing himself, “ Dios nos 
defrenda! when did you meet with her? was she very near this 
place?” 

« Not far, certainly ; perhaps a mile or so.” 

« A mile? only a mile? Good Heavens! Why, she approaches 
nearer évery day.— Father, what shall we do?” ; 

The old goatherd neither answered nor moved a muscle, but preserved 
a most profound gravity. 

« Now, young friend,” said I, “ your suspicious and awful looks 
appear to me singularly out of time and place: I see no cause for such 
demonstrations. What, in the name of wonder, can you apprehend 
from a poor female? Do you know any thing of her?” 

« No, Seror ; we know nothing ; and there precisely lies the mis- 
chief. How came she here ?—what does she want? No good, I trow! 
Depend upon it, my very honoured master, she is possessed—she has an 
evil spirit. Yes, yes! I would take my oath she has a demon in her 
body.” 

«Indeed ! that’s a Curious guest, to be sure. I suppose you have some 
very powerful proof to support your opinion ?” ; 

« She has often been heard communing with some one, very myste- 

riously, when no living soul was near. Perico Matos, a shrewd fellow, 
saw her twice; and I think that I once heard her myself. Now, it is 
very clear, Senor, that she was communing with the wicked sprite. Oh! 
never go near that horrid woman—that malignant being, I should say! 
for the female form is only a deceit; and I would swear that she is no 
more a woman than I am myself.” 
_ “ Hush! Anton, thon foolish boy !” interposed the father, in a reprov- 
ing tone, “how long wilt thou indulge in that silly belief? I have often 
told thee she is no devil, but a poor woman out of her wits—a wild 
maniac, who has no doubt committed some grievotis crime, for which she 
is tormented only by the demon of remorse. Perhaps she wanders in 
these solitudes to do penance for her sin, and obtain mer¢y from 
above.” 

I thought the father’s account of the female the most reasonable of the 
two ; but the son favoured us with a very incredulous shake of the head, 
accompanied by a sagacious smile, which, translated into words, I believe 
meant—“ Oh! but I know better.” 

“ Besides,” resumed the old goatherd, “how can she be thought a 
wicked, unearthly thing, being, as she is, so young and handsome?” _ 

- I considered-this argument none of the worst ; and I certainly admired’ 
the ingenious method which the old man had of guiding his judgment in’ 


1828.] The Maid of Covadonga. 505 


matters of witchcraft and diabolical interposition. I moreover concluded 
that the tia majura, the cripple tailor, and the hunchback, were indebted 
for their supposed magical powers to their extreme ugliness and super- 
fluity of back. Ugliness and shrewdness are, indeed, regarded amongst 
ignorant people as sure tokens of mischief; and the inference is not, per- 
haps devoid of some shadow of reason. The devil is depicted, by some 
learned divines, as an extremely ugly and remarkably clever personage ; 
and people naturally enough conclude that persons who possess those 
two qualities in an eminent degree, must of necessity have some con- 
nexion with the common enemy of mankind ;—a hint this to every old, 
ugly woman, deformed wight, and sharp wit, speedily to remove from 
seanty villages to large towns, where any thing passes muster; and is not 
subject to special observation. 

_ But to return.—The old goatherd, well satisfied with the approving 
looks which I bestowed upon his reasoning, very contentedly con- 
tinued— 

« No, no; there is nothing’ to indicate supernatural practices in that 
young woman. I think I ought to know something of these matters, 
for I am an old man ; and, besides, our curate agrees with me in opinion ; 
and sure enough the holy man is the most proper person to consult con- 
cerning these sort of affairs.” 

« How long has she been a wanderer about these places?” I then 
inquired. 

« Tt is about a week since we saw her for the first time ; but the motive 
of her coming here at all is a mystery. She was found weeping by the 
side of a brook, looking very afflicted, and, at other times, she startles 
the passing stranger with her sad groans and cries. Poor thing! she 
is certainly suffering great agony. When we first perceived her, we 
attempted to approach her ; but she fled precipitately from us with signs 
of terror, and never since has she permitted any one to come neat 
her.” 

«¢ How does she ¢ontrive to. procure a subsistence in her wandering 
life? These places seem not much adapted to the maintenance of rational 
beings.” 

« Alack! Senor, she feeds on acorns, like a wild boar ; she eats any 
thing she can find; and often, too, when she approaches the hamlet, 
some of us take care to leave food in her way, which she snatches up 
greedily, and then disappears.” 

« And this is all you can tell me concerning the poor female ?” 

« As Iam a Christian, it is.” 

_ Now the information I received, instead of satisfying, naturally enough 
tended to heighten my desire of knowing more of the story of the unfor- 
tunate wahderer. Night had closed in unusual darkness, and I became 
apprehensive I should not be able to find my way back to the town. In 
this dilemma, I requested the young goatherd to be my guide ; but the 
timorous bumpkin would as soon have condescended. to conduct me into 
alion’sden. He exhibited a most vacant and prodigious dismay at the 
bare proposal ; and even the persuasive eloquence of a purse shewn to 
him was entirely thrown away upon his unenlightened mind. ; 

“ Keep your money, Senor,” he replied peevishly, “ and do not come 
to tempt poor honest folks with it. I want none of your gold, if I am to 
+ M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.35. 08 TT 


506 The Maid of Covadonga. [ Nov. 


procure it at the peril of my life, and, what is worse, by endangering 
my salvation. A goodly company are we likely to find in these places 
at night—and a night like this withal !” 

The old man seemed more accommodating : he did not, indeed, offer 
himself as a guide, but frankly invited me to pass the night in his hut. 
In my situation, I thought the most prudent course to pursue was to 
accept his hospitality, which I accordingly did, and, dismounting, went 
to inspect what accommodation I was to hope for. A very frugal supper 
served as a prologue to a bed, composed of a mattrass of dry straw, and 
tattered rags for a coverlid. I slept, however, very soundly, and, strange 
to say, I was not visited by any dreams of the female maniac. But, if 
absent in my sleep, she was the first subject to occupy my imagination 
when I awoke. 

I left the hut early in the morning, and pursued my journey to , 
where I arrived full of the adventure which had marked my visit to the 
famous vale and chapel of Covadonga. I was here, however, equally 
unable to gather any satisfactory account concerning the mysterious 
female who had so strangely crossed my path. Time, that general 
destroyer of every thing human, gradually obliterated from my mind the 
recollection of my adventure ; and in less than a month I had scarcely a 
thought to bestow upon an incident which had absorbed all the powers 
of my imagination but a short time before. 


* . * * * : * * 


Ten years had now elapsed—ten years full of variety of incident and 
peril. I had left my native city, Oviedo, with the intention of seeing the 
world; I witnessed the stirring scenes rehearsed in France during the 
despotic period of Napoleon’s gigantic power ; and I had taken arms in 
defence of my country, when that mighty conqueror ventured upon his 
imprudent invasion. After the downfal of that great man—for great I 
must call him, although my hated enemy—at the ever-memorable field 
of Waterloo, I returned to Oviedo to enjoy a life of tranquillity, after the 
many disasters, troubles, and perplexities which had until now distin- 
guished it. 

The restoration of Ferdinancto the throne of Spain gave birth to many 
brilliant hopes, which were unhappily rendered abortive. This was a 
new inducement to make me prefer the solitude and obscurity of my 
paternal home to the glittering scene of the court of Madrid. On the 
day after my arrival at Oviedo, I was awakened early in the morning by 
a visit from Don Lorenzo Navas, my intimate friend. After the first 
greetings, I inquired of him the cause of a confused rumour that I had 
heard in the street. 

«* What!” said Don Lorenzo, “ you don’t know any thing then of the 
strange event which is about to take place?” 

« Not I, indeed ; how, in the name of fortune, should I, arriving but 
yesterday, after an absence of ten years? But what is this strange 
event ?” 

« They are going to hang a poor helpless female.” 

«« And that you call a strange event! Upon my word, your affairs at 
Oviedo must go on upon a very monotonous, uninteresting footing, since 
a public execution is calculated to produce such an effect.” ; 

«It is not, my good friend, the execution in itself that occasions this 


1828. ] The Maid of Covadonga. 507 


unusual excitement in the public mind, but the strange circumstances 
connected with the unfortune culprit.” 

« Well, well, let me hear her story.”’ 

« Tt is, in sooth, amournful one. The wretched being, who is to be 
the heroine of the tragedy of this day was once well known to me, as one 
of the most beautiful and innocent lasses of a neighbouring village. 
Maria Sanchez was, indeed, a most amiable creature, until she fell into the 
power of the ruffian who wrought her ruin. Maria was the daughter of 
a reduced farmer, a tenant of the Bishop of ————. The nephew of 
this prelate found means to insinuate himself into the heart of the unsus- 
pecting girl. His fervent protestations were listened to—his reiterated 
promises of marriage believed. In the seclusion of her retired life, it 
could not be expected that Maria should in any way have become aware 
of the plot and artifices of an experienced seducer. She confided impli- 
citly in the honour of her admirer, and in an evil hour she fell. Too 
late she deplored her error ; the assiduities of her lover became less fre- 
quent ; his caresses were no longer continued with the warmth of a fer- 
vent heart. He grew cold—indifferent ; and she could only weep over 
the change. 

«« She was alarmed, but could not as yet surmise the whole extent of 
the dreadful fate that awaited her. She became a mother ; and this cir- 
cnmstance, which she considered would endear her to her neglectful 
lover, seemed only to estrange his affections more and more. His indif- 
ference soon grew into disgust ; he saw but seldom the unfortunate girl ; 
and her tears and agony growing daily more irksome, he ultimately 
abandoned her to her wretched lot. The heavy weight of her misfor- 
tunes and her shame now glaringly flashed upon the aching sight of poor 
Maria. She fled from the village, where she had been the idol of all 
around her ; she was now become a by-word of contumely—an object of 
pity or abhorrence; she soon grew frantic with her sorrows, and for 
some time continued a houseless wanderer. Once more she chanced to 
meet with her heartless seducer; but her agonizing expostulations and 
scalding tears were poured in vain. He was grown callous even to the 
voice of pity ; and some new amour in which he was now engaged com- 
pletely alienated from his mind even the memory of the affection which 
he had once professed for the unfortunate Maria. This last proof of 
unkindnsss drove the wretched victim to the verge of insanity. In a fit 
of despair she committed a dreadful, an unnatural crime, which rendered 
doubly horrible her already too miserable fate. She deprived of life the 
wretched offspring of her guilty affection. From that fatal moment, the 
pangs of her remorse and woe were augmented. The common instinct of 
personal safety made her at first solicitous to conceal the perpetration of 
the fearful act, and to avoid observation. In a distracted state, she wan- 
dered for some time in unfrequented solitude ; but suspicion had already 
been awakened by her strange conduct, and she did not long elude the 
avenging and awful pursuit of justice, which tracked her with slow but 
sure steps. She was at length taken, and conducted to the jail of this 
city, where she was tried, convicted of infanticide, and condemned to 
death. At this awful moment, it seems that a pang of remorse visited 
the heart of the merciless seducer. He could not, without shuddering, 
contemplate the misery of which he was the sole author. He passionately 
appealed to his uncle, the bishop, whose influence at court was immense, 

SES 


508 The Maid of Covadonga. (Nov. 


His application did not prove fruitless. The prelate was himself eager to 
prevent the fulfilment of the sentence, and obtained a royal decree to 
have the cause investigated by the Council of Castile. The French inva- 
sion succeeded, and, in the confusion of those times, the sentence was 
suspended, and Maria lingered in prison. After a lapse of ten years, 
new judges have ordered the award of justice to be carried into execu- 
tion.” 

“ Can this be possible? Is such an instance of barbarity offered by 
a civilized nation? Methinks the ten years’ confinement is ample 
punishment for the unfortunate girl.” Sha 

« Well, but they say that strict justice requires her life.” 

“Then strict justice ought to have required that life ten years ago. 
But I don’t see how we can reconcile this double punishment with ideas 
of justice.” 

A sullen murmur interrupted our conversation, and the bell tolled 
solemnly—the moment for the execution was arrived. An instinctive 
impulse hurried me to the place; an immense crowd surrounded the 
scaffold. 

Presently the wretched victim appeared, supported by two friars: she 
seemed ready to drop into the earth. I shuddered at the sight of the 
poor maniac prisoner ; but my astonishment, my horror increased, when 
I recognized, in the unfortunate culprit, the strange female—the myste- 
rious being, who had ten years before surprised me so much in the Vale 
of Covadonga! Time and suffering had wofully altered her form and 
features. Her once full, dark eye had sunk into its yielding socket ; her 
cheeks, once round and blooming, time and despair had frightfully 
disfigured ; her rich, luxuriant tresses, once of raven-blackness, were now 
white as snow through extreme grief’ and terror—evidently not by age : 
her withered limbs, once symmetry itself, were almost paralyzed, and 
wholly unable to support their burden. But still there were ‘sufficient 
traces yet remaining to convince me of the justice of my opinion. 

The fatal noose was already round the neck of poor Maria. I could 
not support the horrid scene; and, with feelings of mingled pity, dis- 
gust, and indignation, I turned my eyes away, and rushed from the 
‘revolting scene. 


HispaNnus. 


<< 


4 
u 
d 
. 


1828.] [ 509 J 


AFFAIRS IN .GENERAL. 


Tue Russians are either in actual retreat for the Danube, or on the point 
of it. So much, then, for the anticipations of those political reasoners, who 
already beheld the Russian eagles flapping their wings upon the towers 
of the Seraglio! “ What,” was the ery—* what is to resist the autocrat, 
who commands a million of men in arms, and can, at any time, bring half 
of that number to bear upon any given subject ?”” Nothing on earth like 
round numbers and big words for dazzling and deluding. The 
unbounded resources of Russia have been talked of till we come to believe 
the states of Europe even exist but upon her gentle sufferance. How has 
this come about? Overgrown extent of dominions was wont to be 
regarded rather as enfeebling resources than invigorating them ; but 
Russia has the luck to have her power measured solely by her size. The 
conquest of Alexander is alleged as an irrefragable proof of her might ; 
but Alexander, be it remembered, was only one of Napoleon’s many 
conquerors. The glory of following up an advantage, and of prosecuting 
it to a successful conclusion, was wholly his ; but the means by which 
this was achieved were his in common only with many others. Singly, 
he would never have made head against Napoleon, even crippled by the 
disasters of Moscow ;—it was the flocking to his standard of the whole 
of exasperated Europe, that enabled him to enter the gates of Paris, and 
inflict a just but general revenge. He was, indeed, the ostensible hero 
of the day ; but the exclusive credit of the achievement was gratefully, 
yet too hastily assigned him: the very sharers in the enterprise blindly 
succumbed before him, and honoured as their saviour the man who would 
have been nothing without their aid. Precedence once yielded, is not 
readily abandoned ; and Russia has grown arrogant and presumptuous. 
The dupe of others’ compliances and her own delusions, she has rushed 
upon a favourite enterprise, the cost of which she discovers, too late, she 
has ill-caleulated. Prodigious as is the ‘extent of her dominion, the 
population is thinly spread over its surface—its productions, natural and 
artificial, comparatively inconsiderable—and any extraordinary demand 
must soon drain them to the dregs. Though easy to assemble numbers, 
it is not easy to keep them together. Two or three hundred thousands 
marching over countries imperfectly cultivated, soon sweep off all super- 
abundance. The bulk of provisions must be carried with them; and 
expense of carriage of this kind rapidly exhausts a scanty treasury. The 
wear and tear, again, upon men and material, of marches of two, three, 
and four months’ continuance, is astounding, and, at such immense dis- 
tances, scarcely possible, in any degree, to be replaced or repaired. 
Jaded and harassed, on invading the enemy’s country, they have to 
encounter troops fresh and within reach of their resources ; and, in the 
ease of the Turks, a people inflamed by repeated insults, by the protec- 
tion or the seduction of their rebellious subjects, and by attempts to 
force conciliation upon them, and roused to madness and the most deter- 
mined resistance by the anticipated designs of the enemy to strip them 
of their native soil. Weighing these matters, we shall be the less sur- 
prised by the failure ; but the loss of men, and means, and credit, will 
be to the Russians immense and irreparable. We shall hear little more 
of them for the next half century. Of their entire defeat we shall be 
heartily glad, and trust not a remnant may be suffered to re-cross the 


510 Affau's in General. [Nov. 


Danube. Line upon line, lesson upon lesson, may ultimately teach 
nations, as well as individuals, to mind their own business, and governors 
to content themselves with oppressing at home. 

From any success on the part of the Turks, nothing whatever is to be 


apprehended: they have long ceased to think of conquests; and as to- 


their oppressions at home, what have we to do with them? Tyranny, 
when it becomes quite intolerable, will, somehow or other, be shaken off ; 
and attempts from without, usually inefficient, have generally added to 
the bitterness of it. The Greeks, as a people writhing under the yoke 
of Turkish despotism, had the unquestionable right of nature to throw 
it off—and, left to themselves, would probably have done so long ago. 
But the busy and the talkative among us must interfere ; and what good 
have they done the Greeks? None; but just the contrary. The Greeks 
are deep sufferers by their folly. Instead of husbanding their own 
resources, and trusting to their own exertions, they were taught to place 
reliance upon foreign friends ; instead of uniting in the general object, 
each was looking to his own immediate interests ; unanimity was broken, 
and nothing done in conjunction in furtherance of the common cause. 
So duped were they by the professions of individuals who affected to 
speak the sense of nations, that no doubt was entertained by them of their 
independence being effected from without, and themselves had only to 
seize the opportunity of studying their own advantage—the public 
business was taken up by others ; and thus it was that the hopes held out 
of ample assistance from all quarters, retarded that career which, without 
them, would have been long ago brought to a successful completion. 
How were the Greeks to distinguish between the English and their 
Government ; and what means had they of detecting the lies that were 
undoubtedly told them? Never was any thing, under heaven, more 
ridiculous than the conduct and management of the Greek cause in this 
country—and little better in France, or Germany, or even in. America. 
Who were the active persons here? A few pennyless, nerveless, muscle- 
less quidnuncs, who spent their breath—all they had—in talking of the 
classic soil of the Greeks—the splendid achievements of their ancestors ; 
—commercial men, who were looking to Greece as a new market ;—un- 
employed soldiers and sailors, gaping for commands ;-—and, finally, a 
flight of loan speculators. The admiration of Englishmen for Greece, 
ancient and modern, ultimately centred in undisguised pursuit of gain— 
gain by jobbing, and gain by employment. Even the gallant Cochrane 
—who has, by the way, of late completely vanished from public view— 
secured £37,000. out of the loans, to indemnify him for any possible loss 
on quitting the Brazil service. But Sir Francis Burdett, Cam Hobhouse, 
and their satellites—we utterly forgot them—their object was solely to 
be meddling—to keep in ora virum. Except so far as they might con- 
tribute to cherish idle hopes, they did no good—nor are ever likely, at 
home or abroad—and are only destined to figure in some new picture of 
Village Politicians, to be painted by Wilkie, now that he is come back 
among us again. 

Baffled and driven back for half a century, as Russia has been, what 
will be the probable effect upon Greece? Will not the Turks, exulting 
in their success, be more than ever inflexible in refusing terms? It is 
possible—but the probability with us is, that, if France persevere—as, 
looking to the force she takes with her, apparently she means to do—jn 


eS eee 


— 


1828] A { fairs in General. 511 


establishing herself in the Morea—they will consent to an accommoda- 
tion with their old subjects, and accept a tribute, under the guarantee of 
certain European powers, which, after all that has passed, can with no 
decency be declined. If no accommodation speedily follows, war with 
France is inevitable; and France will prove a much more formidable 
foe than Russia—her resources are substantial and nearer home, as near 
almost as those of Turkey—the difference of a day or two's sail. Both 
parties will be contending, in some respects, on equal terms ; but supe- 
riority of discipline and matériel, on the part of France, will infallibly 
carry the~victory—and then what becomes of Greece? After fighting 
for it, we may be sure France willbe as little disposed to resign it to the 
natives as to restore it to the Turks. 

But have we nothing to do with all this? Shall we suffer France to 
make this beautiful acquisition of the Morea? If we cannot prevent, 
it is surely better not to attempt it ; and the policy of the existing admi- 
nistration, be it the effect of necessity or choice, is obviously not to pre- 
cipitate war ; and that, at all times, is probably the wiser course. More 
good is usually done—in private life, doubtless, and we see not why it 
should not in public—by waiting for events, than by anticipating and 
forcing. More good, we repeat, is done by watching opportunities for 
effective action, than rashly and blindly venturing forward, without 
adequate knowledge of the ground—where the course is not clear, and 
the issue unascertainable. It is too much, because we donot know what: 
the government is actually doing, to take for granted it is doing nothing ; 
and we have no doubt they will not be found neglecting or abandoning 
obvious duties. It is possible the course they take with foreign courts 
may not be effective ; but it is very possible, also, it may be. It is not 
easily to be credited that we are really of so little weight in the political 
scale, as certain debaters would have us believe. Our expectation is, 
that, finally—in the course of the winter, perhaps—matters will be 
arranged, and return pretty much to the position they held before Mr. 
Canning’s interference. The only exception, if exception there should 
be, will be in favour of the Greeks: the Morea will be given up to 
them, subject to a tribute; and the rest of their countrymen, for the- 
present, must remain as before. 

But the Dardanelles! Is it for the dignity of England to submit to 
the exclusions of a blockade? We do not know that she even proposes 
to submit. The Foreign Secretary, it is true, communicates to the 
merchants the fact of the expectation of a blockade ; but, because he 
makes this communication, does it follow that the government will indo- 
lently acquiesce in its legality? If the Secretary was in possession of 
information important to the safety of the shipping, he was bound to 
communicate it. The communication might have been made in different 
terms ; but the inference is unwarrantable, and suited only to serve 
party purposes, to suppose the government acquiescing in the direct 
infraction of a contract. It can scarcely be doubted that remonstrance 
will be made; and as little that Russia, on the instances of both France 
and England, will come back to the terms of her engagement, or to some 
less offensive modification; but for us to go furiously to war before 
remonstrance, is fit only for the Quixotism of the Times, who, on all 
occasions, rather than not fight at all, would tilt at a windmill. » But 
events are dissolving the difficulty ; the Russians are going, and the 


512 Affairs in General. ‘[Nov. 


blockade by this time exists neither in fact nor intention ; and no neces- 
sity or expediency happily can yet be made out for going to war. 

Turn we now to another quarter, of which it will be quite impossible 
to make a grave matter—we mean Portugal. Now that Mr. Canning is 
gone, and all his oratory with him, we are of course not going‘ to war in 
this direction—either against Miguel, or for Don Pedro, or Donna 
Maria—no, nor even for the exclusive possession of the produce of all her 
vineyards. But to make out the right or the wrong of the policy which 
the government are pursuing, is beyond all common sagacity—there is 
no understanding it. If one act tells one way, the next tells another. So, 
for the present, we leave the matter. But the arrival of the new queen’s 
little majesty has puzzled the papersa good deal. The Morning Post 
informed us one day the visit was wholly unexpected ; and the next, that 
a house was to be taken for her in the country, to prosecute her educa- 
tion under English teachers. One day we learned she was to be honoured 
-with all sorts of distinctions; and the next, on the best authority, that 
the two royal carriages would be withdrawn in a few days, and even the 
two rattle-trap sentry-boxes at Grillon’s, propped up, very Lusitanicé, 
with broken bricks, removed. But the said sentry-boxes have béen since 
replaced with two nearly sound ones, standing, still with the aid of a 
stone or two, quite perpendicular; and the minister himself, in full 
feather and “ order,” has made his bow, and entered, it séems, into a 
political discussion with her on her very delicate position ; after which 
her majesty complimented him very prettily, by telling him she knew 
he had been her “august” grandfather’s preserver, ard hoped he 
would be her’s; and at the same time, according to the caricatures— 
which are sometimes excellent authorities—taking certain freedoms with 
his grace’s nose. The only bit of common-sense which breaks through 
the ceremony with which she has been so absurdly treated, was intro- 
ducing to her Punch and Judy—with which she naturally was highly 
delighted, and testified that delight by insisting on giving the exhibitor 
a couple of six-and-thirties. The Falmouth people—they are at the 
Land’s End—must be for ever memorable: the mayor and aldermen, 
accompanied by a file of “honorary police,” each adorned with a rosette, 
and armed with a pike, actually read the young lady an address of wel- 
come and self-gratulation on their felicity in receiving her majesty on 
their happy shore. At Bath—the seat and centre of frivolity for a cen- 
tury past—the same farce was more naturally performed. No notice; we 
have been assured, has yet been given for a Common Hall, in the city, 
to take up a dutiful address. Lord Lucan’s house, at Laleham, was, 
‘according to the papers, a few days ago given up, as lying low, and too 
near the river, and likely to be injurious to her health ;—and low, indeed, 
we remember it does lie—for, whenever the river floods, the grounds, 
like Chertsey, are all under water. But she goes, it seems, notwith- 
standing—and notwithstanding, also, we suppose, Dr. Maculloch’s pro- 
test against the malaria. 


And apropos of Dr. Maculloch—this reminds us of the Quarterly _ 


Journal of Science, upon which, on view and inquest of several numbers, 


if it were not redeemed, occasionally, by a little chemistry, we should _ 


be disposed to inflict none of the most flattering epithets. And even 
their communications on chemistry, the learned professors of Albe- 
marle Street, in common indeed with other professors, are daily -wrap- 


1826-4 Affairs in General. 513 


-ping up in more’ and more mystery. We appeal to any unscientific 
reader, accustomed to cast an eye on these matters now and then, whe- 
ther, in language and construction, they are not considerably more unintel- 
ligible than they were twenty years ago. Dr. Maculloch has an able article 
(but of unreadable length) in the recent number, a second on the same 
topic—the old malaria on board ship—in which region of stinks nobody 
could eyer for a moment doubtits existence, or of any thing else abominable. 
Turning over the leaves a little further, we find two articles, one on the 
steam navigation of the Hudson, and the other on the internal navigation 
of the United States, the “science” of which is not very manifest, and 
the articles themselves well enough calculated for some topographical 
school-book. Then follows a paper of one Mr. Wood—a very funny 
man—who has heretofore written on fatness, and now presents the “ linea- 
ments of leanness,” drawn last year, it may be presumed, from the Ana- 
tomie Vivante. Laugh and grow fat, is the remedy warmly recom- 
mended by Mr. Wood, and though he himself, volunteering a ready- 
made prescription, very obligingly cuts a number of jokes, the effect we 
regret to add was entirely lost upon us, swallowing even the whole dose 
to the dregs. Turning on in despair, we pitched upon a paper of a Mr. 
Ranking, who by the way, we have since discovered is a prodigious 
book-maker, though we never heard of him before—entitled an attempt 
to prove the Ophir of the Scriptures to be no other than Ava—not a very 
inviting subject to be sure, but for want of something better to do just 
then, we chose to see what he had to say on this pen-beaten subject. 
And what thinks the reader Mr. Ranking has to say—why, wrapt up in 
a deal of idle verbiage, simply this—first Ava sounds, or may be made 
to sound like Ophir, which of itself is good prima facie evidence—and 
next every other place by one or other has been fixed upon, and every one 
nevertheless rejected as untenable, except this Ava, which is therefore 
good negative evidence. -Now a primd facie evidence, backed by a ne- 
gative one, makes up at last, every logician will allow, some degree of 
probability ; and Mr. R. accordingly congratulates himself in very warm 
terms upon the discovery, and the settling of this questio verata. . A 
paper of a Dr. Harwood on the structure and economy of the whale, 
though absurdly pompous and pious, is by far the best of the book, but 
only part of the lecture is given, and the editor plainly does right to 
make the most of it. _Another Dr. Harwood—probably the same—has 
a book reviewed, eulogistically, on the Curative Influence of Hastings, 
of which—the book we mean—we need say no more, than, doing every 
thing as the writer evidently has done for Hastings—he is a resident 
fishing for patients—it will be very ungrateful if Hastings does nothing 
for him. 

But how could we be scribbling all this time, and forget the London 
University, which commenced its proceedings this month with the medi- 
eal lectures, and threw open its doors gratuitously to all comers and 
goers, to fill the rooms and look respectable for a beginning. The lec- 
tures themselves were, no doubt, of a certain average quality, and, as all 
lectures have been, which we ever heard, highly applauded—excellent— 
_clever—able—very superior man, Dr. So-and-so,—high talent, &e. 
One or two of the lectures have already, we believe, been printed, though 
none have yet fallen, and we trust, none will fall into our hands. This 

| | M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 35. 3 U 
: 


514 Affairs in General. ’ [Nov. 


‘mania for publishing lectures is quite alarming, and it will grow too— 
‘not a man among this new batch of professors—how many scores are 
‘there—one (not one score) for every pupil—but will publish at least 
his introductory, if not his whole course. Defend us from the inundation. 
A new book upon botany, for which there could be no earthly occasion, 
abounding as such books do, met our eyes the other day, by somebody 
never heard of before, who styled himself professor of botany to the 
London University. Then again there is King’s College, before a brick 
is laid, or the money subscribed for, or a professor appointed, has already 

_ begun to print, though the secretary, it seems-— we do not know why—dis- 
claims the book.—Good ! The results will soon be horribly annoying—re- 
chauffées already meet us on every side, and nothing of course is to be ex- 
‘pected but new rechauffées from a set of persons, who apparently think 
‘themselves bound ez officio to publish a book, and shew they can write. 
‘One consolation is left us—writers will soon be more numerous than 
readers, and then the evil will work its own remedy. The medical lecturers 
have 130 pupils attending them—that is among them. Who suffers we 
have not yet learnt, but some of course: the hospitals, or the private 
teachers. No new medical pupils can be created by the University ; all 
who before wanted medical instruction, could get it abundantly. The 
New University has no extraordinary facilities for dissection ; and as to 
professors, the old ones, are at least equal in name, practice, and ex- 
perience to the new, be they as respectable as they may. It becomes,in 
fact, merely a rival shop—a new medical school was the thing in Lon- 
don the least demanded—a company running down the private dealers ; 
companies have, however, one termination. 

To represent the University, as the prospectuses do, as possessing 
superior means of communicating instruction—as aiding in any uncom- 
mon respect the diffusion of classical, or even of scientific knowledge— 
as instituted for the benefit of science, and the progress of education— 
is all obviously stuff, and would never have been swallowed by any 
other nation, or by this, in any other age. Those who know any thing 
of lectures, know that it is not by lectures that a language will be 
learnt, or science or philosophy be understood. If the le¢turer can give 
any individual attention—it will be the quicker lads who will engross 
it—the duller can have no chance of it, and to them the lecture must o. 
course be utterly useless. Next week a score or two more professors 
will be ready to commence—whether they will have any pupils we have 
not yet learnt. The new Latin professor has got some friend to adver- 
tise hs course. It is, we observe, as nearly as possible, the one sug- 
gested and announced by Mr. Williams, the professor first appointed— 
so that this must be considered the prescription of the council. Why 
did Mr. Williams withdraw ? 

In the new number of the Edinburgh we find an article—the writer 
nobody will mistake—written in a tone of the fullest and most satisfied 
conviction, and anticipating the most complete success for this New 
University—to the utmost extent of the most sanguine expectation. 
King’s College, for which, by the way, the subscriptions are lagging at 
Jast very remarkably, the writer doubts whether he shall call it a 
“‘younger sister,” or the “ first-born child.” The fulness of his satis- 
faction prompts.a novel effusion of good will towards the old institutions, 
and he is confident both the patrons and the depreciators of the New 


1828. ] Affairs in General. - 5S 


University were actuated by much higher considerations than the 
enemies of both charged them with, or rather, what they charged each 
other with. The old Universities are convinced they were wrong in 
their opposition, and to this conviction the writer ascribes their acquies- 
cence—taking no notice whatever of the yet deeper conviction, that the 
new institutions cannot in the slightest degree conflict with their tho- 
roughly established interests. Some of the writer’s anticipations are 
really curious. It will soon, he says, become a matter of perfect indif- 
ference with- the father of a family, to which seat of learning he sends 
his sons, and accordingly one will go to Oxford, another to London, 
and a third to Cambridge, wherever the whim or the fashion prompts. 
One would think he had entirely lost sight of the annoying fact, that the 
old Universities retain the monopoly of degrees—that that alone will 
secure the exclusive reception of men destined for professions—that the 
disposal of masterships, tutorships, fellowships, scholarships, registrars, 
public orators, and offices and advantages innumerable, must always 
secure a preference over that which has nothing of the kind, amongst 
men who have their way to push in the world; end that, as to the 
aristocracy, every man of them are sure to send their sons solely to Cam- 
bridge and Oxford, except, perchance, some stray whig, who may be 
more bent upon himself being conspicuous, than consulting his son’s 
interests. As long as distinctions have any influence among men, the 
London will sink below the level of her opulent and ancient rivals. 

' The question of religion is, it seems, finally settled. For our own 
parts, we never could tolerate the cry that was made against the London 
University on this point—it was the offspring of sheer hypocrisy. The 
very persons who made the outcry well knew how carelessly, how worse 
than inefficiently, the matter was enforced and conducted at both Cam- 
bridge and Oxford. The New University was avowedly to be thrown 
open te dissenters of all denominations—from that quarter its founders na- 
turally looked for the chief supply of pupils,—and they wisely determined 
not to defet their own aims, by instituting creeds or forms in which all 
could not unite. A sort of compromise has been entered into. They 
still do not intend ex-cathedra to teach divinity, but the professors are 
permitted to supply the deficiency extra-officially: Two professors 
(members of the church) have announced the opening of an episcopal 
chapel, contigucus to the University, where accommedation will be 
furnished to students residing in the neighbourhood, and where divinity 
lectures will be read during the accademical session. Two dissenting 
Ministers, one the librarian, Cox, an Unitarian, will also deliver lectures 
on the subject, each after their own doctrines ; and the writer adds, from 
the best authority—himself, it will be understood—he doubts not, ifa 
Catholi¢ wishes to do the same, he also will be sanctioned by the council. 
This, indeed, is all that can be done. Prayers morning and evening— 
supposing them done after the old and approved method, would be 
scarcely practicable, where students do not reside within the building, 
and are changing all the day. King’s College propose to take the stu- 
dents under the roof, and then, of course, prayers and surplices will be 
easily managed. 
' In this same Edinburgh also, ‘we find a high-flown panegyric 
on the publications and views of the Society for the Diffusion of 
Knowledge, obviously from the same source. The writer is himself 
3 U2 


516 Affairs in General. [ Nov. 
ostensibly manager-in-chief, though we believe we may state pretty 
confidently, he finds himself occasionally, and more than he likes, over- 
ruled. The execution of these little books, nevertheless, he lauds in 
magnificent terms, though he betrays, the meanwhile, a lurking convic- 
tion of their utter unfitness for the classes for whose service they were 
specifically destined ; and we may safely, ourselves, declare, we have 
seldom seen an atterapt that so completely failed of its object. Mr. B’s 
own two performances—though full of blunders—that very brilliant one 
above all others, on the law of gravitation—especially the hydros- 
tatics, were much nearer the mark. The first part of Mechanics 
had much of the same character ; but the second part of the same 
treatise was obscurity obscured, and must have been distilled, drop by 
drop, from the iron-bound pen of Olinthus Gregory. The arithmetic 
and algebra is decidedly a clumsy performance. Of the lives, Caxton 
contains some information of the right kind; but the outline of General 
History is much too skeletonish—a mere syllabus, nothing of which 
can stick in any novice’s brain ; and as to the History of Greece, though 
pretty good in some respects, is, particularly in the early part of it, too 
full of names, and deals too much in niceties, and is not geod at all for 
that for which it was intended, and for which Mr. B. so extravagantly 
commends it. The fact is, the treatises together are, frankly, a failure ; 
and arrangements are already, we have been assured, making for reforg- 
ing the whole in metal of a better temper. In the Edinburgh also, 
Hallam’s Constitutional History is reviewed—eulogized, of course, and 
that it deserves it, but not so lavishly. The worst of these party publi- 
cations’ is, you know what they will say of a writer, if you happen to 
know his connexions. There is, however, an excellent bit—just and 
powerful—comparing Cromwell and Napoleon, in which they ven- 
ture to contest a dictum of Mr. Hallam’s. “In civil government,” 
says Hallam, “there can be no adequate parallel between one who 
had sucked only the dregs of a besotted fanaticism, and one to whom 
the stores of reason and philosophy were open.” This is very charac- 
teristically Mr. Hallam—all in broad lines—and strong, and therefore 
undue contrasts. We cannot quote the Edinburgh —every body will 
glance atit. Mr. Hallam himself, we hear, takes the command of the 
Edinburgh next number. 


It is a rare thing for a week to pass in London without some alder- 
man or police-magistrate presenting himself in some supremely ridi- 
culous shape. The most frequent exhibitor of late has been Sir Peter 
Laurie. A few days ago a letter was addressed by Lord Frederick 
Beauclerck to Sir Peter, inclosing another, detailing a piteous tale of 
distress or oppression, we do not recollect which. To substantiate the 
story, the lady had given Lord Frederick two references in town, one 
to a Mrs. B. in Welbeck-street, the other to a gentleman near, which 
the noble lord, forwarding to Sir Peter, and complimenting him upon 
his known activity and humanity, begged him by some means or other, 
to ascertain the truth of the story. Away flies Sir Peter himself to 
Welbeck-street, all the way from the city, and calls first, of course, like 
a true knight as he is, upon Mrs. B., who confirms the whole story to 
the letter, assuring Sir Peter. the lady was one of the most amiable and 
deserving of her sex. Touched and delighted with the success of his 


1828.] Affairs in General. 517 


expedition, he was bending back towards the city, when he bethought 
himself he might, now he was so near, call upon the gentleman too, 
and have the credit of performing his commission completely. ‘I am 
Sir Peter Laurie—do you know Miss ————?” The man hesitated. 
«« Not know her, Sir !—I have just seen Mrs. B. of Welbeck-street, and 
she speaks of her in the highest possible terms.” “I dare say she 
does, Sir Peter ; Mrs. B. is the lady herself; and her mother is a very 
respectable butcher, one hundred and forty miles from London.” This, 
however, only shews a desire to be busy ; and, above all, to please a 
lord. But within this week or two, a man, five and thirty years of age, 
of sound wind and limb, was brought before Sir Peter by some parish 
officers, as chargeable to the parish, while his father was very well able 
to maintain him. The case being called on, the man stated that his 
father was a clergyman, with preferment of more than 2,000/. a year— 
that he himself had been a clerk at Everetts’, the late bankers, and dis- 
missed by them for no crime but that of winking at another’s crime— 
that Everetts’ house, though dismissing, had still occasionally employed 
him, sometimes as afootman ; and that the father had for six years totally 
abandoned him, and even refused to repay him 30/., which he himself had 
lent his father, while white-washing under the Insolvent Act, &c. On the 
face of it the story bore the broad marks of falsehood and suppression ; but 
Sir Peter, good man, took the whole for gospel, and declaimed, as he knows 
how, with great energy and eloquence upon the sad conduct of so cruel a 
parent—a clergyman too—one who undertook to teach mercy, &c. Though 
not doubting the exaggeration for a moment, we were glad to see a con- 
tradiction from the father—he, it turns out, has 400/. a year, and four 
young children, and a load of debt—the young man was himself a 
defaulter to the amount of 320/., and rescued from prosecution solely 
by the father’s undertaking to indemnify the house ; and vouchers are 
forthcoming for. money and clothes within the six years. The letter 
concludes with advising Sir Peter, another time, to hear both sides 
before he ventures to give expression to his virtuous vituperations ; and 
a very excellent bit of advice it is, and the sooner Sir Peter acts upon 
it, the better. 


__ In the late inquiries relative to the water companies, several of the 
witnesses concurred in stating that the fishing of the river was absolutely 
ruined, by the refuse of the gas-works being thrown into the Thames. 
This statement was made to prove the filthy condition of the water. 
Nothing, we believe has been done to check the continuance of this 
nuisance ; yet, the other day, we observed a sly sort of paragraph, con- 
gratulating the public upon the fish coming up the river again in abun- 
dance since the gas-works had ceased to pollute the river. This story of 
the return of the fish, we have no doubt, is a fudge ; and who should it 


come from, but the water-companies ? 


This reminds us, by the way, of Mr. Martin’s plan for bringing up the 
Colne, or a branch of it, by an aqueduct, to town. Artist like, he pro- 
poses to unite beauty and utility ; and a very handsome piece of arehi- 
tecture he is projecting. He has published his plan, and accompanied it 
by some very beautiful sketches of river scenery ; but the plan itself is 
probably too costly to pay. The Grand Junction professed to fill their 
reservoirs from the “ streams of the vale of Ruislip.’—How soft, and 
Jimpid, and refreshing felt the cold and pure liquid upon our lips—— 


518. Affairs in General. LNov. 


streams of milk and honey, or nectar itself could scarcely sound more 
delightful. Mr. Martin has very rudely broken the charm, by assuring 
us these streams of the lovely vale of Ruislip were nothing but drain- 
ditches in the neighbourhood, dry all the summer. 


Poor Mademoiselle Verrey, and her wee, simple features, and clustering, | 
enveloping tresses. The Swiss exile to which she was said to be doomed 
by the advice of the magistrate proved to be the back-parlour, where, 
suddenly excluded from the delicions draughts of compliment she daily 
and hourly inhaled—the common air—the exhilarating sights—the per- 
petual bustle and movement of Regent Street, the unhappy girl sickened, 
pined, and died. Could nobody foresee that a change so abrupt and 
peremptory would shock to the centre a girl, like her, evidently of the 
most susceptible texture ? 

Contrast this poor girl with the young lady of Bremen—a perfect angel 
in form, and feature, and accomplishments, as the German papers repre- 
sent her, who has poisoned sixty-five persons, prompted by the varying 
impulses of love, jealousy, ambition, and avarice. This out-herods 
Herod. How much of itis true? 


In the way of extravagant assertion, though of a very innocent cast, 
take the following from the Quarterly Journal of Science, of whose 
merits we have already spoken. Last year the Pacha of Egypt offered a 
reward of seventeen piastres a measure (what size?) for grasshopper’s 
eges; and the quantity, by Cctober, brought in, amounted to 46,000 
piastres, or 40,000/. sterling. To be sure, the Quarterly Journal was not 
bound by any penalty to know the the value of a piastre; but the very 
sound of 40,000/. must surely have startled him, and led him to inquire 
about the quantity of grasshopper’s eggs before he stuffed his ostenta- 
tious publication with a mad story of this kind. 


There has been a sad dearth of new publications this month ; but a 
novel we met with, the Anglo-Irish, has some scenes of considerable 
power. It was not every body who saw O’Connel and Shiel when in 
London. The waiter of an inn, playing Cicerone, will give us a 
glance :— 

“¢ Please to look at that tall, lusty gentleman, with the Oxford-grey sur- 
tout, buttoned below, but wide open at the breast, and with the Quaker-like 
hat, and the healthy, good-humoured face, and his eyes cast down, thinking, 
and the umbrella lying along his arm—he that walks so firm and stout ?’— 
* That’s Counsellor Dan.’ 

«« Pray assist me again: I have my eye, I think, upon some other popular 
eharacter, for the people turn to lock after him too, though he is so different a 
figure from Mr. O’Connel—I mean the low, slight, little gentleman, who walks 
so rapidly, jerking his arms, and pushing out his under lip so often, and 
whose complexion is so bilious, and whose nose is rather short and cocked, 
and—now that he happens to look up—whose eyes are so dark, and fine, and 
expressive ?’—‘ That’s Mr. Shiel.’” 


Similar glimpses are given of O’Gorman, Eneas M’Donnel, Sir Har- 
court Lees, and Lord Norbury, and a fair sketch of the different style 
and manner of speaking in the two leaders. 

Some where or other we saw it remarked, that onion or garlick, 
rubbed on the wound, would relieve the sting of a wasp. We do not 
recollect the authority—but an onion is always readily attainable; and 


1828.] Affairs in General. 519 


if such be its virtue, the remedy is worth knowing, and no great harm 
done, if it prove a mistake. The mere sprinkling of flour upon a burn 
will not only relieve the immediate anguish, but, continued, will com- 
pletely heal the wound—in the severest cases. We forget our authority 
here, too—probably the Lancet, accompanied, nevertheless, with good 
testimonies: this, too, is worth remembering. 


Though disgusted, in common with many others, at the ribaldry of 
the Age, especially respecting the Duchess of St. Albans, of whom a 
great deal too much is heard on all sides, we were struck with the 
extreme greenness of the duke at the Lincoln dinner. The duchess’s 
health was drank ; and, after returning thanks in her name, the duke 
took the opportunity of telling the company “he loved his wife, and that 
heard she despised the miscreants who affected to doubt her virtue!” Is 
it possible these words could have been uttered? We commended the 
silence that had before been preserved, convinced that breaking it would 
only make matters worse ; but this 2s worse than we anticipated. 


The Duke of Sussex still on his tour! Is it not a little singular that 
great men of this kind cannot have somebody about them with a little 
common understanding—somebody who could make a decent excuse, if 
they wished to break an engagement, not expecting to like their com- 
pany? Unexpected dispatches from town prevent the duke’s intended 
visit to the Lord Lieutenant, just at the moment when he is putting his 
foot on board the packet. Why, the duke is notin office—is, indeed, the 
most disengaged man in his Majesty’s dominions ; and so little impera-' 
tive proved these dispatches, that he is not come to town yet. Though 
within twenty miles of Chester, again “ pressing engagements” pre- 
cluded his attendance at the Whig Club dinner. 


The papers told us, a few days ago, the king wished to partake of the 
sacrament ; and the Bishop of Winchester was accordingly sent for to 
administer. The servant loitered, and the bishop was behind the 
appointment. The royal impatience complained—explanation followed 
—and the servant was summoned, and angrily dismissed: the king then, 
turning to the bishop, said, “ We may now proceed.” But the bishop 
firmly, yet respectfully, assured his Majesty, in that frame of mind he 
was not a fit communicant. “ You are right, my lord ;’—and, ringing 
the bell, ordered the servant to be brought back, and forgave him on the 
spot. The details sufficiently prove the whole of this story to be mere 
humbug; but what grovelling wretch could be the author of such nau- 
seous stuff? 


Juries are about to be introduced in India., The Times, in an ecstasy, 
extols the liberality and judiciousness of the measure, and as one which 
marks, more distinctly than any fact upon record, the progress of modern 
improvement. The government communicated with some of the leading 
natives of Bombay, who evidently regard the matter rather as a burden 
than a privilege. In their reply, they beg to be excused altogether 
attending coroners’ inquests—in all cases of life and death—when them- 
selves or their families are sick—on certain festive and anniversary days 
—always after five o'clock. They stipulate, moreover, to be furnished 
with water, and allowed to attend to the calls of nature—and, being con- 


520 Affairs in General. [Nov. 


fessedly ignorant of the duty, to be associated -and instructed by English- 
men—but, also, that all Englishmen associated with them shall be 
respectable Christians. This latter condition is really a high joke, and 
speaks pretty expressively of the English residents at Bombay. 


We take the following from the French Globe, relative to the state 
of education in France :—Out of thirty-two millions, sixteen cannot 
read at all ; of the remaining sixteen, nine-tenths at least read nothing 
but the breviary, and perhaps an almanack. Among those whose means 
rise a little higher, a great number content themselves with a paper, or 
some miserable novel. The more enlightened amount but to some thou- 
sands, and among them very few are to be found whose ideas rise above 
the level of acquired knowledge. 


Owen of Lanark is come to life again. We find a memorial of his just 
presented to the Mexican government, with the very moderate and modest 
request of the province of Texas, to be given up in full sovereignty to 
him and his friends, for the purpose of instituting, on a sufficient scale, 
quite uninterrupted, a pattern society, on his entirely new principles. 
His convictions are, that the whole existing system rests on lies and affec- 
tations ; and his object, in one word, is to teach men to act according to 
their sensations ; and this, after sundry trials, he finds cannot be done, 
where any thing belonging to the present condition of things comes in 
contact. Placing this society in this province, he tells the Mexicans, 
will prevent them and the Americans from conflicting by-and-by : it will 
form an excellent frontier barrier. 


Is there any thing in this remark of a theatrical critic >— 


*F It is singular how few Englishmen are decent singers. We often see big, 
well-made men, stout, good-looking singers, with weak voices. For the last 
fifty years, it has been the custom to wrap folds of. muslin round the throat, 
which must necessarily weaken that organ ; and to this unnatural custom we, 
in a great degree, attribute the want of a decent voice on the part of our male 
singers. Of female excellence in singing, we have abundance. We have 
heard, but we know not how true it is, that female singers will never sing if 
they have a necklace on ; and we have heard, too, that they conceit that even 
so slight a pressure as that of a necklace impairs the voice, or, at all events, 
does not benefit it. Now only let any one consider, if this be true, what an 
advantage female singers must have in singing, with their throat and neck 
unencumbered, in comparison with our male singers, the most of whom wrap 
round their throats cravats, enclosing well-stuffed small mattrasses.” 


1828.] [ 


521 J 


MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 


The Animal Kingdom arranged, in Con- 
formity with its Organization, by Baron 
Cuvier, &c. &c. By Edward Griffith, 
F.L.S., and others. Part XV.; 1628.— 
Something like a complete work on zoology, 
embracing modern improvements and dis- 
coyeries, has long been imperatively de- 
manded. The subject, though long pur- 
sued with ardour on the Continent by men 
of great eminence in their several depart- 
ments—by such men as Lacepede, Meyer, 
Wolf, Temminke, Savigny, Brogniart, 
Mliger, Le Vaillant and Vieillot, and, 
above all, by Cuvier and his brother—has, 
in this country, been comparatively neg- 
lected, and, certainly, its importance greatly 
undervalued. The very important and ele- 
gant publication before us is intended, by 
supplying an acknowledged deficiency, at 
once to furnish the requisite materials, and 
stimulate to a more effective pursuit of the 
study. It has been some time in a course of 
publication, and has now reached a fifteenth 
part, with no diminution as to research, 
fulness, or ornament: the execution was 
good at the commencement, and continues so. 
Mr. Griffith and his able coadjutozs, Major 
Hamilton Smith, and Mr. Pidgeon, have 
spared neither cost nor labour to present it 
in an instructive and acceptable shape, 

But this is not to do adequate justice, The 
publication, deserving as it is, is not by any 
means so well known as it merits to be. The 
title gives but a very imperfect conception 
of either the object or the contents of the 
book. The work is not simply Cuvier’s 
“ Regne Animal.”” That admirable per- 
_ formance, exclusive of the introduction and 
_ occasional discussions, in which the genuine 
’ spirit of philosophy is every where conspi- 
: 
: 
L 


cuous, is little else than a scientific cata- 

logue, and that not complete, of the living 
' tribes, arranged according to the laws of 
conformation. It, indced, contains only a 
partial selection of the various species, just 
sufficient to illustrate the different genera. 
It was originally intended by him as an in- 
troduction only to his more elaborate work 
on Comparative Anatomy, and chiefly des- 
_ tined for the use of professional students, 
and, consequently, as might be concluded, is 
extremely defective in—or, more truly, is 
utterly unaccompanied by—popular descrip- 
tions relative to instinct, habits, &c. Cuvier’s 
work, therefore, was altogether inadequate 
to meet the purposes which the editors had 
in view; and yet whatever he had accom- 
plished was of too much weight and import- 
_ ance to be rejected. They have, therefore, 

given a careful translation of the “ Regne 
_ Animal,” and supplied from other sources, 
and those only of the most indisputable au- 
thority, whatever was requisite to complete 
their design. They have not only added an 
tire synopsis of existing species, as well as 
account of the fossil ones, more complete 
M.M. New Serics.—Vou.VI. No. 35. 


than any we have hitherto seen; but de- 
scriptions of the several species are given’ to 
an extent proportioned to the importance 
and interest of each. Cuvier’s materials 
will not amount to more than a fourth of the 
whole publication. The names of the editors 
are a sufficient guarantee for the correctness 
and respectability of the general perform- 
ance, which may, therefore, safely be recom- 
mended at once as complete as the existing 
state of the science will admit, and incom- 
parably superior, in point of appearance and 


- illustration, to any thing of the kind in the 


English language. Every body, educated 
and uneducated, with scarcely 2n exception, 
to a certain extent, likes to know something 
about animals ; and a book of reference, not 
likely to balk the referrer, is of incalculable 
value to these, above ali, who wish only to 
consult, but who, when they do consult, ex- 
pect to iind-what they want. 

To enable the reader to judge of the ex- 
tent of the Jabour which the editors have 
imposed upon themselves, it will be sufficient 
to remind him of Cuvier’s classification, 
which they have strictly followed, and com- 
pare what is already done with what yet re- 
mains to be done. ‘The animal kingdom, 
then, is by him divided into— 


1. Vertebrated animals. 
. Mollusea, or shell animals—animals with- 
out a skeleton—boneless, 
3. Articulated animals, or insects, worms, 
&e. 
4, Radiated animals, or zoophiytes. 


to 


The vertebrated are divided into four | 
classes :— 


1. Quadrupeds. 
2. Birds. 

3. Reptiles. 

4. Fishes. 


Each of these classes is again subdivided 
into orders, genera, species. The Grst class 
into the following eight orders, depending 
chiefiy on the teeth and claws :— 


. Bimana. 

. Quadrimana. 

. Carnivora, 

Glires, or rodentia. 
. Edentata. 

. Ruininantia, 
Pachydermata, 

. Cetacea. 


AN ad ® wr 


The second class (birds) into six orders ; 
and these again into families and genera :—~ 


1, Birds of prey. 
2. Passores. 

3. Climbers. 

4, Gallinaceous, 
5, Waders. 

6. Swimmers, 


The fifteen parts—which are all we have 
seen, and all, we believe, yet published — 
3X 


522 


bring the work down to the passeres. That 
is, of the first division, the first class is com- 
pleted; and of the second, one order is 
“completed, and a considerable portion of 
a second — making about five volumes. 
The work will, of necessity, be of consider- 
able extent—but will be valuable precisely 
in proportion to that extent: a shorter pub- 
lication would have defeated the utility of the 
‘whole. But the ornamental part must not 
“be forgotten. The plates are worthy of the 
work—well and distinctly engraved—the 
figures of a good size—and some of the 
animals drawn and etched by Landseer. 


Historical Sketches of Charles I., &c., 
by W. D. Fellowes, Esq. Ato. ; 1828.— 
.This is the production of Mr. Fellowes of 
the chamberlain’s office, and dedicated to 
:the Right Honourable Priscilla Barbara 
‘Elizabeth Baroness Willoughby d’Eresby, 
‘and the Most Noble Georgina Charlotte 
-Marchioness of Cholmondeley, joint here- 
ditary Jord great chamberlain of England— 
-very dutifully, no doubt, but with what pos- 
sible propriety we could never have guessed 
without Mr. Fellowes’s assistance—it ap- 
pears, ‘‘all parties bear a willing testi- 
mony to the merits of Robert Earl of Lind- 
‘sey, and his son Montague, who nobly shed 
their blood on the disastrous fields of Edge- 
hill and Naseby, and therefore,’’ adds Mr. 
Fellowes, “it was natural for me to turn to 
your ladyships, who are the representatives 
of these illustrious chiefs, as those to whom 
this record of their virtues should be most 
fitly inscribed.’”’ Only eight or ten pages are 
occupied with those very subordinate .per- 
sonages—but dedication and nonsense seem 
of late, more than ever, inseparably coupled. 


The book itself is printed with a French 
type, to give an air of ancientness; and is 
said in the title page, to be printed ny John 
Murray, Albermarle Street, London—why 
this folly? But the utility of the whole 
concern is quite past all understanding. 

It consists, to take the detail of the title 
page, of Historical Sketches of Charles the 
First, Cromwell, Charles the Second, and 
the principal personages of that period— 
including the king’s trial and execution— 
to which is annexed ‘an account of the sums 
exacted by the commonwealth from the 
royalists—and ‘the names of all those who 
compounded for their estates—with other 
scarce documents—illustrated by fifty litho- 
graphic plates. The reader would of course 
expect from this parading statement, some- 
thing original both in composition and 
document, bat nothing of the first, and 
scarcely any thing of the last occurs. The 
sketches are taken chiefly from. Claren- 
don’s Life, and his history of the rebellion 
—Noble’s Lives of the English Regicides, 
Sir Philip Warwick’s Memoirs, and from 
some ‘scarce tracts published at the pe- 
riod.”” The plates are copies of “ some 
very rare prints and outlines, which may be 
considered,” says Mr. F., “as enhancing 


Monthly Reyiem of Literature, 


ENov. 


the interest of the account of the ill-fated 
monarch’s trial and execution.” 

The case seems to be, Mr. Fellowes, for 
some reason or other, chose to reprint Nal- 
son’s Trial and Execution of Charles, and 
was then tempted to throw in any odds and 
ends, in any way, near or remote, connected 
with Charles. To listen to his introduction, 


‘something more important was surely to be 
‘looked for, notwithstanding sundry dis- 
‘claimers he makes. “ Many interesting par- 


ticulars,”” says he, “ connected with the ad- 
verse fortunes of Charles, as well as the fate 
of the Regicides, are placed in such a new 
light from the important details which 
the last twenty years have brought into 
existence, that I have thought it necessary 
to add them.’”? However true this may be 
—we have looked in vain for these impor- 
tant details—_Mr. F. must certainly, by 
some oversight, have omitted them. With 
the exception of Mr. Ellis’s letter, in which 
he claims the discovery of Charles’s execu- 
tioner—a letter or two of Charles’s—the 
first from the Hayleian MS., and another 
letter or two of Charles the Second—and 
perhaps one or two other papers—we may 
safely say, the whole is well known to every 
one at all acquainted with the older docu- 
ments of our history. Mr. I’. finally claims 
no kind of merit from the compilation of 
these documents. “I have only,”’ says he, 
“ the desire to present, in one connected 
whole, the various detached memoranda, 
and many curious particulars of this most 
deeply eventful period of our history, which, 
in process of time, might otherwise be for- 
gotten.’’ To even this humble merit, how- 
ever, he has no claim—connewion there is 
absolutely none—and much of it, it was 
mere waste of paper to reprint—Sir Thomas 
Herbert’s stupid dream, for instance. 

Charles the Second’s letters amused us, 
and may the reader, who is little likely to 
trouble himself with referring to the book 
itself : — 

) Woo 
King Chamnles the Second’s Description of his 

Queen, Donna Catherina, Infanta of Portugal, 
* on his wedding day. 21st May, 1662.—Indorsed 

in the hand-writing of Lord Chancellor Claren- 
- don. Inthe British Museum. 

Portsmouth, 21st May, 8 inthe morning. 

T arrived heere yesterday aboute two in the af- 
ternoone and as soone as I had shifted myselfe, I 
went into my wive’s chamber who I found in bed, 
by reason of a little cough and some inclination 
to a feaver which was eaused, as we Phistians 
say, by having certain things stop at sea which 
ought to have carried away those humors; but 
now allis in due course, and I believe she will 
finde herself very well this.morning as soon as 
she wakes ; it was happy for the honour of the 
nation that I was not put to the consummation of 
the marriage last night, for I was so sleepy by 
having slept but two hours in my journy, as I am 
afraid that matters would have gone. very sleepily. 
T can now only give you an account of what I 
have seene a bed, which in shorte is; her face is 
not so exact as te be called a beauty, though her 


, 


nil a Well a” pean Ieee alin 


1828.] 


eyes are excelent good, and not any thing,in her 
face that in the least degree can shayme one; on 
the contrary she hath as much agreeablenesse in 
her lookes altogether as ever I saw, and if I have 
any skill in visiognemy, which I think I have, she: 
must be as good a woman as ever was borne; her 
conversation as much as I can perceave is very 
good, for she has witt enough and most agreeable 
¥oyse ; you will wonder to see how well we‘are 
acquainted already, in a worde! thinke myselfe 
very happy, for I am confident our two humours 
will agree very well together.—I have not time to 
say any more. My Lord Loy, will give you an 
account of the rest. Cc, 


No, IT, 

Letter from Charles the Second to Lord Claren- 
don.—In the Briti-h Museum.—Indorsed in 
Lord Clarendon’s hand-writing and addressed 
—For the Chancellor. 

Hamton Court, Thursday morning. 

I forgot when you weare heare last to desire 
you to give Brodericke goud councell not to med- 
dle any more with what concerns my Lady Castle- 
maine, and to lett iim have a care how heis the 
authour of any scandelous reports, for if I tinde 
him guilty of any such thing I will make him re- 
pent it to the last moment of his life: and now I 
am entered on this matter, I thinke it very neces- 
sary to give you a littie good councell, least you 
may thinke by making a farther stirr in the busi- 
ness you may diverte me from my resolution, 
which all the world shall never do, and I wish I 
may be unhappy in this world and in the world to 
come, if I faile in the least degree of what I re- 
solved, which is of making my Lady Castlemaine 
of my wives bed chamber, and whosoever I finde 
endeavouring to hinder this resolution of myne 
(excepts it be only to myselfe) I will be his enemy 
to the last moment of my life. You know how 
mueh a friend I have been to you, if you will 
oblige me eternally, make this businesse as easy 
to me as you can, of what opinion you are of, for 
Tam resolved to go through with this matter, lett 
what will come on it, which againe I solemnly 
sweare before Almighty God, wherefore if you 
desire to have the continuance of my friendship, 
meddle no more with this business, excepte it be 
to beate downe all false and scandalous reports, 
and to facilitate what I am sure my honour is so 
much concerned in ; and whomsoever I finde to be 
my Lady Castlemaine’s enemy in this matter I do 
promise upon my word to be his enemy as long 
as Llive; you may shew this letter to my Lord 
Lunt, and if you have bothe a minde to oblige me, 
carry yourselves like friends to me in the matter. 

Cuarves R, 


Journey through the Upper Provinces 
of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-5, 
by Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta. 
2 vols. 4to.; 1828.—These volumes belong 


to the very highest class of narrative travels. 


The writer was one of the most accomplished 
men of his day—a scholar and a gentleman, 
‘ardent in his benevolence, and earnest to 
diffuse good will and peace among men, 


-with—what adds greatly to the interest his 


fate excites—something of the delicate and 
Sensitive temperament of genius — high 
strung and high wrought—essentially erra- 
tic, but kept within the bounds of perfect 


Domestic and Foreign. 


523. 


propriety, by his peculiar position, kind 
feelings, and domestic attachments. The 
eniire simplicity and singleness of his cha~ 
racter was rescued from contempt by the 
direction and steadiness of his ruling purs 
poses. The gentleness of his temper and 
evenness of his conduct, may, and must in 
part be ascribed to the ease and competency 
of his circumstances—his mixing mainly 
with the better part of mankind—the entire 
absence of all occasion for conflicting with 
opponents, or encountering serious difficul- 
ties. From the outset of life he was fa- 
vourably placed—with every opportunity 
before him ; his early acquirements were of 
a kind to win admiration among his asso- 
ciates and friends—his tastes prompted him 
to roam over the continent, and his circume 
stances enabled him to indulge his inclina- 
tions to the fullest extent. - His position at 
home gave him the best introductions—he 
had good preferment—was well connected 
—and blessed with admiring friends and 
an amiable family. The wonder is, and it 
constitutes his real merit, that he preserved 
his simplicity, amidst a good deal of adu- 
latory attention; he had a large literary 
acquaintance, and got well be-praised. To 
resist the natural effects of such circum- 
stances shews no common vigour; there 
was no affectation in the man—no fanfaro- 
nade; his aims were direct, and aided by 
no obliquities. India presented to his some- 
what ardent and sanguine imagination, an 
unbeaten field of usefulness, and, invested 
with the episcopal purple, with the mighty 
importance of which he was thoroughly, 
perhaps somewhat extravagantly possessed, 
he went resolutely and strenuously forward, 
and would never have rested as long as 
there were places for churches, or churches to 
consecrate, catechists to confirm, schools to 
establish, or chaplains to ordain. 

There was something about him, how- 
ever, much too elevated—too good, we had 
almost said, absit invidia—for a bishop. 
A bishop is, ex officio, bound to maintain 
certain dogmas, certain forms, certain pri- 
vileges, whatever be the degree of his con- 
yiction as to their utility, or their continu- 
ance. To relax in the enforcement of them 
is to desert his duties—to apostatize. He 
has less freedom than any man in society— 
to take freedoms depreciates him by the 
very act, even in the eyes of those who are 
ready to speak of him with contempt; he 
is supposed to be, and, indeed, must always 
be, in buckram and lawn sleeves—he can 
scarcely give way to any natural feelings— 
his sentiments must always be in print, or 
he runs a manifest risk of being miserably 
calumniated. To join in any of the com- 
mon pursuits of society is scarcely, in the 
most temperate degree, allowable—to play 
at cards—to appear at the Opera—to mingle 
in a dress party—to read poetry, a novel, is 
almost matter of scandal—to pursue science 
to any effective purpose is almost profana- 
tion——to escape it, Watson burnt his books 

3 X 2 


524 


He must be © pattern’ man—always pre- 
senting an example —and an example 
which nobody wishes to imitate. The ridi- 
cule of the thing is incomparable—a bishop 
must do—and for the sake of example—— 
what nobody will imitate, or would be 
toierated if he did. Any body would as 
soon think of playing harlequin, or a mounte- 
bank, as take the tone, or mask, or wig of 
episcopacy. No, Reginald Heber had a 
soul above forms, in spite of all ceremonial 
and conventional necessities. He loved 
poetry, read novels, enjoyed romances— 
even in the book before us, and which we 
had nearly forgotten, quotes Scott, and 
Southey, and Byron—talks the language of 
common life—shews an intimacy with its 
sentiments and ways—withoui a desire to 
eonceal it—and talks of chance and luck, 
where another would cant about Provi- 
dence. The sacrifice of such a man is 
greatly to be lamented ; he was calculated 
to adorn, and instruct, and soften the most 
cultivated, instead of being thrown among 
the roughest, and would have honoured the 
English bench. A very inferior man would 
have done for India. The idea of forcing 
a man to make the tour of India every 
three years is absurd—it will kill every one 
who attempts it. 

The Journal, edited by his widow, con- 
sists of his visitation tour from Calcutta, up 
the Ganges, through the Upper Provinces 
of India, by Oude and Rohileund, to the 
very confines of the Himalaya Mountains, 
returning, by the way of Delhi, Ferrucka- 
bad, Jeypoor, and Surat, to Bombay. His 
professional business is of course minutely 
detailed, but these matters constitute not 
only the least interesting, but, in fact, the 
smallest part of the book. That is filled 
with the objects that struck his observation, 
and few things escaped his vigilance—mo- 
rails, manners, politics, scenery, the condi- 
tion of the people. In all he shews himself 
a thoroughly amiable and good man, ac- 
cording to his best measuze of good—unde- 
terred, also, from expressing disapprobation 
occasionally of the mighty Company, under 
whose protection he was journeying. The 
kind feelings he betrays at every tuzn—the 
soothing services he was ever ready to per- 
form to the poorest—his consideration for 
the humblest—his conciliating manners— 
neither affecting fhor coveting popularity, 
make the reading one of the most gratify- 
ing enjoyments—he has often beguiled us 
of onr sympathies. Without pursuing him 
repularly—the book is too bulky for that— 
we shell pick out aspecimen or two. On 
leaving the court of Oude, he had made a 
distribution of small coiv, accerding to the 
custom of the country, and had the mortifi- 
cation of seeing what he had given—more 
than to the rest—to a miserable old woman, 
torn forcibly from her— 

T observed (says he) that my chobdar, and the 
rest of my escort, seemed to think that it was 
atrange to give more toa woman tlian to most ofthe 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Nov: 


men; and I had noticed on’ many oceasions, that 
all through India any thing is thought good 
enough for the weaker sex, and that the roughest 
words, the pourest garments, the scantiest alms, 
the most degrading labour, and the hardest blows, 
are generally their portion. The same chuprassee, 
who, in clearing the way before a great man, 
speaks civilly enough to those of his own sex, 
cuffs and kicks any unfortunate female who 
crosses his path without warning or forbearance. 
Yet to young children they are all gentleness and ~ 
indulgence. What riddles men are, and how 
strangely do they differ in different countries! 
An idle boy in a crowd would infallibly, in Eng- 
land, get his head broken ; but what an ontery 
would be raised if an unoffending woman were 
beaten by one of the satellites of authority. Per- 
haps both parties might learn something from 
each other; at least I have always thought it 
very hard to see beadles, in Evgland, lashing 
away children on all occasions, as if curiosity 
were acrime at an agein which it is, of all others, 
most natural, 


Among the Rohillas he noticed some 
fields of tobacco, which he had not often 
observed before. The Hindostanee name 
is tumbuccoo, evidently derived, as well as 
the plant itself, through the Eurepeans, 
from America. ‘‘ How strange it is,’’ he 
adds, ‘ that this worthless drug should 
have so rapidly become popular all over the 
world, and among people who are generally 
supposed to be most disinclined from the 
adoption of foreign custems.”? But why 
this vituperation of tobacco? It is mani- 
festly a source of high enjeyment, and that 
to those who cannot be said to have too 
much. The fastidiousness of his own ha- 
bits, we must suppose, betrays him. here. 
It is the hardest thing in the world to enter 
inio other people’s tastes. 

When at Agra, [took this opportunity (says he) 
of inquiring in what degree of favour the name 
of the French stood in this part of India, where, 
for so many years together, it was paramount. 
I was toll that many people were accustomed to 
speak of them as often oppressive and avaricious, 
but as of more conciliating and popular manners 
than the English sahibs. Many of them, indeed, 
had completely adopted the Indian dress and cus- 
toms, and most of them were free from that ex- 
elusive and intolerant spirit, which makes the 
English, wherever they go, a caste by themselves, 
disliking and disliked by all tieir neighbours. 
Of this foolish, surly, national pride, I see but too 
many instances daily, and I am convinced it docs 
us much harmin this country. We are not guilty 
of injustice, or wilful oppression, but we shut out 
the natives from our society, and a bullying, inso- 
lent manner is continually assumed in speaking to 
them. 


At Broach is an hospital for sick and 
infrm animals. He was not able himself 
to visit it. My. Corsellis, the commercial 
agent, described it to him as a 


Very dirty and neglected place, which, though 
it has considerable endowments in land, only 
serves to enrich the brahmins who manage it. 
They have really animals of different kinds there, — 


Te a a 


1828. ] 


not only those which are accounted sacred by the 
Hindoos, as monkeys, peacocks, &c., but horses, 
dogs, and cats, and they have also, in little boxes, 
an assortment of lice and fleas. It is not true, 
however, that they feed those pensioners on the 
flesh of beggars hired for the purpose. The brah- 
mins say that insects, as well as the other in- 
mates of the infirmary, are fed with vegetables 
only, such asrice,&c. How the insects thrive I 
did not hear, but the old horses and dogs, nay the 
peacocks and apes, are aJlowed to starve, and the 
only creatures said to be in any tolerable plight 
are some mileh cows, which may be kept from 
other motives than charity. 


When with Mr. Elphinstone, of whom 
he speaks in terms of high admiration, he 
inquired of him his motives for being so 
decidedly hostile to a free press in the 
country— 


. In discussing (says he) the topic, he was always 
open and candid, acknowledged that the dangers 
ascribed toa free press in India had been exag- 
gerated; but spoke of the exceeding inconve- 
nience, and eyen danger, which arose from the 
disunion and dissension which political discussion 
produced among the European officers at the dif- 
ferent stations—the embarrassment occasioned to 
government by the exposure and canvass of all 
their measures by the Lentuli and Gracchi of 
a newspaper, and his preference of deciced and 
vigorous to half measures, where any restrictive 
measures were necessary. 


Near Guzerat, he met with the Indian re- 
former Swaamee Narain—the account of his 
interview with him is much too long to quote. 
His morality was said to be far better than 
any which could be learned from the Shaster. 
He preached a great degree of purity, for- 
bidding his disciples so much as to look on 
any woman whom they passed. He con- 
demned theft and bloodshed; and those 
villages and districts which had received 
him, from being among the worst, were 
among the best and most orderly in the 
provinces. Nor was this all—he was said 
to have destroyed the yoke of caste—to 
have preached one God, &c. But we have 
no space. 


Essay on Political Economy, two Parts, 
by Captain Petiman, R.N.; 1628.—The 
final aim of the first of these pamphlets is, 
professedly, to teach the world how to re- 
concile apparent incompatibilities—that is, 
prevent fluctuations in the pzice of corn, 
and secure, at the same time, the advan- 
tages of a free trade in that article, ample 
remuneration to the grower, and gocd rents 
to the landowner; and of the second, to 
relieve the distresses of the labouring poor, 
benefit all classes of the community, increase 
the resources of the country, and give per- 
manent value to a paper currency. 

These are magnificent pretensions, the 
realizing of which we take it to be about as 
probable as any of Robert Owen's well- 
micant visions. Like most speculators and 
enthusiasts, the author grasps too much. 


His main expedient appears to be—what 


Domestic and Foreign. 


525 


will give the reader a shock to begin with 
—increasing the national debt !—because 
the more debt, the more capital—the more 
capital, the more employment—the more 
employment, the more wages—the more 
wages, the more purchasers—the more pur- 


‘chasers, the more demand—the more de- 


mand, the more profits, the more wages, 
again and again, in eternal and augmenting 
circles. ° But, then, the more debt the more 
taxes—to be sure, but the taxes themselves 
must be spent; and the more expenditure, 
again, the more demand, employment, pro- 
fits, wages, purchasers, &c. The author, 
indeed, would have the government the 
general banker—the general debtor—the 
general employer—to pick up all the stray 
debts—receive all the small deposits—all 
the unused and idle capital of the country, 
and with it set the people to work—drain, 
for instance, the four or five millions of bog 
in Ireland—cultivate and colonize Salisbury 
Plain, &c.~ As soon as the charter of the 
bank expires, we must have a national 
Bank, with authority to issue precisely the 
amount of circulation required for the ser- 
vice and convenience of the public, and no 
more and no less. This national bank is 
to have nothing to do with the government, 
nor make any advances to the state. Its 
object solely to supply a currency—which 
will thus prevent the fluctuation of prices, 
so far as currency isconcerned. The state 
must manage its own affairs—if it wants 
more money, it must raise it by direct tax- 
ation ; and borrowing will often become its 
duty. Tf the poor are unemployed, and in- 
terest low, government must borrow ; the 
effect of this will be to raise interest, which 
will mend the condition of money lenders, 
and the money lendezs will spend more, 
and that wiil increase consumption, and 
that again improve the condition of manu- 
facturers and labourers—they will eat more, 
and that will benefit the farmers, who in 
their turn will be able to pay more rents. 
Then the government can levy direct taxes; 
and if these prove burdensome, take anotiver 
loan, and then run the same career, and 
alternate and vary it with a little more 
direct taxation. In short, keep the people 
employed, and all classes thrive ; and this 
will be readily and permanently effected by 
a currency of no intrinsic value—by a gene- 
ral system of credit—by pushing machinery 
and the productive powers of men and ani- 
mals to the utmost—and empowering the 
government to set the unemployed to work, 
when nobody else can do it—the very 
means, in short, most of them, to which 
ignorant people seem inclined to attribute 
all the wide-spread poverty of the nation. 
The misfortune has been, we have stopped 
short in a career which would ultimately 
have led to an undying prosperity and 
splendour, and lost the race, when the prize 
was within our grasp. 

Captain Pettman, however, is a very clever, - 
ready fellow, and all that volubility of words 


526 


will effect, he ‘will obviously accomplish. 
Points of his subjects he handles with great 
facility and ability—he is clear, earnest, 
full—occasionally comprehensive, and often 
sagacious, and only errs in the impractica- 
bility of his ends, and the want of measure- 
ment in his means. 

The corn-protecting duties are well argued 
against the landlords--something in this man- 
ner :—These duties bear hard upon trade, and 
of course upon the manufacturing and labour- 
ing poor—that is, the interests of one-third of 
the country—taking in both farmer and farm- 
ing labourer—are protected to the injury of 
those of two-thirds of the country. The land- 
owner assumes, in the teeth of facts, that the 
burden of the taxes falls upon him, and 
to enable him to pay them, his property 
must be protected and privileged. But the 
truth is, he direct taxation, which is all he 
has to complain of, is comparatively insig- 
nificant. The whole amount of direct tax- 
ation is but six millions out of fifty, and the 
whole of that does not fall upon him’ exclu- 
sively. The land tax, of which he croaks 
so much, was, in the reign of George the 
Second, reduced from four shillings in the 
pound to three, and that upon an old rental, 
which has never been raised to this day. 
And, then, as to tithes and poor rates—the 
first do not touch him in the least—they 
never were /iis—they form no part of his 
estate, but are precisely the tenth part of 
that estate, of which he owns the other nine 
—he has as much reason to complain as the 
possessor of the moiety of an estate, that the 
legal owner of the other half withholds it 
from him. And as to poor rates, it may 
be truly affirmed, that, in a very large part 
of the landed property of the country, the 
owners are no sufferers, for they bought it 
with the burden upon it, and paid accord- 
ingly. But the claim of protecting duties, 
on the score of high taxation, is still more 
obviously groundless, when we look to the 
actual rate of rents. During the war they 
rose 150 per cent, while prices rose 75 per- 
haps—the landlords were thus benefitted 75 
per cent.; but though prices have since 
fallen considerably, rents have scarcely fallen 
at all; and landlords, accordingly, are bet- 
ter able to pay their taxation by nearly, if 
not quite, 100 per cent., than they were be- 
fore the war. What claim of right, then, 
can they have to protecting duties? It is 
obvious the price of corn is kept up by these 
duties— landlords would never be fools 
enough to incur the odium they know they 
do, if the duties were not scaly, as well as 
nominally, protecting ones. If the trade 
in corn were free, the price must, by foreign 
competition, come down ; and the landlords 
must lower their rents; but this we see, 
they may do, 100 per cent., and be no 
worse off than before the war. And what 
necessity or pretence is there, for the land- 
lord being placed, now-a-days, in a more 
fayourable position in society than any other 
class? But the truth is, every other class 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Nov. 


is injured by this unjust privilege, and espe- 
cially the most numerous of all, the labour- 
ing class. When people invest their capital 
in land, they do so for their own particular 
benefit—they do so as much as the manu- 
facturer, and he should of course be left to 
take the consequences of his own act. If 
he makes a bad bargain, he must abide 
by it—as every man is made to do but 
himself. F 

The capital of the landlord is his land— 
the capital of the monied man is: his money 
—the capital of the tradesman is his stock— 
and the capital of the labourer is his labour. 
If, therefore, the rent of the landlord be 
reduced from £500 to £450 a year; the 
interest of the monied man from £500 to 
£400; the stock of the tradesman from 
£400 to £200; and the wages of the la- 
bourer from’ 3s. to 2s. per day—it follows, 
that all capitals have been reduced in value; 
but that the landed capital has been reduced 
less than any other—and of course he is 
better able to bear the same burdens, if he 
have them still to bear, than before. 

Captain Pettman’s opinions upon the ewr- 
rency, also, are at least worth consideration. 
They are of this cast—prices, he thinks, 
haye not depended on the issues of paper, 
but the issues on the prices. The cause, 
he conceives, is taken for the effect. If the 
demand for. money be reduced—the de- 
mands for the business of circulation—the 
currency may well be contracted without 
changing its value, or producing any effect 
upon prices—for no more can be kept in 
circulation than is actually wanted. People 
do not hoard paper ; if they have more than 
they want, they send it as deposits to a 
bank, or exchange it for some security, 
which returns an interest. If a country 
banker were to purchase an estate, and pay 
for it with his own notes, such notes would 
in a few days be returned to him in ex- 
change for gold, or for Bank of England pa- 
per, or for'some other security—they would 
not remain in circulation, The amount of 
money, and of paper that circulates as 
money, cannot exceed. the sum paid for la- 
bour, or for commodities produced by la- 
bour—in short, it cannot exceed the expen- 
diture; and hence it was, that the efforts 
made by bankers, previous to the late panic, 
to keep an increased quantity of their notes 
in circulation, by reducing the rate of in- 
terest, failed, and brought losses upon all, 
and ruin on many, &c. 


Life of Leigh Richmond, by the Rev. T. 
S. Grimshawe ; 1828.—This Life of Leigh 
Richmond, though of no inconsiderable 
bulk, is yet so strictly personal, and written, 
if we may say it without offence, in so secta~ 
rian a spirit, that it will, and can be read 
by few but those of the class of religionists 
among whom he was deservedly distinguish~ 
ed. His life was exclusively spent, and 
prematurely exhausted, in preaching ; but, 
except as the author of the Dairyman’s 


pak =) yl er ee ae 


reward of it, that of the other. 


1828. 


Daughter, which, in some form or other, 
must have fallen into every reader’s hands 
—for copies to the amount of four millions, 
it seems, have been printed—he has left 
nothing to keep his memory alive. Yet he 
was no common person—possessed, indeed, 
of talents and energies that would have 
borne him through any labours, and acting 
on all occasions with a zeal and amiableness 
to make him loved and respected. Of a 
highly susceptible temperament, he was of 
course essentially enthusiastic, and when his 
feelings took the bent of religion, he had no 
rest in his soul, but as he brought others to 
his own convictions. 

His sentiments were strictly what go by 
the name of evangelical—usually, we be- 
lieve, characterised by the parties them- 
selves, we scarcely know why, as modi- 
fied Calvinism—for as to any doctrines 
peculiar to Calvin, they apply but to few of 
them. The peculiarities of the evangelical 
party are rather Lutheran than Calvinistic 
—sometimes in malice, but oftener, we doubt 
not, in ignorance, described as all for faith, 
and works must take their chance. None 
are, in fact, more zealous that conduct should 
correspond with profession, and none, pro- 
bably, have actually produced more decided 
and even permanent effects, or so indisput- 
ably shown the-practical influence of a point 
of doctrine. That some of their disciples 
are hypocrites, and others bigots—or stern, 
or arrogant—is no fault of the preachers ; 
the source of these defects is in the frailty 
and perversion of individuals—the preachers 
inculcate them not, or any thing that fairly 
leads to them—humility is the point mainly 
enforced by them, and that on the ground 
of unworthiness. 

The common church doctrine is briefly 
this—if men fulfil their appointed duties to 
the best of their ability, the merits of the 
Saviour will supply all deficiencies. The 
ground and necessity for redemption—the fall 
of man—is not, indeed, suppressed, but it is 
treated more as a matter of theory, to clear 
up obscurities, and aid in the business of 
interpretation, than as a doctrine destined 
or fitted to bear upon practice. The sub- 
ject, indeed, beyond a cold statement of the 
admitted fact, is pretty carefully shunned by 
the true son of the church, sometimes pro- 
fessedly as unintelligible, but generally, as 
fixing the stamp of fanaticism upon the man 
who ventures fo debate upon the corruptions 
it is supposed to have entailed upon us. 

The evangelical churchman, on the other 
hand, not only brings the matter of original 
sin conspicuously forward as the very basis, 
and cause, and occasion of redemption, but 
represents the Redeemer as the sole and 
perfect instrument of salvation. With the 
orthodox, the merits of the Saviour are 
strictly supplementary—with the evangeli- 
cal, all in all. Sin, and salvation from sin, 
is the burden of the latter—virtue, and the 
The evan- 
gelists preach absolute devotion of life, and 


Domestic and Foreign. 


527 


heart,’ and feelings, in grateful prostration 
to the Redeemer—the sole medium of sal+ 
vation—the pattern, also, and exemplar ; 
and though no trust, nor any degree of it, 
is to be placed in good actions, the per- 
formance is by implication, if not by ex- 
press declaration, indispensable, or rather, 
inseparable. The orthodox is equally 
earnest in representing the Saviour as the 
one pattern and exemplar ; but he does not, 
apparently, make the ground and motive of 
imitation and obedience equally personal. 
He considers the sacrifice of Christ, as at 
once, and for ever, counterbalancing the fall 
—the matter as done with; whereas the 
evangelical urges the fact, that we are all 
ways, and always shall be to the end of 
life, under the influence of that fall, and 
shall always equally, to the end of life, re- 
quire the counter workings of redemption. 
The thing, therefore, can never be out of 
his thoughts. The one is evidently more 
calculated to produce pervading effects than 
the other. The tendency of the one is to 
indifference and oblivion—of the other, to 
absorption and fanaticism. The doctrines 
of both, at the bottom, are the same; but 
the different aspects in which they are pre- 
sented, may very well produce different ef= 
fects. Which may be the corrector view 
is another question, but one which a literary 
journal need not busy itself with discussing. 
That question, indeed, is not one of autho- 
rity, for then we might examine its basis— 
nor of speculation, for then we might look 
into the principles; but of interpretation, 
where both may be wrong, for neither will 
agree in a common criterion, nor submit to 
a common moderator. 

Mr. Richmond’s story is soon told. He 
was the son of a physician of some emi- 
nence at Bath. From an accident in his 
childhood, which lamed him for life—a cir- 
cumstance which has often had a perma- 
nent influence upon character—he was edu- 
cated chiefly at home, and sent, at the usual 
period, to Trinity College, “‘ where,” the 
biographer remarks, “‘ Richmond, keeping 
immediately under the present Lord Chan- 
cellor, and being both reading men, he and 
Copley usually drank coffee together after 
midnight.’”” Though destined for the bar, 
his thoughts turned early towards the church, 
and on his wishes being finally complied 
with, with a curacy and a wife, he settled 
himself in the Isle of Wight, where he was 
quickly distinguished for the zeal and per- 
severance with which he discharged his 
ministerial labours. While thus soberly 
engaged—with some inclination still to run 
a peculiar course—he met with Wilber- 
force’s Practical Christianity, the perusal of 
which at once fixed him in evangelical sen- 
timents. ‘The Dairyman’s Daughter, The 
Young Cottager, The Negro Servant, and 
some other tracts, were the first fruits of 
this change, and are records of facts which 
fell under his own observance. Through 
life, he was fond of eliciting the feelings 


528 


and language of piety from children, and 
has doubtless given birth to abundance of 
silly stories about infant conversions. While 
in the Isle of Wight, he commenced a pub- 
lication of the ‘‘ Fathers of the English 
Church,’’ which extended, eventually, to 
eight octavo volumes—a work of cousider- 
able laboux—exhibiting the substance of the 
writings of Tindal, Ridley, Cranmer, Lati- 
mer, Hooper, Bradford, Sewell, and others. 
In the Christian Observer, he reviewed, 
with great care, the controversy between 
Overton and Archdeacon Daubeny, of 
which he observes in his diary—‘ surely 
this is conclusive.”? Prompted by this per- 
formance, apparently, Hannah Moore of- 
fered him the curacy of Cheddar, which, 
however, he declined, and undertook to 
assist at the Lock, a wider field for useful- 
ness. From the Lock he was speedily re- 
moved ; some old lady, who held the ad- 
vowson of Turvey, in Bedfordshire, placed 
it at the disposal of a frequenter of the 
Lock, and he conferred it forthwith upon 
the new preacher. To Turvey he accord- 
ingly went, and continued there, for twenty 
years, till his death. 

His activity, and extraordinary powers of 
extempore preaching, soon brought him into 
conspicuous notice with his party. He now 
took a leading part in the business of reli- 
gious societies — bibles, Jews, missions, 
schools, and particularly distinguished him- 
self by his preaching tours—collecting for 
specific objects—chiefly the conversion of 
the Jews. Such, indeed, was his almost 
miraculous facility, that he was always ready 
to preach or expound. In one of his tours, 
we find in his diary—<‘ Dined with dear 
Mrs. P. at S. Lodge. A most profitable 
and spiritual party. It was suddenly pro- 
posed, after dinner, that I should preach a 
lecture that night at Lancaster. At two 
hours’ notice, about 1,000 people were col- 
lected.”” On another occasion—“ In the 
evening I expounded the 23d Psalm to a 
large company of friends and neighbours.” 

These multiplied engagements took him 
much from his parish and family; but his 
care and anxiety for both were unceasing, 
notwithstanding the invidious remarks to 
which he subjected himself by these ab- 
sences. He had a family of twelve children, 
of whom, the eldest, proving wayward, went 
to sea, and was, finally, wrecked, though 
not before he had been recalled to his fa- 
ther’s sentiments. A second son partook 
largely of his father’s feelings and tempera- 
ment, but died just as his father began to 
anticipate the blessed fruits, and contem- 
plate him as his own adequate successor. 
The effect, combined with the previous loss 
of his eldest son, was painful and pressing 
upon the disappointed parent—he had over- 
worked—the disappointment took posses- 
sion of a shaken, though not quite a shat- 
tered frame—it absorbed his thoughts, 
depressed his spirits, hung upon his feel- 
ings, and chagrined and gloomed his de- 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


clining days—he died at 55, in May 1827. 
The volume contains many of his letters, 
chiefly addressed to his children in his ab- 
sences—some on the marriages of his daugh- 
ters—all of them full of earnest and affec- 
tionate concern for their spiritual welfare ; 
and at the close, the biographer gives two 
letters, from the widow, and one of the 
daughters, which speak volumes for the 
amiable and’ excellent qualities of the man, 
and the influence he had gained, and the 
respect he had inspired in the members of 
his own family—written with great feeling, 
and. energy, and ability—too full, of course, 
of scripture phrases, and proving clearly 
how well they were each of them qualified 
to preach themselves. 


America, or a General Survey of the 
Political Siiuation of the several Powers 
of the Western Continent, &c., bya Citi- 
zen of the United States, Author of “ Eu- 
rope,’’ Sc. ; 1828.—For the present every 
body seems to be beginning to have had 
enough of America. This is unlucky—for 
the progress of a new state, built on new 
principles—explicitly in favour of individual 
liberty—an untried course of being—has 
something in it, surely, that deserves to 
command attention. But the truth is, we 
have been deluged with accounts from in- 
competent or interested quarters—on the 
one hand, from travellers, whose object has 
been not observation, but business—none of 
them men of education, or good society, 
or independent thoughts, but the creatures 
of newspapers, full of prejudices, extremes, 


and undigested materials, and disappointed, 


perhaps, in their private views—men of 
coarse habits, and certainly of no real deli- 
cacy—of no cultivation, in short, of mind 
or manners; and, on the other hand, from 
Americans themselves, who have eyes for 
nothing but their own superiorities. Part- 
ly, to be sure, America has been piqued by 
abuse and depreciation to assert itself, and 
partly cockered into conceit and presump- 
tion by the high-flown panegyrics of some 
among us, who have made cat’s paws of the 
Americans to serve the purposes of. political 
oppositicn at home. The character of the 
Americans has become precisely what our 
own used to be a few years ago—braggart. 
and bullying—comparing our roast beef 
with French frogs—full shirts and top boots 
with frills and wooden shoes—our own rosy 
gills with their anatomie vivante. 


The writer before us is a good specimen 
of the American, who sees nothing but su- 
periority over England in his own institue 
tions. His very motto—matre pulchra, 
Jfilia pulchrior—is a sufficient indication of 
American modesty. Anticipating that 
America must become the most -powerful 
nation in the world, he already takes the 
tone of supremacy, though professedly, at 
present, placing her only on a level with 
England and Russia. But England must 


soon shrink to a third or fouxth rate power, - 


7 


- 


[Nov. 


- 


1828.] 


which, according to Bonaparte, it seems, is 
its natural position—its colonies will soon 
become independent—New South Wales, 
the Cape, India, the West Indies—and as 
to the Canadas, &c. they must of course 
speedily amalgamate with the United States. 

hen, stript of her adjuncts, what will Eng- 
land be ?—TIreland, too, struggling for inde- 
pendence—or actually independent, and at 
war with England, and, eventually, bring- 
ing her, in turn, under her dominion—or 
America herself seizing both, at one fell 
swoop, in her talons. 

America, on the contrary, has nothing to 
arrest her career—a world before her—her 
constitution has a preservative power within 
it, checking all tendency to decay. By its 
incomparable arrangements, each state is 
sovereign within itself, for certain purposes, 
and possesses, also, a share of the sove- 
reignty of the Union. The Union, also, is 
sovereign over all for certain purposes—all 
strictly defined ; and no clashings can fol- 
low from misunderstandings. The separate 
parts have no control whatever over the por- 
tion of sovereignty surrendered to the Union, 
nor the Union again over the portions of 
sovereignty retained by the states—collision 
is thus precluded. The sovereignty of the 
Union concerns mainly the foreign rela- 
tions; and so little indeed has it to do 
with internal matters, that there actually is 
no secretary for the home department. The 
leading principle of government is the sove- 
reignty of the people, and the ultimate aim 
to leave to individual action the greatest 
possible latitude. This, indeed, is the ad- 
mirable part of the American institutions. 
Every one feels at liberty to move as he 
pleases, and no restrictions are tolerated, 
but such as are manifestly indispensable for 
the safety of all—no privileges retained, or 
conferred. As soon as restrictions are felt 
to be useless, they are promptly removed ; 
for there actually exists no party eager and 
determined to suppert established or anti- 
quated usages. Generally, the American 
sits free and loose; and feels it possible 

that things, though undoubtedly good, may, 
by possibility, be better still. 

- The manufactures of the country are ra- 

pidly advancing on every side; and the 
writer of the volume before us is earnest to 
shew the wisdom and sound policy of entire 
independence of all the world. Capital is 
every day accumulating; and large sums 
released by the payment of the debt, are all 
quickly invested in manufactures. In Bos- 
ton no less than seven millions of dollars 
_ were thus paid in one year. 

On ‘returning lately to this country, after an 
absence of five years, I was not less astonished 
tian delighted to witness the visible signs of this 
progress, and to find flonyishing villages and even 
considerable towns springing up, as if by en- 
chantment, on spots that were recently uninha- 
bited. At Lowell, in Massachusetts, where there 
were not, if | am rightly informed, more than one 
or two dwelling houses in 1820, I found, in the 
_ M.M. New Series.—Vow.VI. No. 35. 


Domesiic and Foreign. 


529 


spring of 1825, a population of 1,560 souls, wholly 
engaged in manufactures; aud it was the opinion 
of persons, who bad the means of judging correct- 
ly, that ten years would add another cypher to 
the number. Similar results may be observed at 
Weare, Springfield, Dover, Somersworth, and 
various other places; and, in short, the spirit 
that produced them is active through the whole 
country. 


To enforce the necessity of complete in- 
dependence of all foreign markets —he 
says— 

In a time of war, the most extensive European 
and colonial markets are thrown open to our flour 
and provisions ; and our cultivators extend their 
enterprizes in all directions, for years perhaps in 
succession. Peace comes at length, and all these 
markets are hermetically sealed, Flour falls from 
ten or fifteen dollars a barrel to three or four, 
and ruin stalks at large through the fair planta- 
tions of the United States. Again, a panic is felt 
in England, on account of a supposed deficiency 
in the supply of cotton actually on hand, and the 
value of the article takes a sudden rise. Our 
speculating merchants, incapable of estimating 
the correctness of the opinion that occasions it, 
go on buying for exportation at extravagant 
prices. Immense supplies arrive in Europe. In 
the meantime the imagined deficiency is found to 
be of little or no importance. The market is over- 
stocked, and the merchants are ruined. Finally, 
we are forced ourselves into a war with England, 
and the usual supply of manufactures is checked: 
Immediately large amounts of capital, following 
the direction which they would naturally take in 
time of peace—were it not for the yery peculiar 
circumstances in which our country had been 
placed—are invested in domestic establishments 
which are to make up the deficiency. Everything 
goes on prosperously until the war comes to a 
close. Within a few months after, our markets 
are inundated with British goods, cheaper than 
we can make them, of equal quality, and our 
manufacturers are involved in their turn in one 
common ruin, &e, 


Forgetting the politics and policy, of 
which the book is full, the more agreeable 
parts will be found in the notices scattered 
here and there of the distinguished citizens 
of America—and among these the best are 
those of the authors of the existing federal 
constitution, Madison and Hamilton, and 
the two veterans, Jefferson and Adams, 
who both died on the jubilee anniversary 
of American independence. There is a 
good deal of extravagance in the whole of 
them ; but these were still eminent men; 
and mere prejudice it is not to place them 
on the same level with the. most renowned 
statesmen of Europe. They were engaged 


\ 


-in the same kind of business—exeeuted it 


with effect—shewed inferiority to none— 
and were a match for the ablest. Why 
should a smile come over us, when we find 
them thus compared ? 

The subject of slavery is strangely hud- 
dled over. Slavery is sanctioned by, we be- 
lieve, full one-half of the 25 states ; but the 
word is never once mentioned. The blacks 
are talked about a little, as constituting a 

3 Y 


530 


portion. of the American population. At- 
tempts have been made by private societies 
to remove them, and between 3 and 400 a 
year, it seems, have been induced to with- 
draw to Africa and Hayti; but the course 
of nature re-produces between 30 and 
40,000. The author doubts if it would be 
desirable to remove so large a portion of the 
working classes (if it could be done peace- 
ably and quietly)—“‘they are,’’ he says, 
© industrious and usefal labourers, and the 
southern states would suffer not a little. 
All that can be done,” he adds, “is to 
make them as happy as we can in their 
present condition, and then employ such 
means as may be expedient for raising them 
by a slow and gradual progress to a higher 
one.” ‘One of these means is, it seems, to 
discourage in every possible shape, the idea 
that any thing can be effected immediately, 
and at once; and the Colonization Society 
are sharply censured, because they keep up 
an impression that something may be done 
at once. This is just the way the Anti- 
Slavery people are treated among ourselves 
—but none of them suppose the business 
accomplishable at once; they wish, indeed, 
to be Leginning ; and if the question be not 
kept alive by discussion, and by making a 
beginning, and going on—we may be quite 
sure nothing eyer will be done. The in- 
terested parties never yet did any thing 
spontaneously, and we may be certain never 

In the meanwhile, however, to screen and 
mystify, by seeming to talk about the ne- 
groes, the question of their capacity is dis- 
cussed very learnedly ; and the writer, with 
extraordinary liberality, expresses his con- 
viction, that no sufficient ground exists for 
any supposition of essential inferiority. If 
such a prejudice exists, he thinks it is rare. 
The whites have now the upper hand, and 
so had once the negroes. The authors of 
‘European civilization were all negroes—the 
Egyptians were all negroes—the founders 
of Grecian colonies were negroes—the 
Canaanites—the Tyrians— the Carthagi- 
nians. He has been reading Dr. Pritchard, 
apparently :— 

Even now, according to Colonel Denham, in the 
heart of Africa, the high intellectual spirit that 
once flashed out so finely in those sun-burnt cli- 
mates is not yet quenched. He has presented us 
with several specimens of contemporary (with 
David?) African poetry, which are hardly inferior 
to the’sweet and lofty strains of the ancient 
monarch minstrel. The dirge of the Furrancers 
in honour of their chief, Bookhaloom, will bear a 
comparison with the lamentation of David over 
Saul and Jonathan. Give him songs! give him 
music! What words can equal his praise? His 
beart was as large as the desert. The overflow- 
ings of his coffers were like streams from the ud- 
der of the camel, bringing health and refreshment 
to all about him. An extempore love song unites 
the tenderness and purity of the Canticles, with 
something of the deicacy of imagery that distin- 
yuishes the poetry of Moore. The triumphal ode 
of the Sheik of Bornou, written by himself, is still 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Nov. 


more remarkable, and may fairly be considered 
as poetry of the first order. If such a thing were 

to be produced by one of the reigning sovereigns 

of Europe of the present day, we should not hear 

the last of it for 20 years, &c. : 

Notwithstanding, we take it the more en- 

lightened impression is that there ts an 

essential inferiority. The poor and miser- 

able are every where treated with contempt 
enough, no doubt ; but the treatment of the 

poor and the fool is different, and the ne- 

gro is commonly, and certainly in America, 

treated as a child, or a natural. Nothing 

but crossing with the white will mend him ™ 
probably. 


The Life and Administration of Lord 
Burghley. Ato. By Dr. Nares; 1828.— 
Dr. Nares is professor of modern history in 
the University of Oxford, and though no 
novice in literature, has never tried his hand 
at any thing historical before. The task 
was suggested to him by his relation, Arch- 
deacon Nares, as one which it became the 
“¢ professor’ to undertake, partly because 
Lord Burghley’s life had never, it seems, 
been competently written, and partly be- 
cause the original papers of the great states- 
man were still carefully preserved, and, 
through the courtesy of the noble possessors, 
perfectly accessible. Once determined, Dr. 
Nares set to with the method of age and 
vigour of youth. More than 59,000 pages 
of previous close reading did not appal him. 
He began to put pen to paper in March 
1825, and in March 1828 was a first volume 
of 800 pages committed to the press, and. 
another of the same vast magnificence ac- 
tually ready—oblita modi millesima pagina. 
surgit. Circumstances rendered it expe- 
dient to put off the publication of the second 
to a more convenient season. ; 

The life is written carefully in the model 
of Archdeacon Coxe’s performances, and, 
like -them, is neither one thing nor the 
other—too comprehensive by half for the 
life of an individual, and too incomplete for 
the story of the times. We cannot for the 
life of us see the propriety, and certainly not 
the necessity for going into the wide field of 
historical events, to illustrate the particular 
actions of one, who, though he might be in-. 
timately mixed up with many of them, yet 
had no very influential share in the produc- 
tion of others, and with some had obviously 
nothing whatever to do. The general cha- 
racter of the times—the common facts and 
incidents should be gathered from general 
story, and might have been so gathered 
from a thousand sources. But then a large 
book—a justwm volumen—could not be 
be made; and, in the case before us, Dr. 
Nares would have lost, what no professional 
man could bear to lose, the opportunity of 
discussing again the Reformation, and de- 
tecting new merits in the reformers. ' 

But the chief fault of the book—a book 
which we shall readily allow possesses very 
considerable merits—is the perpetual strains 
ing of the author to make his hero a man 


~ 


1828.] 


of importance before his time. Undoubt- 
-edly he was an able and an effective man, 
-and to him we must look for the tenor and 
counsels of along and successful reign—not 
one, however, distinguished for liberality, 
or freedom, or enlightened policy—but one 
*which admirably accomplished its aims— 
keeping people in order. Burghley had, 
of course, enemies, and was exposed to ca- 
lumnies, and no doubt suffered from them ; 
but he was not, we imagine, the faultless 
angel his fond biographer would make him. 
An early account of Burghley was published 
-anonymously by one who described himself 
as his ‘ domestic for 25 years,’’ written 
wholly in a laudatory spirit—in a servile, 
or more correctly, in a dutiful strain. Dr. 
-Nares thinks he must have been rather a 
-“ retainer,’ according to the manners of 
the times—but there were no “ retainers,”’ 
we take it, of 25 years standing—“ and 
very capable,’’ Dr. N. adds, “of appre- 
ciating the high attainments of his lord and 
master, and above fiattery.”’ 'This is quite 
gratuitously put—the probability is, that 
_the man was confidentially employed, per- 
haps as a secretary, or a bailiff, or superin- 
tendent of his household; but why, because 


he writes his master’s life, and praises him | 


through thick and thin, he is, therefore, 
“ above flattery,’’ must be quite incompre- 
hensible to common understandings. Dr. 
_Nares forgets subordination in society was 
better practised in those days than ours; 
and men of humble stations did not pre- 
sume to scan the conduct of their superiors 
—it was sufficient that they could venture 
to commemorate their virtues. This ac- 
count, however, good or bad, is Dr. Nares’s 
text-book, and the very object of his la- 
‘bours might really seem to be to justify the 
dicta of this “ faithful” domestic. Every 
‘word of it is sacred to the author, and his 
‘own book is but a laboured commentary 
‘uponit. The life is brought down only to the 
death of Mary, and contains the part least 
known, and, moreover, politically, the least 
worthy of being known, though, doubtless, 
the tracing of the early career of a distin- 
‘guished personage is not among the least 
useful purposes for which biographical 
Stories are told. 

- Cecil was born in 1520, at Bourne, in 
Lincolnshire, and sent from Grantham 
‘school to St. John’s, Cambridge. At Cam- 
bridge he was early distinguished ; and be- 
fore he was nineteen read amateur lectures 
‘on Greek—a study then comparatively new. 
‘Smith Cheke, Ascham, Nich. Bacon—all 
men of the highest acquirements—all some- 
' ‘what older than himself—were his chief 
_ associates. He was one, in short, of a knot 
_ of men, who were the early patrons of 
Greek and Protestantism. At one and 
‘twenty, we find him in Gray’s Inn, appa- 
tently studying for the bar, and within a 
few months marrying a sister of Cheke’s. 
But a political career was, probably, from 
the first his object. His eyes were naturally 


4 


Domestic and Foreign. 531 


turned to the court—his father was Henry 
VIII.’s master of the robes—and a ready 
access to the presence-chamber was open to 
him. According to his ‘‘ domestic,” a dis- 
pute with two of O’Neale’s (the Irish chief- 
tain—come to pay homage on Henry’s as- 
sumption of the title of King of Ireland) 
chaplains, on the subject of the king’s su- 
premacy—then a very interesting topic— 
introduced him favourably to the king, who 
was so much pleased with him, that he de- 
sired the father would make some “suit’’ 
for the son, and, accordingly, the reversion 
of custos brevium of the Common Pleas was 
conferred on him. This was in 1541. He 
appears to have made no farther progress in 
Henry’s good graces; but his friends at 
court multiplied —Cheke was made tutor to 
the young prince, and Ascham to the Prin- 
cess Elizabeth. His first wife dying shortly 
after their marriage, he took a second—one 
of the five learned daughters of Sir Anthony 


-Cooke—which added greatly to his courtly 


connexions, for Cooke was the prince’s 
governor, and the other daughters were all 
of them well allied. Through these con- 
nexions, especially Cheke, he was intro- 
duced to more potent persons—to Somer- 
set and Cranmer; and on Somerset’s as- 
suming the title of protector, was made 
apparently, his private secretary, and ac- 
companied him in the expedition to Scot- 
land, apparently, again, for the matter is 
not at all ascertainable, as a judge or pro- 
yost-marshal of the army. Soon after he 
was taken into the secretary of state’s office 
—not made secretary certainly, as seems 
to have been often supposed. 

On the protector’s fall, he was, with other 
confidential agents, thrown into the Tower; 
but—by what course of management brought 
about we know not—within a few months 


-we find him actually succeeding Wootton as 


secretary of state; and under Warwick’s 
government more thriving and prosperous 
than he had ever been under Somerset’s. 
He was now knighted—and shared liberally 
in the good things that float in the atmo- 
sphere of a eourt; was made chancellor of 
the garter, and obtained the reversion for 
sixty years of Wimbledon Rectory. He is 
charged with betraying his patron, Somerset, 
to curry favour with Warwick, whose star 
rose as the other’s set. But of this there is 
no good evidence ; he lost one patron and 
gained another—these patrons were, it is 
true, enemies; but before Cecil’s new ap- 
pointments, these enemies were apparently 
friends again. As secretary, he shewed 


‘himself the steady coadjutor of Cranmer 


and the reformers, in furthering the in- 
terests of the Reformation, and, we suppose, 
it may be added, in persecuting its oppo- 


‘nents. 


Cecil was again charged with betraying 
his second patron, Warwick, the Duke of 
Northumberland. That he deserted him 
is no doubt true enough ; but Northumber- 
land’s measures were obviously utterly wa- 

3 Y2 


532 


justifiable, and no man need be censured 
for prudently refusing to join in them. 
Nevertheless, he, and Cranmer too, signed 
the document, which was understood to 
throw Mary out of the succession. This, 
when called before the council, in the suc- 
ceeding reign, after Northumberland’s 
schemes had ended in his own destruction 
and that of his innocent victim, he endea- 
voured to show he had done merely as a 
witness, and had remonstrated against the 
‘act. 

To a certain extent he made good his 
defence, and might—but this all depends 
on the “ domestic’’—have retained his office 
of secretary, would he have consented to 
change his religion. This, however, of 
course, was a condition, which, with his 
high-minded, and pure Protestant convic- 
‘tions, Cecil could never consent to: and he 
was accordingly dismissed, and the office of 
‘chancellor of the garter given to another. 
Cecil, however, was no further persecuted— 
nay, he rose into favour, for within a few lit- 
tle months we find him especially appointed 
one of an honourable commission to fetch 
the /egate Cardinal Pole from Brussels— 
living with the same cardinal in terms of 
great intimacy on their return, and accom- 
panying him back to the continent, when 
the cardinal went to negociate a peace ; and 
in other respects, we find him not over- 
looked among the courtiers of the day. The 
fact is—and a melancholy fact it must be to 
his admirers— whatever Cecil’s first im- 
pressions and resolutions were on the sub- 
ject of religion, he soon changed his mea- 
sures—he even conformed—this pillar and 
-defender of Protestantism was converted ; 
and at his Wimbledon residence had a 
priest in his house, confessed, attended 
mass, &c., and suffered Cranmer, whose 
coadjutor he had so long been, to go unac- 
companied to the stake. Yet has he the 
good fortune to have gained the credit of 
sincerity, and even of consistency; he is 
considered as wisely accommodating himself 
to circumstances; and, while others fled, 
assuming a useful disguise, and thus effec- 
tively and allowably promoting the interests 
of Protestantism. In 1555, he was returned, 
according to his own account, unwillingly, 
to Parliament, and there took an active 
part, “ aliquo cum periculo,” he says, in 
occasionally opposing the measures of the 
administration. On one occasion, after an 
effort of this kind, certain members invited 
themselves to dine with him, and, contrary 
to an express stipulation, some of them 
talked freely at table. This was reported ; 
they were summoned before the council, 
and severally committed. Cecil was the 
last. On his introduction, he begged they 
would not treat him as they had done the 
others—commit first, to hear afterwards— 
being convinced he could explain all to 
their satisfaction. “ You.speak like a man 
of experience,” said Lord Paget—“ go on.” 
This was the sum of the peril he encoun- 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


* [Noy. 


tered in Mary’s reign; and this is amply 
counterbalanced by many marks of favour. 
Cecil must haye been a very prudent per- 
son, and his conversion, or conformity, is 
indisputable proof it. Dr. Nares has fought 
a good fight for him—but biographers need 
not surely be adyocates. We shall be misun- 
derstood, if we are supposed to depreciate 
Dr. Nares—there is much able execution in 
the work; but he has over estimated his 
man, and made too large a book. 


Compendium of Mechanics, by Rohert 
Brunton. Ath Edition; 1828.—This isa 
compilation for the use and benefit of Me- 
chanics’ Institutes, by one of themselves—a 
mechanic of Glasgow—consisting of a body 
of practical rules, for calculations in mecha- 
nical matters. The theory and principles 
of these things are wholly omitted—the ob- 
ject is solely a practical one. Rules are 
given for finding the areas of geometrical 
figures, selected from books of good autho- 
rity. In the same way, and from the same 
sources, chiefly are presented rules for ascer- 
taining and measuring specific gravities, 
the strength of materials—iron and timber 
—the strength and velocity of wheels—the 
powers of pumps and steam-engines, &c. ; 
to which are added geometrical problems, 
and tables of specific gravities—weights of 
malleable and cast iron plates—yelocities of 
falling bodies—squares, cubes, roots, &c.— 
all excellently adapted for immediate appli- 
cation, and unencumbered with reasons, 
though we cannot but think a little even of 
the grounds and reasons of these rules might 
not have been altogether out of place. 


The Winter’s Wreath ; 1829.—This an- 
nual comes forth under new auspices. The 
leading object of the last, it will be remem- 
bered, was to convey religious impressions ; 
in the present the introduction of similar 
topics has been carefully ayoided, from a 
feeling that more harm than good is done in 
attempting to relieve grave matters by light 
handling—like Whitfield singing a psalm to 
the tune of the Black Joke. Though strictly 
provincial, the Winter’s Wreath, will fairly 
match, in the beauty and elegance of its 
ornaments, with its rivals of the metropolis ; 
and as to its literary treasures, besides con- 
centrating the talent, alive and dead, of Li- 
verpool—Roscoe, Shepherd, Currie, and ini- 
tialists, whose names will be readily filled 
up, of acknowledged superiority, it presents 
many of the best specimens of the bijouterie 
of the annual establishments. The volume 
contains at least 120 pieces, of which it may 
be observed, generally, the prose bears the 
palm. Among these may be distinguished — 


‘not invidiously, for there are others probably 


of equal merit—Kit Wallace, by the author 


_of Recollections in the Peninsula, Wallace 


was a soldier—a poor underwitted fellow, of 
whom nothing could be made—the com- 
mon butt of his comrades, who survived 
the campaigns of Spain, and was after- 


“= 
a 
sf 


18287] 


wards found by his former captain in In- 
dia, entirely changed—not in intellect, for 
he was still as imbecile as ever, but in 
appearance and behaviour, and no longer 
the general laughing-stock.. The cause 
appeared, to be his attachment to a little 
child, who returned his attentions, with the 
most passionate fondness. This had en- 
grossed and steadied him—he had found— 
what he had never found before—some- 
thing to love him.—The memoirs of a young 
sculptor, is a very touching little narrative— 
a true story. Proctor, from a boy, had a de- 
cided bent for the art, but was forced by the 
inflexibility of his friends, to a linen draper’s 
shop. Once released from the counter, he flew 
back to his old pursuit, and finally succeeded 
in modelling a group, of Diomedes torn in 
pieces by his horses, which was exhibited 
conspicuously at Somerset House, and ad- 
mired by every body, but at the end of the 


-season returned unsold, to the disappointed 


artist. In a fit of desperation he smashed it 
to atoms with a hammer, and was fast sink- 
ing into a state of entire apathy—_when West 
heard of his condition, and kindly procured 


‘from the Academy a grant of a hundred a 


year, for three years, to enable him to visit 
Rome—the joy of which, by the sudden re- 
vulsion it occasioned, killed the poor fellow 
in a few days. Lady Anne Carr, by the 
author of May you like it—how excessively 
troublesome these pariphrases are—is in that 
writer’s best and very amiable manner ; Les 
Contretemps, half-French, is well told—and 
Audubon’s Journey up the Mississippi, is a 
very agreeable sketch. The poetry, though 
exhibiting many specimens of very graceful 
yersification—has nothing lofty or stirring in 
it. The editor’s own epilogue may serve as a 
specimen. When speaking of his own diffi- 
culties in selecting, he says— 


Nor bolder his attempt to judge the prize, 
When the three goddesses stood all revealed, 
And gave their beauties to his dazzled eyes, 
Than mine, to cull amidst the spacious field, 
Where flowers of every scent their fragrance 
yield, 
A garland which shall blend the fairest hues ;— 
For still the sweetest lie the most concealed, 
And numerous charms each dubious sense con- 
fuse, 
Bafling his anxious care, who seeks the best to 
choose, &e, 


Here is something very youthful in Mr. 
Roscoe’s Sonnet :-— 


TO THE CAMELIA JAPONICA. 


Say, what impels me, pure and spotless flower, 
To view thee with a secret sympathy ? 
Is there some living spirit, shrined in thee, 


Endows thee with some strange, mysterious 
power, 
Waking high thoughts? As there perchance 
might be 
‘Some angel-form of truth and purity, 


+ Whose hallowed presence shared my lonely 


- hour? 


Domestic and Foreign. 


That, as thou bloom’st within my humble bower, 


533 
Yes, lovely flower! ’tis not thy virgin glow, 
Thy petals, whiter than descending snow, 

Nor all the charms thy velvet folds display ; 
’Tis the.soft image of some beaming mind, 
By grace adorned, by elegance refined, 

That o’er my heart thus holds its silent sway. 


Of the engravings, The Scotch Peasant 
Girl, perhaps, is distinguishable—and, cer- 
tainly, The Sailor Boy ; but ail are of the 
highest order of execution. The View near 
Windsor is beautiful; and the Fire-works 
at St. Angelo has a very good effect. 


Forget-me-not ; 1829.—This is the an- 
nual which had the merit of introducing 
this class of publications ; and, though now 
completing its sixth year, shews no symp- 
toms of degenerating. The contributions 
are, for the most part, the handy works of 
well-known scribblers, and few compara- 
tively are anonymous ; but, again, the prose 
carries it decidedly against the poetry. Miss 
Mitford appears again with her Sketches, 
and more cricketing—which is really"a very 
odd fancy of her’s. Several stories are told 
in a very agreeable, light-hearted manner: 
—The Red Flag at the Nore—One Hour 
too many—and a piece of Irish extrava- 


‘gance, like Croker’s. Hogg has some of his 
‘best prose and verse too. 
‘the ladies and the clergy predominate—and, 


Among the poets, 


among the latter, one “ B. D.”? We do 
not, however, discover the literary pre- 
eminence above its competitors, of which the 
editor talks. Take, however, some of the 
best :-— 


‘LAST LINES BY C.B. SHERIDAN, ESQ. 


By affection’s torturing power 

In that fatal, final bour— 

By my waking on the morrow 

To the consciousness of sorrow ; 

Grief, which far exceeded sadness; 
Love, which still approaches madness ;— 


By the tones which, as thou speakest, 
Make the firmest heart the weakest ; 
Charms, too fatally beguiling ; 
Pensive grace, or playful smiling, 
Looks with which thou still delightest, 
All expressions best and brightest ;— 


By my tears, represt, but starting, 

At the moment of our parting— 

By the love which yet adores thee— 
By the pride which thus implores thee— 
Pangs that torture, cares that fret me, 
Doubly loved and lost—/orget me. 


Delta’s Blind Piper is too long for quota- 
tion; but we may give a scrap ;—there is 
no accounting for taste :— 


I love to bear the bagpipe sound ; 
The tones wind magically round 
The heart, which they subdue 
To pain or pleasure; yes, they raise 
Deep memories, and departed days 
Glide sweetly in review. 


534 
*Tis soft—the low note speaks of love. 
Lo! the blue lake ; the birchen grove 

Almost from view conceals 
A maiden and a youth, for whom 


Elysium, in its pictured womb, 
Futurity reveals. 


*Tis wild—hark! how the storms rejoice 
Among the rocks; the cataract’s voice 
So mighty ; and the breeze 
Sweeps like a hurricane along, 
Singing its fierce demoniac song 
Amid the wondering trees. 


’Tis harsh—the battle-onset’s come ; 
With bray of trump and beat of drum. 
In deadly combat meet 
The soldier and his foe—the ery 
Of onward—on to viectory— 
Of quarter—and retreat. 


And now the wild and wailing tones 
Seem sighs, and shrieks, and direful groans ; 
And now their hurrying force 
Re-echoes like the tramp and tread 
Athwart the dying and the dead, 
Of horsemen and of horse.—&c, 


The best engravings are,—The Blind Piper 
—The Cottage Kitchen—Ellen Strathallan 
(by the way, Mrs. Pickersgill’s tale is per- 
haps the most melliffuous piece of versifica- 
tion in the volume)—and The Idle School- 
Boy ;—but all are good. 


The Gem; 1829.—This is a new start, un- 
der the sovereignty of Mr. Thomas Hood, of 
Whim and Oddity notoriety. The getting 
up of this very beautiful volume must, we 
think, be allowed to be superior to the rest. 
The subjects of the engravings have been 
selected by Cooper, R.A.; and the engray- 
ings themselves are most of them of unri- 
valled excellence. Hero and Leander— 
The Painter’s Study—Harry and his Dog, 
except that Harry’s sister’s hand is nothing 
but a paw—Nina—May Talbot—May 
Queen, a very sweet face, but the picture 
does not in the least accord with the story 
it is:intended to illustrate. The literary 
part of the book—not at all meaning to de- 
preciate this in particular—is, after all, in 
these annuals, of the least importance. Al- 
most any thing not muck below mediocrity 
goes off very well, when the typography and 
the accompaniments are so beautiful: sus- 
picion is lulled—it is a sop to Cerberus— 
the judgment is beguiled, and integrity 
duped. But Mr. Hood musters with great 
strength—he has Sir W. Scott, Charles 
Lamb, Montgomery, and Gleig; and among 
the ladies, Miss Mitford (Harry and _his 
Dog should have been turned over to the 
Juvenile Souvenir) is at the head: but we 
do not see Mrs. Hemans, and what can 
have become of L.E.L.? The pieces do 
not exceed fifty, and we like the book the 
better for its moderation ; the page is well 
set, andreads agreeably—some of the others 
have their page too much crowded. Mr. 
Hood has put his own mark upon it— 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


Nov. 


ON A PICTURE OF HERO AND 
LEANDER. 


Why, Lover, why 
Such a water-rover? 
Would she love thee more 
For coming half-seas over ? 


Why, Lady, why 
So in love with dipping? 
Must a lad of Greece 
Come all over dripping ? 


Why, Cupid, why 
Make the passage brighter ? 
Were not any boat 
Better than a lighter ? 


Why, Maiden, why 
So intrusive standing? 
Must thou be on the stair, 
When he’s on the /anding ? 


Here is a bit of exquisite twaddling ; but it 
is only fair to add, plenty of the same qua- 
lity is to be found in all of them:— 


Oh! were I spiritual as the wafting wind, 

Which breathes its sighing music through the 

wood, 

Sports with the dancing leaves, and crisps the 

flood, 
Then would I glide away from cares which bind 
Down into haunts that taint the healthful mind ; 

And I would sport with many a bloom and 

bud, 

Happiest the farthest from the neighbourhood, 
And from the crimes and miseries of mankind ; 
Then would I waft me to the cowslip’s bell ; 

And to the wild-rose should my yoyage be ; 
Unto the lily, vestal of the dell, 

Or Daisy, the pet-child of poésy ; 

Or be, beside some mossy forest-well, 

Companion to the wood anemone. 


Friendship’s Offering ; 1829.—This is 
one of the elder annuals, and maintains its 
position with undiminished respectability. 
The Scotch predominate very decidedly— 
Hogg, Pringle, Mackenzie, Moir (4), Cun- 
ningham, Malcolm, &c. among the poets ; 
Gleig, Gillies, Fraser, Modern Pythago- 
rean, &c. among the prose writers. Among 
the English, Miss Mitford figures still, and 
particularly in the “Election,”’ one of her 
best—Mrs. Bowdich’s “ Going to Sea, and 
Ship’s Crew,” shews a good deal of Miss 
Mitford’s graphic power; and generally, 
we incline to say, the literature takes 
a somewhat higher tone. The Editor 
claims the merit of “ purer morality, and 
more generous and manly sentiment ;’’ but 
this, as a fact, is not, to us at least, pre- 
eminently conspicuous; and still, as we 
said, the execution on the whole—if one 
can correctly speak of these things generally, 
and it is impossible to speak of them singly 
—is a shade or two above any we have 
hitherto glanced at. Of the ormamental 
part, Martin’s .Glen-Lynden, is quite in 
his style—rocky, gloomy, massive—with the 
distance beautifully undefined ; the engray- 


1828.) 


ing of one of the Duke of Bedford’s chil- 
dren among the best. 

Mr. Malcolm’s poem was pointed out to 
us by a lady as inter ignes luna minores— 
we quite agree with her— 


THE SPIRIT’S LAND. 


The Spirit’s Land! Where is that land 
Of which our Fathers tell? 
On whose mysterious, viewless strand 
Earth’s parted millions dwell! 
Beyond the bright and starry sphere, 
Creation’s flaming space remote ; 
Beyond the measureless career, 
The phantom flight of thought. 


There, fadeless flowers their blossoms wave 
Beneath a cloudless sky ; 

And there the latest lingering tear 
Is wiped from every eye; 

And souls beneath the trees of life 
Repose upon that blessed shore, 

Where pain and toil, and storm and strife, 
Shall never reach them more. 


And yet, methinks, a chastened woe 
E’en there may prompt the sigh— 
Sweet sorrows we would not forego 
For calm, unmingled joy ; 
When strains from angel harps may stray 
On heavenly airs, of mortal birth, 
That we have heard far, far away, 
Amid the bowers of earth. 


Ah, then, perchance, their saddening spell, 
That from oblivion saves, 
May wander, like a lone farewell, 
From this dim land of graves ; 
And, like the vision ofa dream, 
Shed on the disembodied mind 
Of mortal life a dying gleam, 
And loved ones left behind. 


Yes—yes, I will, I must believe 
That Nature’s sacred ties 
Survive, and to the spirit cleave, 
' Immortal in the skies ; 
And that imperfect were my bliss 
In heaven itself, and dashed with care, 
Tf those I loved on earth should miss 
The path that leadeth there. 


4 What could prompt the Editor to print 
an old stale ode of Southey’s, on Queen 
Charlotte ? Never surely was such maudlin 
stuff—concluding thus— 


Long, long then shall Queen Charlotte’s name be 
dear; 
And future Queens to her 
As to the best exemplar look. 
Who imitates her best 
May best deserve our love. 


The New Year's Gift, and Juvenile 
Souvenir ; 1829.—This is a new thing, 
_ edited by Mrs. Alaric Watts, wholly ap- 
; iated to children of from six to twelve. 
, it is extremely well got up, put into a stout 
binding that will bear rough handling, and 
matches, nevertheless, well with the more 
adult publications. The Editor describes 
her aim to have been to make each piece 
convey some moral truth. Giants, ghosts, 


ata ah tee 


Domestic and Foreign. 


535 


and fairies are all carefully excluded—and 
why ? because they tend to enervate the 
infant mind, indispose it for wholesome 
nutriment, and nourish superstitious terrors. 
Mrs. Watts is herself too sensible a woman 
not to feel that any such effect will depend 
much more upon the general bringing up 
than the tales themselves. With a sounder 
judgment, Mrs. W. excludes, also, stories 
of exaggerated sentiment, “ which forms,” 
she says, ‘‘the staple of nursery literature, 
and are worse than the giants and fairies.”’ 
The only romance admitted is that of “‘ His- 
tory and Real Life.”” Some of the regular 
annualists have been pressed into the ser- 
vice. Wiffen tells the story of Edward 
IV.’s hapless sons, in prose; and, in verse, 
gives a new version of the Children in the 
Wood; and somebody else the Death of 
Prince Arthur. Miss Mitford plays another 
match of cricket—and gives “pride a fall.” 
Montgomery extols the virtues of short- 
hand, and Delta indites a Blackbird’s Pe- 
tition for release. Mrs. Hoffman, in her 
manner, tells a story of a Stolen Child 
among the American Indians, and Derwent 
Conway, very agreeably, a little French 
tale. Mr. Alaric has some agreeable lines 
to a “ Dear Little Boy’—much too good 
for the occasion; and A Little Boy’s Ad- 
dress to his Rocking Horse, involyes some 
allusions, which Mrs. Watts ought surely, 
in consistency, to have excluded. We 
quote this, for the remarkably easy flow of 
it— 


A LITTLE BOY’S ADDRESS TO HIS 
ROCKING-HORSE. 
BY M. J. J. 


There was Pegasus, famed in old story, 
A dragon, too, turned by a screw; 
What were they, and their wonderful glory, 
Compared, wooden Dobbin, with you? 
You need neither manger nor bin; 
You are shod without shoes to your feet ; 
You starve, and yet never grow thin; 
You work, and want nothing to eat! 


My father has steeds in his stable, 
Worth hundreds and hundreds of pounds ; 
And oh! very often at table 
Their worth and their praises he sounds: 
There is Wildfire, and Wagtail, and Wager, 
And many another beside; 
But racer, and hunter, and stager, 
Are nought to the one that I ride. 


Yet if I should wish for a buyer, 
J fear a long while I might stop ; 
For I can’t trace your pedigree higher 
‘Than up to the carpenter’s shop. 
Never mind ;—for when asked for your points, 
E’en a jockey of honour may say, 
That if you are stiff in your joints, 
It keeps you from running away. 


If I give you a cruel hard smack, 
No dread of your rearing before ; 

If I happen to fall from your back, 
No fear of a kick on the floor :~-- 


536 


You’re saddled, and bridled, and ready, 
Alike through the day and the night; 

And well do I-call you, Old Steady, 
That never was known to take fright. 


The Greeks gave the Trojans a shock, 
With a horse that, like mine, was of wood ; 
But being unable to rock, 
Though larger, it was not so good :— 
To be horsed as I am is a pleasure, 
At school to be horsed is no joke ; 
So Pll e’en make the most of my leisure, 
And bid you good-morrow, good folk. 


The Anniversary; 1829.—We can only 
speak of what we know. The Gem, the 
other day, appeared to us, and we said as 
much, to surpass in decoration its rivals— 
but the rivals we had then seen, of course, 
we meant; and now we find The Anniver- 
sary, setting it beside The Gem, to be not, 
indeed, quite Hyperion to a satyr, but as 
much superior to The Gem, as The Gem to 
those we had previously admired. The vo- 
lume, like several others, is all green and 
gold, but of ampler margin, and containing 
full twenty engravings, all of great excel- 
lence. taken from paintings by Lawrence, 
Bonnington (to whose merits and memory, 
by the way, there is a handsome tribute in 
one of the numbers of the French Globe 
this month), Beechey, Shee, Landseer, 
Howard, &c.—of which Westall’s Picka- 
back, Linton’s Morning, and Allan’s Pic- 
ture of Scott in his Study, are the most con- 
spicuous, and must first fix attention. The 
literary department is edited and enriched 
by Allan Cunningham; and contributions 
will be found.from Southey, a piece of some 
little humour, describing the portraits which 
have been exhibited of him—from Profes- 
sors Wilson and Lockhart—and from one, 
few would expect to find in the Annuals, 
Irving, the Scotch preacher, a tale of the 
times of the martyrs. The description of 
Abbotsford, the grotesque and yet beautiful 
creation of Sir Walter Scott’s, is sketched, 
it may be supposed, by Geoffrey Crayon. A 
glance is given of Windsor Castle, and there 
we have the king and his “politeness” again. 
Miss Mitford, also, in a visit of one of her 
farmers and the carpenter’s daughter to 
Ascot races, finds, in the “ king’s gracious- 
ness and dignity, the first gentleman in Eu- 
rope (has the lady seen al the gentleman of 
Europe ?), the greatest sovereign of the 


Monthly Review of Literature. 


[Nov- 


world.’”? Somebody also eulogizes the late 
Sir George Beaumont ; and he also, “ to 
the easy dignity which we assign to the 
Sidneys and the Raleighs of Elizabeth’s 
court, united the polished manners, refined 
taste, and sense of propriety, which distin- 
guish George the Fourth.”” When shall 
we have done with this stuff ? 

We have no space to quote—or pieces of 
equal merit, with any of the other annualists 
which we have yet seen, might readily have 
been presented. 


The Literary Souvenir ; 1829.—Of this 
we have seen nothing at present, but the 
proof plates, to the number of thirteen. Of 
these deserve to be distinguished a good 
portrait of Sir Walter Scott, which very dis- 
tinctly recalled to us his features as we, not 
very long ago, quietly contemplated them, 
on finding him at our elbow, gazing at an 
exhibition of fantoccini, in Burlington-street 5 
—Cupid among the Graces, from Hilton’s 
painting—a very charming group, except 
that Cupid’s wig has just suffered from the 
friseur’s curling-irons ;—and The Sisters, 
by Stephanoff: the detecting sister has a 
laughing eye and sunny smile, quite in- 
comparable and irresistible. 


Portrait of the Right Hon. Mary Eliza- 
beth Baroness de Clifford, &c. &¢., En- 
graved by T. Wright, from a Painting by 
Derby.—A very great proportion of the 
drawings, or rather the best of them, that 
were made for Mr. Lodge’s valuable work, 
and exhibited last season at Mr. Harding’s, 
Pall-Mall East, were executed by the very 
clever artist, Mr. Derby, the painter of 
the excellent picture, from which this ex- 
tremely beautiful engraving has been made. 
Mr. Wright, who, in his line of éngray- 
ing, is decidedly at the top of the list, has 
been most successful in giving to the fea- 
tures the pleasing and amiable expression 
which characterizes the noble lady they re- 
present. This engraving is to form the 
47th of a Series of Portraits of Tlustrious 
Females, now ‘publishing in a work of 
much respectability, entitled La BrLitEe 
ASSEMBLEE, the oracle of ladies’ fashions. 
It is not usual for Magazines to criticize 
each other’s performances, but as the plate 
is before us, we will not withhold our praise 
where it is so well merited. 


re ee Fee eee 


1828.] 


{ 537 ] 


MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 


THE first month of our theatrical winter 
in London is generally as free from novelty 
as the most indolent of critics need desire. 
But we live in an age of innovation; and 
our winter managers—particularly he of 
Drury—seem determined not to be behind 
the rest of the world, in displaying that 
most unequivocal evidence of either wisdom, 
or the want of it, as the case may be. What 
is proved by it in the present instance, we 
shall not pretend to say ; but with the re- 
sults that now claim our notice, we are 
more than content. In fact, when Mr. 
Price can get into his hands such a tragedy 
as the “ Rienzi’’ of Miss Mitford, and sucha 
débutante as Miss Phillips to perform in it, 
he may bring them forward whenever it may 
seem to suit his managerial interests to do so: 
those being, we take it, the acknowledged 
and sole criteria of a modern manager’s 
wisdom. Still, however (not having yet 
been able to attain to a very profound des 
gree of respect for the penetration of our 
accredited purveyors of dramatic amuse- 
ment), we cannot help suspecting that it 
was rather in contempt of the public taste, 
than in reverence towards it, that the two 
novelties now to be noticed were brought 
forward precisely at the moment when, of 
all others during the dramatic winter, the 
town is most empty of a dramatic audience. 
We imagine the truth to be, that ‘certain 
shrewd doubts were entertained, in that 
most uncritical of all spots, the Green Room, 
as to the success both of ‘ Rienzi” and of 
Miss Phillips; and that the moment of 
bringing these matters to issue was ¢hosen 
accordingly. Be this as it may, the success 
of the experiment (so far as we, the public, 
ate concerned) has been complete; and we 
proceed at once to give a brief account of it. 

Rienzi” is *¢ founded wpon’’ the true 
history of the extraordinary individual who 
Dore that mame in the middle of the four- 
teenth century, in Rome. But those spec- 
tators who will not take the trouble to en- 
quire for themselves into matters of this 
nature, should be expressly informed, that 
history has been followed no step further 
than the dramatic purposes of the tragedy 
writer demanded. Miss Mitford has not 
scrupled to omit, to expand, to modify, to 
alter, and even to falsify facts, wherever the 
object she had in view, of producing an ef- 
fective acting drama, seemed to call for such 
4 course of proceeding. Without thinking 
it needful to enter into any inquiry as to 
the propriety of this, we are. particular in 
stating the fact, because the most influential 
oracles of the daily press give theit readers 
no hint of this being the case, but, on the 
contrary, declare that historical truth has 
been preserved *¢ as much as circumstances 
would permit.”” What degree of latitude 
these critics may be pleased to allow to 
* circumstances,” we cannot tell; but cer- 

M.M. New Series.x—Vou. VI. No. 35. 


tain it is, that, to say nothing of Miss Mit- 
ford’s having invented a// the female cha- 
racters, and the most important but one of 
the males, she has unquestionably given a 
tone and bearing to all the latter portion of 
Rienzi’s career, which the truth does not 
justify; and has, moreover, so entirely 
changed the final catastrephe of that career 
as to render it purely her own: that it is 
also Natwre’s, we are not disposed to deny, 
any more than that all her alterations have 
been conceived and effected with great judg- 
ment, and in the true spirit of a dramatic 
poet. But that she has made these changes, 
should not the less be denied or concealed. 
Leaving all further considerations of this 
kind to those who may wish to pursue them 
into detail; we now turn our exclusive at- 
tention to Miss Mitford’s tragedy, as it is— 
not as what it might or might not have been. 
It opens by certain intimations, touching 
the existing feud between the rival houses 
of Colonna and Ursini; who may, at that 
period, be almost said to have divided be- 
tween them the allegiance of the degenerate 
Roman people. At the time of the tragedy 
commencing, Rienzi (Mr. Young) may be 
supposed to have been secretly cherishing, 
during the greater part of his previous life, 
the rnost intense and absorbing desires to 
behold, and, if possible, to himself effect a 
recurrence to the older and better times of 
the Roman republic. In fact, though of 
the lowest origin, he may be looked upon as 
a shrewd, enlightened, and courageous pa- 
triot, who has fully satisfied himself as to 
the possible regeneration of the country 
which he leves, and prepared to wait and 
watch, with an inflexible patience, till some 
fit eccasion presents itself of attempting the 
desired change. Such an occasion is made 
to occur in the opening scene of the tragedy. 
A, Roman citizen is publicly outraged by 
some of the vassals of the Uysini, in pre- 
sence of the assembled people; and Rienzi, 
having first punished the offender, calls upon 
his countrymen on the spot to assert their 
long-forgotten rights, and join him in cast- 
ing off the contemptible tyranny under 
which they are daily sinking lower and 
lower jn the scale of humanity. They are 
no less astonished than moved, and roused 
by his bold and eloquent appeal; for they 
had hitherto known him only as a permitted 
jester and buffvon in the family of the Co- 
lonna. The people with one accord meet 
and entertain his call upon them, and he 
appoints a general rendezvous at night on 
the Capitoline hill, at which meeting he is 
joined, and his views seconded, by Angelo 
Colonna (Mr. Cooper), the young and en- 
thusiastic heir to the name and honours of 
the first family in Rome; but, forgetting 
his pride of birth in his newly-awakened 
love for the beautiful Claudia, Rienzi’s 
daughter (Miss Phillips). With this ac- 
3 Z 


538 


cession to the strength of his party, Rienzi 
loses not a moment in calling it into 
action. Scrolls are placed on all the con- 
spicuous parts of the city, calling upon the 
people to rise against their oppressors—ap- 
pointing a place and hour for meeting— 
and openly signed by Riensit’s name. ‘They 
are scorned and treated with contempt by 
those whose power and its bad use they 
threaten. The meeting takes place—the 
changes are carried by acclamation—and 
Rienzi is placed in the seat of supreme and 
uncontrolled power, as “ Tribune of the 
People.”’ The patriot. is no sooner seated 
in the chair of state than he shows symptoms 
of being about to become the politician. 
He instantly brings about a marriage be- 
tween the heir of the Colonna and his own 
daughter ; having previously, however, urged 
the age of the nobles to its height, by exe- 
cuting summary vengeance on one of their 
most distinguished members, merely for 
commitiing a crime that.impunity had ren- 
dered at least venial, if not a virtue, in the 
eyes of his fellows and followers. To the 
marriage banquet of his daughter with 
Angelo, Rienzi now invites al! the chief 
nobles of the city, though he had previously 
gained knowledge of a plot which they had 
prepared for his immediate assassination, 
The nobles attend—their plot is exposed and 
frustrated, and themselves condemned to 
death; but they are all pardoned by the 
new dictator, on condition that they take 
certain degrading oaths, and go through 
other ceremonies, all of which are of a na- 
ture at once to further the interests of the 
people, and fix the power of their (now) 
ambitious leader. These oaths and cere- 
monies (so degrading are they to the honour 
of the nobles, at the head of whom is the 
elder Colonna) induce the new-made bride- 
groom not only to secede from his connec- 
tion with Hiengi, but to taunt and outrage 
him to his face, and finally to head a new 
conspiracy of the nobles. This is met by 
new exertions on the part of Rienzi, and a 
trial of strength in the field, or rather in the 
streets of Rome, ensues, in which the party 
of the nobles is partially defeated, and seve- 
ral of themselves (including Angelo) taken 
prisoners, and condemned to instant execu- 
tion. By the intercession of Claudia, An- 
gelo’s pardon is pronounced by Rienzi, but 
not till it is too late; for as the scene be- 
‘tween the daughter and father is concluding, 
the frantic mother of Angelo enters to an- 
nounce the death of her son, and pronounce 
a prophetic curse upon its author. It now 
appears that the sinister changes which have 
taken place in the character and conduct of 
Rienzi since his eleyation to supreme power, 
added to the unceasing and now united 
efforts of the nobles against him, have greatly 
alienated the people from his party; and, 
accordingly, his self-confidence is shaken, 
his rule totters, and his mingled weakness, 
arrogance, and intemperance, ere hastening 
his downfal. At length, while he is medi- 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[ Nov. 


tating on his altered condition, his enemies, 
both patrician and plebeian, have collected 
in overwhelming force at the gates of the 
capitol (where he is shut up); and just as 
they are about to storm it, he orders the 
gates to be flung open, and issues. forth 
alone and unarmed; and having harangued 
them on their fickleness, he resigns his 
power back into the hands that gave it. 
This, however is not enough: they demand 
his instant death ; and just as he is baring 
his breast to their swords, Claudia enters, 
in time to receive the first mortal wound 
that was aimed at her father’s heart, but 
not to cover it from a thousand others that 
the instant after assail it. 

It will be seen, from the above sketch, 
that Miss Mitford’s plot is a very simple 
one, consisting merely of the sudden rise, 
the brief reign, and the precipitate fall, of 
an ambitious man. Nevertheless, it includes 
several situations of great dramatic capa- 
bility, and scope for the display of much 
passion and pathos, and the developement 
of many subtle windings and varyings of 
the human character. With regard to the 
first of these, we will say that Miss Mit- 
ford has used her materials with great judg- 
ment, and with corresponding dramatic 
effect. The scene in which Rienzi’s appa- 
rently insane boldness, in affixing his name 
to the scroll that is stuck about the city, is 
related to the lords whose power it contemns 
(Rienzi himself loitering in, as if by acci- 
dent, and taking part against himself), is 
conceived in a true dramatic spirit, and exe- 
cuted with great felicity. Those also be- 
tween the same parties after I2ienzi’s eleva- 
tion, when the lords beg for Ursini’s pardon ; 
and again at the bridal banquet, the fine 
scene between Rienzi and Angelo alone, 
when the latter contemns and falls off from 
his alliance with his plebeian father-in-law, 
and Rienzi runs through the history of his 
own past life; the scene between the same 
two characters, when Angelo is condemned 
to death by Rienzi; and finally, the con- 
cluding catastrophe: all these points of dra- 
matic interest are worked out with great 
skill, and with a real feeling of the nature 
and capability of the materials in hand. We 
are not able to give equal praise to the man- 
ner in which the character of Rienzi is 
brought out, and. its subtle changes and 
windings linked together. We admit the 
truth of all its parts; but we are not made 
to see the connecting links which bind those 
parts one to another. We must add, too, 
that in softening down those points of Ri- 
enzi’s real character which would have stood 


in the way of the spectator’s sympathy, — 
y ympathy, 


Miss. Mitford has in no slight degree im- 
paired the truth as well as the force and 
consistency of her representation. 
over, by choosing to crowd the events and 
feelings of many years into the limits of a 
single play, she has (almost necessarily, 
perhaps) induced a hurry and consequent 
confusion in the spectator’s mind, which is 


More- — 


1828.] 


productive of very mischievous effects in a 
dramatic point of view. Not that we would 
advocate a French strictness in regard to the 
unity of time and place; though we should 
be glad to see that unity preserved in all 
other things, and above all in character and 
dramatic effect. But we must venture to 
confess our belief, that even the strict unity 
of time, which the French tragic drama 
exacts, is productive of very excellent effects, 
and effects which of themselves alone are 
often capable of, in some sort, compensating 
for the miserable deficiencies of that drama 
in other respects: since, by not taxing the 
spectator’s imagination too lavishly in the 
direction in question, it is left free to dwell 
on other and more important matters, and 
to busy itself about them alone. 

In the minor character of Angelo, we 
think Miss Mitford has been successful 
throughout. The proud and ardent, yet 
pure and high-minded beir of the Colonna, 
swayed for a moment from the haughty 
course which custom has made a nature, 
and almost a duty in him, turned from his 
filial allegiance, by love and beauty acting 
upon and rendering irresistible his young 
impulses to good, but retracing his steps 
the instant he has reason to doubt and dis- 
trust the motives and views of his new 
leader and director, Angelo Colonna ex- 
hibits, as far as his character is developed, a 
true picture of a noble nature, at the mercy 
{as even the noblest are) of passion and of 
circumstance. 

For the sweet Claudia, too, we have 
many thanks to offer Miss Mitford. It is 
one of those sketches in which much is at- 
chieved, because little is attempted. It is 
as touching as true feminine sweetness and 
simplicity can make it. These are the fe- 
male characters that we would fain see on 
our tragic stage, because it is these that we 
see in the real drama of human life: any 
thing beyond these, any thing more subtle, 
or more recondite, or more complicated, is 
© from the purpose of playing.” We have 

to speak of the general performance of this 
tragedy with great commendation ; but not 
_. with that unmeasured, because undiscrimi- 
é nating, praise which has been lavished on it 

by our daily and weekly cotemporaries— 
particularly on Mr. Young’s performance of 

Rienzi. We know of no character that is, 
upon the whole, so exactly adapted to display 
_ all the best qualities of that actor ; but we 
_ must nevertheless insist, that he might have 
_ played it much better than he did. It was, 
in fact, a most clever piece of acting, in- 
cluding some high beauties; but it was 
careless and off-hand to a singular degree ; 
and from this arose all its faults, certainly 
_—perhaps some of its beauties. Be this as 
it may, the performance occasionally touched 
the heights of passion, and now and then 
sounded the depths of pathos ; but not sel- 
dom it was “ full of sound and fury,” but 
signifying nothing,” or, rather, signifying 
yorse than nothing, because not what either 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


539 


nature or the author meant that it should.* 
There was a vigour and a vitality in it 
throughout; and there were passages to 
which no human powers could have added 
either force or intensity. But a sense of 
even justice impels us to add, that there was 
not a little of mere school-boy declamation, 
in which the actor uttered words, and words 
only: vox, et preterea nihil. — . ; 

Mr. Cooper is an actor whom we do no 
greatly affect. He is prodigiously judici- 
ous, respectable, and “ all that.” More- 
over, there is an earnestness of purpose about 
him, which is capable of redeeming even 
respectability—that deadliest of dramatic 
sins. But. Mr. Cooper has a voice—to which 
sounding brass’’ issoftness. True, he has 
tutored it with great care; but a man’s 
voice has a will of its own, and ‘‘ commonly 
rebels,” just at those precise moments when 
it has most need to obey. It is because we 
are not always so gratified by Mr. Cooper’s 
efforts as his uniform care, his evident love 
of his art, and his earnest pursuit of excel- 
lence, lead us to wish we could be, that we 
are the more pleased at being able to speak 
with almost unmingled praise of his Angelo 
Colonna, which, to 2il his usual correctness 
and energy, adds, in one scene, a power and 
spirit that we do not desire to see surpassed 
on the stage. We allude to his conference 
with Rienzi, just before he is led off to 
death. 

Finally, what shall we say of Miss Phil- 
lips, the sweet and gentle representative of 
the sweet and gentle Claudia 2—At present 
we will say nothing in detail. But we will 
stake our modicum of critical reputation on 
the prediction, that, if she proceeds as she 
has begun, nothing can prevent her from 
being among the brightest ornaments of 
our stage, for the next twenty years : that is 
to say, if, (as we at once fear and hope) her 
personal charms do not prove the occasion 
of our losing her almost as soon as we have 
found her. Truly she is a sweet young 
lady, and as intelligent as she is sweet, and 
as modest as she is intelligent, and as fear- 
less and self possessed as she is modest. 
Her performance of Claudia offers much to 
think about it, but little to write about. 
When she appears in a new character she 
shall have our best attention, and (if she 
seems to need it) our respectful advice. 
But, so far as we can judge ut present, she 
seems likely (provided she is permitted to 
keep to her proper line of character) to 
claim little from us but a gratified admira- 
tion. , 

Mr. Price is doing excellently well this 
season. Let him proceed as he has begun, 
and we promise him success. In the very 


* We must let this passage stand, even after 
having read Miss Mitford’s unqualified panegyric 
of Mr. Young’s performance: for (putting the 
habitual politeness of dramatic prefaces out of 
the question) we are of opinion that a reader some- 
times knows what a writer means better than the 
writer's self! 


3 Z 2 


540 
midst of the attraction of ** Rienzi,” he has 
given us a petite comedy, of the modern 
French school, which is exceeding lively, 
spirited and agreeable ; indeed, but for one 
fault, it would be perfect in its way. It is 
called “‘ The Youthful Queen.” On read- 
ing this title we were sorely afraid that we 
must witness what the French call a piéce 
d’occasion—the * occasion”? being the ad- 
vent, to our shores, of a certain youthful 
*‘queen, or no queen,”’—as the case may be. 
Expecting, therefore, nothing more than 
“a tale of the nursery’? we are doubly 
gratified in having to. announce a drama, 
that, as far as it goes, is fully entitled to the 
name of a comedy; and one, too, that is 
unalloyed by the slightest mixture of farce. 
Christine, of Sweden (daughter of the great 
Gustavus) is called upon to reign as absolute 
sovereign, while still in extreme youth, and 
by the time she reaches to woman’s estate, 
(the period at which the drama commences) 
her queenly and her womanly nature, toge- 
gether, have of course rendered her as hasty, 
headstrong, and wilful alittle personage, as a 
prime minister could desire to have the mis- 
management of. Moreover, she has chosen 
to fall in love, and with an untitled and un- 
distinguished subject, one Frederick Bury, 
an adventurer in her army—whom she 
meets by accident while strolling incognita 
in her park at Stockholm, and on whom she 
causes to be bestowed favor after favor—all 
of which her protégé richly merits, by his 
gallant conduct in the field against the 
Danes, with whom a fierce war is raging. 
Previously, however, to this lucky rencontre 
with the fair unknown of the park, Frede- 
vick himself had fallen in love with Emma, 
niece of the haughty, but honest and faith- 
ful Oxtensteirn, prime minister of the queen 
—who peremptorily refuses the offered ad- 
dresses of the new favourite, but without, at 
first, having the remotest guess as to how his 
rapid promotion has been brought about. 
But his earnest endeavours to. get rid of 
Frederick from the court, being repeatedly 
frustrated by some secret influence which 
the latter evidently possesses with the queen, 
and the queen herself not being over skilful 
in concealing her sentiments, especially on 
the occasion of a formal offer of marriage 
from Prince Ulric of Denmark, ‘as a condi- 
tion of peace between the two countries, 
and which offer the lady rejects in a manner 
that neither the occasion nor the policy of 
the moment render natural or reasonable, 
these things enable Oxtensteirn to at length 
divine her secret, and to take his measures 
accordingly. To remove Frederick from 
the court against the positive determination 
of the queen, he finds impossible ; but to 
permit a marriage which she evidently con- 
templates, but which would be destructive 
to the welfare of the state, is not to be 
thought of. Meantime, the queen’s passion 
gains strength every hour, and with it her 
wilfulness ; and she heaps new honours and 
rewards upon her favourite, in proportion as 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[Nev. 


her minister seeks to detach hint from her 
presence: and at length confesses that it is 
she who protects him, and even insinuates 
her intention of placing him beyond the 
reach of envy or controul: and she is the 
more strongly urged to all this, by discover- 
ing the passion of Emma for Frederick— 
though she is not aware that Frederick is 
equally ardent in returning it. The hopes, 
fears and embarrassments arising out of these 
contradictory circumstances, make up the 
business of the piece till the last two scenes, 
when Ovztensteirn determines to adopt, 
while there is still time, the only means 
which remain of warding off the danger 
which awaits the queen’s rash project of 
raartiage, by, at all risks, putting it out of 
her power to fulfil it. Taking advantage of 
Frederick’s stil! unchanged passion for his 
niece, he withdraws his refusal to their union, 
but on the express condition that that union 
take place instantly. The lovers are accord- 
ingly united in the chapel of the palace ; 
and Frederick returns to the queen’s pre- 
sence only to receive the avowal of her love, 
and the offer of her throne and person, and 
to declare the engagements which (even if 
his heart had been previously free) must 
have prevented him from accepting her 
offers. Rage and disappointment are of 
course the order of the moment ;. but a little 
reflection brings back the good sense and 
good feelings of the young sovereign ; and 
all parties (but partieularly Oxtensteirn, 
who had been disgraced and dismissed) are 
pardoned and honoured; and the queen 
herself seemed disposed to take a useful 
lesson from the discovery she now for the 
first time- makes, that even queens may and 
should meet with disappointed hopes and 
baffled intentions, when their projects have 
been formed in giddy haste, and do not 
point to the welfare of those whom they are 
set over. 

The scenes growing out of the above plot 
are conducted throughout with that easy 
dexterity which is the prime boast of the 
modern French stage, but which our own 
furnishes very few examples of. There is 
no wit, no humour, no satire, no sentiment, 
and little or no developement of character : 
and yet, by a clever and comprehensive 
arrangement of parts, a clear connection 
between those parts, and a judicious adap- 
tation of them to the purposes of dramatic 
effect, added to an easy and natural dia- 
logue—a whole is produced, which excites 
an unfailing interest from beginning to end, 
without taxing the spectator’s feelings be- 


yond the due bounds of pleasure, and with-. 


out outraging his sense of probability in any 
one instance. The fault of this pleasant 
little. drama is, that its author (for fear of 
not being sufficiently effective) has been ra- 


ther too hard upon the youthful queen— 


considering that, with all her wilfulness, she 
is young, beautiful, virtuous, and sincere in 
her love for Frederick,—we could hardly 


have tolerated-the fearfully painful situation — 


" 


1828.] 


in which she is placed, in avowing her love 
for, and her desire to marry, a man who 
loves and is married to another woman: 
especially-when the conduct of the man she 
loves had in no particular led her to suppose 
that his heart was engaged, but on the con- 
trary that it was devoted toher. We con- 
ceive that this great fault might have been 
avoided, without impairing the strength of 
the interest excited, so far as that interest 
was founded on just and natural grounds. 
But the lady is a queen ; and therefore we 
bear to see an outrage committed upon her 
feelings, which, had she been any thing less 
than a queen, we should have revolted 
against. She is not one of owrselves, and 
therefore we cannot fully and entirely sym- 
pathise with her, but on the contrary are not 
sorry to see her receive “‘ a great moral les- 
son,” which she herself evidently thought 
herself beyond the reach ef. This is paltry 
enough ; but it is human nature, and it is 
that portion of it which the author of this 
drama has depended upon, in venturing to 
construct the scene we are now alluding to: 
for he is too judicious a person to have erred 
from ignorance of what is due to the feelings 
in question. 

Nothing could possibly be more spirited 
and effective throughout than Miss E. Tree’s 
performance of the Youthful Queen, and 
in some parts, particularly the last scene, it 
was fraught with a degree of feeling (almost 
amounting to passion) for which we had not 
given her credit. Farren’s Count Oxten- 
steirn was also excellent ; though somewhat 
too wise and sagacious in manner, perhaps, 
too much in the style of my Lord Burleigh. 
There was also a short sketch of a courtier, 
Steinberg, who is raised from obscurity, he 
himself cannot divine how or why—but in 
reality because the Queen discovers that he 
is related to Frederick. This was acted 
with infinite tact and humour by Jones, and 
gave a liveliness and variety to the piece 

“that it might otherwise perhaps have been 
felt to want. ‘“ The Youthful Queen” was 
entirely successful, and promises and de- 
serves to become a stock piece, if it be only 
from the excellent occasion it offers, in the 
principal character, for the display of a cer- 
tain class of female talent. It will unques- 
tionably be a favourite with future débu- 
tantes. 

. The minor theatres grow daily more and 
more deserving the public attention and fa~ 
your ; but they are still lamentably beneath 
what the interests of the drama, no less 
than the public wants, require that they 
should be, and what their own capabilities 
might speedily render them. In the mean- 
time, the most popular of them has taken a 
new step towards the desired goal, in gain- 
ing, as its proprietor, at once the most enthu- 
siastic and most enlightened lover of the 
drama, that the profession can at present 
boast. We are aware that this includes but 
a very limited degree of commendation. In 
_ fact, there is no exaggeration in saying that 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


541 


Mr. Mathews deserves well, not merely of 
his profession, but of his country, for the 
manner in which he has spent much of his 
hard earned gains, in collecting together a 
mass of dramatic wealth, that is perhaps 
unparralleled in its way. We would fain 
have to award him a still higher degree of 
praise hereafter, for the ends to which he 
may (if he pleases) turn his new possession. 
Two minor winter theatres, conducted as 
they assuredly might be without infringing 
the present privileges of the great patent 
ones, would in the course of two or three 
seasons break up and for ever put an 
end to, their monopoly. But we must 
confess our fears and misgivings on this 
point, so far as relates to the new ma- 
nagement of the Adelphi. There may be 
many actors who sincerely love the drama, 
and some who would endure sacrifices 
in purse and person, to serve its inte- 
rests; but we do. not believe there is one 
actor who loves his profession, or would 
move a finger to do more than lift himself 
from the mire in which it lies: and a man 
must love both before he will take efficient 
steps to restore either to the station it might 
occupy ; and there is no restoring one with- 
out the other. What Mr. Mathews’ parti- 
cular set of views may be, in having embarked 
his fortune and his name in the Adelphi, 
we cannot pretend to guess ; but thus much 
we feel confident of, that, whatever they are, 
they will be disappointed, if no better me- 
thods of furthering them are adopted, than 
those we have hitherto had occasion to wit- 
ness. The worst that need or that can be 
said of the novelties hitherto produced at 
this theatre since its re-opening under its 
new management, is that they are precisely 
adapted to the kind of audience that is 
expected to attend them, and that, conse- 
quently does attend them. In short, gene- 
rally speaking, they have been dreary trash, 
disgraceful to those who offer it, and insult- 
ing to those to whom it is offered. The 
only exception to this is the little piece 
d’occasion with which the theatre opened, 
and in which Mr. Mathew’s himself per- 
formed three very tolerable sketches of cha- 
racter, with a precision, a spirit, and a 
distinctness of marking, worthy of his ex- 
traordinary powers, and well calculated to 
shew them off. For the rest, he has been 
worse than throwing . away his time and ta- 
lents upon stuff that even he could not 
redeem, for a moment, from the contempt 
of all but those whose applause is an affront, 
and their good word a libel. We are sorry 
to be obliged to say this, and should not 
have taken the trouble to say it all, under 
ordinary circumstances ; but we had looked 
for better things, and the disappointment 
has grieved and vexed us. But what we 
are most sorry for is, that we already observe 
a tendency, in Mr. Mathews himself, to 
play down to his audience. If he means to 
leave behind him the reputation which he 
now enjoys, and so richly deseryes, let him 


542 


above all things else beware of this. Repu- 
tation resembles a more tangible species of 
wealth, in various particulars ; but in none 
more than this, that it cannot be squandered 
away, and kept, at one and the same time. 
Let the voice of a real well-wisher warn 
Mr. Mathews of his danger in regard to 
both the above named possessions. That 
the Adelphi Theatre is a mine of wealth, we 
do not intend to deny: but let Mr. Ma- 
thews beware, lest, by his mode of working 
it, it prove (like most other mines) a place 
for the deposition of wealth rather than the 
extraction of it. We shall pay more than 
usually strict attention to the proceedings of 
this little theatre, and do not care how soon 
we have occasion to reverse the opinion we 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


[Nov. 


haye just pronounced as to its future pros- 
pects. 

Covent Garden has produced one success.. 
ful new piece, and some new performers 5 
Mr. Kean has been playing (we hear) with. 
a vigour and spirit that bring back to re~ 
membrance the early days of his (and cur) 
theatrical life. But the lateness of the time 
prevents us from going further into detail. 
till our next. 

We have also a French Company at Tot- 
tenham Strect, a I’'rench conjurer at the 
Haymarket, and a French puppet-shew at 
the Argyll Rooms, allof which may chance 
to gain notice from us, if our critical duty 
to more important matters permit. 


VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


oe 


Apology for Jacobinism.—The effect of 
an heroic passage in one of Voltaire’s most 
celebrated tragedies, was completely de- 
stroyed among the Parisians by a ridiculous 
parody to which it gave rise. The lines 
were :— 


Quand on a tout perdu et qu’on n’a plus d’espoir, 
La vie est un opprobre et la mort un deyoir ;— 


for the latter of which some wiseacre sub- 
stituted— 


On prend Je pan de sa chemise et en fait un mou- 
choir! 


Racine’s tragedy of Berenice is reported to 
have totally failed on the stage from a simi- 
lar absurd application. An attendant in- 
quires on entering, “ On est la reine Bere- 
nice?’? Some michievous wag in the pit 
replied in an indecorous rhyme, which con- 
vulsed the house with laughter, and the play 
was hissed. Among sucha “thinking people” 
as the English, ludicrous associations are not 
equally omnipotent; but the story of Dryden 
and the Earl of Rochester is well known ; 
and, amongst the green-room_ traditions of 
Covent Garden theatre, there is one which. 
regards a tippling actress, who was hooted 
off the stage in the piece of Cymon, from 
some one of the audience having replied, in 
her absence, to her lover’s question— 


“ Ah! is she then gone? where shall I o’ertake 
her ??— 

"She has stepped to a gin-shop hard by in 
Long Acre!’ 


Lord Chesterfield, if we recollect right, par- 
ticularly mentions to his son to avoid all 
words which can, by any possibility, suggest 
other ideas than those they are intended to 
conyey. Now a plain matter-of-fact cor- 
respondent of ours has been greatly scan- 
dalized by the following passage from Sir 
W. Scott’s Life of Napoleon :—“ The red 
night-cap was the badge of breechless liber- 
tye Viol ay. ps LIS. 


Apology for Sans Culottes ! 
And froma pen like Walter Scott's!!! 
The thing’s as strange as true: 
I would not credit Byron's lore, 
Nor Hazlitt, Campbell, Hunt, nor Moore, 
Nor Jeffery’s yellow and blue ; 
But it must strike opponents speechless, 
To hear from Scott that they were “ breech- 
fess!” 


This worthy correspondent is not, however, 
the only one who remarked this singular 
passage in the first romancer of the day. 
From a different quarter we hear :— 


Paris, when blessed in ninety-three 

With Jacobinic Liberty, 

Though Liberty shone fall upon her, 
Could not be termed the seat of honour; 
Nor cou!d Sir Walter mean to teach less 
In calling this same goddess “* breechless.”’ 


Another friend writes in a similar strain :— 
Fair Liberty! thy tree to plant 
All France took up the spade ; 
Yet honour’s seat, we all must grant, 
Was not beneath that shade; 
And that I deem the reason why 
Scott calls thee “ breecliless Liberty!” 


Couching for Cataract.—A_ great deal is 
said in this country about the operation for 
removing cataract, which is represented by 
those who practise it as a sort of mystery, 
which but few can exercise. This may be 
true, so far as the English oculists are con- 
cerned, but few of them being men whose 
education. has been such as to render their 
success any thing short of a miracle. Very 
different has been the case in India, with 
Mr. Assistant-Surgeon Richmond, of His 
Majesty’s 4th Light Dragroons, who has for 
some years held the situation of oculist to 
the subordinate station of the Bombay resi- 
dency. The couching-needle used by that 
gentleman is extremely delicate and spear- 
pointed, and the handle not quite an inch 
long. The success of his practice is sur- 


1826. ] 


prising, his failures not exceeding one in 
twenty. The patients who, before the opera- 
tion, could only distinguish day from night, 
could, after it, clearly and distinctly point 
out the figures on the face of a watch, which, 
considering the advanced age many of them 
had attained, was as much as could reason- 
ably be expected from them. Mr. R. dis- 
penses with all the usual preparations re- 
commended by authors, and which are cer- 
tainly caleulated to excite alarm in the mind 
of the patient: he thinks not of chairs, 
stools, pillows, speculums, &c.; but, with 
his native assistant to raise the upper eye- 
lids, the patient is seated on the floor of the 
room, or, provided there be light sufficient, 
wherever by accident he may be standing. 
Something is given to him to hold, with the 
view of diverting his attention; when, 
kneeling, Mr. R. introduces the needle, and 
quickly removes the lens and its capsule 
from the axis of vision. In this position, 
and without any support, he operates, if ne- 
cessary, on both eyes, and uses his right and 
left hand with equal steadiness and dexte- 
rity. In this way he has restored more than 
.2,000 blind to sight, and examined more 
than 3,009 cases of cataract. Great expe- 
rience has taught him that that operation 
will be the most successful which disturbs 
the eye least, is performed with the greatest 
facility, and is attended with the smallest de- 
gree of pain, and that is least likely to ex- 
cite subsequent inflammation. Couching, 
Mr. R. observes, is as easily performed as 
blood-letting ; and, when skilfully done, oc- 
casions so little pain, that the patient is often 
not sensible that an instrument has been 
introduced into the eye. Secondary cata- 
ract is always the fault of the operator. 
Experiments on Steam.—tIn the seventh 
chapter of the fifth book of Agathias (one of 
the most distinguished of the Byzantine 
historians), under the year 557, are some 
singularly curious details respecting the ef- 
fects of the expansive force of steam, pro- 
duced by Anthemius, the famous architect 
of Saint Sophia, at Constantinople, and 
which is probably the oldest experiment of 
the kind of which we have any account. 
The following is an abridgment of Aga- 
thias’s account :—‘ Anthemius had a neigh- 
bour named Zeno, a celebrated rhetorician ; 
their houses joined together in such a man- 
mer as to appear only one. In course of 
time, some dispute arose between them that 
ended in a lawsuit, in which Zeno pleaded 
his own cause, and gained the victory. An- 
themius finding himself unequal to cope 
with his adversary in eloquence, resolved to 
give him a proof of his superiority in his own 
art. The lower part of Zeno’s house was so 
connected with his as to-afford him the ne- 
cessary facilities for executing his scheme. 
He procured several large vessels, which he 
filled with water, to which he attached long 
eathern pipes, wide enough at bottom to 
cover the vessels entirely, and very narrow 
at the tops, which he fixed to the joists of 


Varieties, 


543 


his neighbour’s floor, with so much nicety, 
that not a particle of the vapour which 
ascended could escape. “He then lighted a 
great fire under the vessels. As soon as the 
water began to boil, it threw up a thick 
steam, which rose with violence, and pressed 
against the joists with so much force, as to 
make the floor and the whole house shake 
and tremble, so as to resemble the shock of 
an earthquake; the servants of Zeno were 
so terrified as to run out into the strect,” 
&e. 

Improvement of Candles.—Steep the cot- 
ton wick in lime-water, in which has been 
dissolved a considerable quantity of nitrate 
of potassa (chlorate of potassa answers still 
better, but is too expensive for common prac- 
tice) ; and, by these means, a purer flame 
and superior light is secured, a more perfect 
combustion is ensured, snuffing is rendered 
nearly as superfluous as in wax candles, 
and the candles thus treated do not “ run.” 
The wicks must be thoroughly dry before 
the tallow is put to them. 

Silver Mine in Australia.—Australia, 
it is well known, is daily rising into com- 
mercial importance, and attracting the at- 
tention both of the speculating capitalist and 
the needy adventurer; and this alone, 
of all the colonies of Great Britain, is, 
perhaps, the only one from which the 
mother country may receive any advantages 
equivalent to the expense incurred. A short 
time since, a silver mine was discovered in 
the western part of this country, by W. Law- 
son, Esq. ; specimens of which are now in 
Sydney, if none have been as yet forwarded 
to England. 

The Jaculator Fish of Java.—An ac- 
count is given, in the last number of the 
Edinburgh Journal, of these extraordinary 
animals, by a gentleman who found them in 
the possession of a Javanese chief. The 
fish were placed in a small, circular pond, 
from the centre of which projected a pole 
upwards of two feet in height. At the top 
of this pole were inserted small pieces of 
wood, sharp-pointed, on each of which were 
placed insects of the beetle tribe. When all 
had become tranquil after the placing of the 
beetles by the slaves, the fish came out of 
their holes, and swam round about the pond. 
One of them came to the surface of the wa- 
ter, rested there, and, after steadily fixing 
his eyes for some time on an insect, it dis- 
charged from.its mouth a small quantity of 
watery fluid, with such force and precision 
of aim, as to force it off the twig into the 
water, and in an instant swallowed it. After 
this, another fish came and performed a 
similar feat, and was followed by the others, 
till they had seized all the insects. He ob- 
served, that if a fish failed in bringing down 
its prey at the first shot, it swam round the 
pond till it came opposite the same object, 
and fired again. In one instance, he re- 
marked one of. the anismals return three 
times to the attack before it secured its prey ; 
but, in general, they seemed to be very ex- 


544 


pert gurinéis, bringing down their prey at the 
first discharge. This fish, in a state of na- 
ture, frequents the shores and sides of the 
sea and rivers, in search of food. When it 
spies a fly settling on the plants that grow 
in shallow water, it swims on to the distance 
of from five or six feet from them ; and then, 
with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its 
tubular mouth a single drop of water, which 
never fails to strike the fly into the sea, 
where it soon becomes its prey. 

Goéthe’s Herman and Dorothea.—The 
following anecdote of a circumstance which 
took place in Germany nearly a hundred 
years ago, is said to be the foundation of 
this celebrated poem. In the year 1732, in 
consequence of a great persecution of the 
Protestants in the principality of Salzburgh, 
great numbers of them were compelled to 
emigrate, and about 20,000 of them came to 
Prussia. The sor of a rich farmer happen- 
ing to meet with one of these emigrant par- 
ties, and entering into conversation with a 
young woman belonging to it, was very 
much smitten with her; but, being unwil- 
ling to make her more serious proposals till 
his parents should have seen her, asked if 
‘she would be willing to engage as their ser- 
vant. Having assented to the proposal, she 
went with him to his father’s house. After 
some time, the young man, having obtained 
his father’s consent, offered her his hand, 
which she, fancying he was merely in jest, 
at first resented ; but, being soon satisfied by 
his father that the proposal was serious, she 
joyfully consented, and then drew from ner 
bosorh a purse, containing 130 pieces of 
gold, which she offered him as her marriage 
portion. The story is related in a Berlin 
journal of the year in which it happened. 

Influence of Electricity on the Emana- 
tion of Odours.—When a continued current 
of electricity traverses an odoriferous body 
—camphor, for example—the odour of this 
substance becomes more and more feeble, 
and at last entirely disappears. When this 
has taken place, and when the body, with- 
drawn from all electrical influence, is put in 
communication with the ground, it will re- 
main without odour for some time. The 
camphor, however, resumes its former pro- 
perties gradually and slowly. M. Libri, of 
Florence, the author of this curious experi- 
ment, has promised to describe it with more 
detail. 

Important to the Studious. — Edmund 
Castell, one of the scholars of the seventeenth 
century, of whom England may be most 
justly proud, devoted his whole time and his 
eyesight to complete his Lexicon Hepta- 
glotton—a most extraordinary monument of 
learning and industry. It is important, how- 
ever, for scholars to know, that the regular 
application of eighteen hours a day, for se- 
yenteen years, did not so far impair his con- 
stitution as to prevent his reaching the ad- 
vanced age of seventy-nine. 

Metcoric Iron.—A great quantity of na- 
tive iron, which, from its containing cobalt 


Varieties. 


LNov. 


and nickel, may safely be considered of me- 
teoric iron, has been found in the province 
of Atacarna, in Peru, at a distance of about 
twenty leagues from the port of Cobija, in 
large masses, imbedded in a mountain in 
the neighbourhood of the village of San Pe- 
dro, and scattered over the plains at the foot 
ef the mountain in question for a distance of 
three or four leagues, and sometimes in frag- 
ments of considerable magnitude. From 
specimens that have arrived in this country, 
it seems to be entirely similar to the Siberian 
mass of native iron, which hitherto has stood 
unrivalled. 

Protection against Damp, Rust, §¢.— 
If linen or woollen cloth be immersed in 
water saturated with quicklime and sulphate 
of soda, and then carefully dried, delicate 
steel instruments folded up in it, even if 
themselves damp, are effectually preserved 
from rust or oxidation. The rust of iron is 
found to contain a carbonate of that metal, 
and the aqueous particles of “ rust” and 
* damp” are, it is proved, decomposed by 
the contact of iron at all temperatures, and 
with increased effect at an elevated one: 
hence the formation of rust or oxida- 
tion, &c. It is probable that the caustic 
lime not merely absorbs any minute quan- 
tity of carbonic acid present in the air, by 
damp brought into more immediate contact 
with the iron or steel, but also absorbs the 
first portions of present damp : perhaps, too, 
caustic lime may even take upoxygen. The 
efHorescent sulphate of soda does not attract 
humidity, but rather casts it off, even its 
own water of crystallization. It is evident 
that an enyelop of cotton or woollen cloth, 
saturated as described, would not only be a 
protection against damp, in the case of steel, 
plate, &c., but also of equal value for the 
preservation of deeds, &c., whether on 
paper or parchment. These articles, &c. 
may be very well preserved if bruised in 
powdered quicklime. By suspending, by 
means of a silk, &c. thread, finely-polished 
and magnetized steel bars in lime-water, so 
as to float freely in this medium from the 
point ef suspension, it points out an admi- 
rable methed by which the magnetic virtue 
may be preserved for an indefinite period. 
A ring of iron, inclining to the “ angle of 
no attraction,’ pointed out in Dr. Barlow’s 
researches, might surround the phial or little 
glass globe, and the ordinal points be en- 
graved by a diamond on a circular line ex- 
ternally. Under these circumstances, poised 
in an uniform medium of unvarying density, 
no atmospheric mutations would disturb it, 
and the finely-polished steel needle would be 
preserved even free from oxidation—the 
fatal antagonist to magnetism, 

Shower of Ice.—On Saturday, 9th of Au- 
gust last, there was a fall of solid ice at Hors- 
ley, in Staffordshire. Some of the pieces 
were three inches long by one inch broad, 
and others were about three inches in cir- 
cumference, and quite solid. One gentle- 
man in Dudley had £70. worth of glass. 


1826.] 


broken in his house;-and at Mr. Yates’s 
house, near the Horsley iron-works, about 
150 panes of glass were broken: about 100 
panes were broken at the iron-works. The 
storm -was aecompanied with very heavy 
tltunder, but no lightning. The crops upon 
which the ice fell are said to be completely 
ruined. 

Lectures on the Ear.—The first of a se- 
ries of lectures on theanatomy, physiology, and 
pathology of the ear, was delivered a few days 
since at the Royal Dispensary for Diseases 
of the Ear, Dean-street, Soho-square, by 
Mr. Curtis, aurist to his Majesty. The lec- 
turer commenced by giving a zoological de- 
finition of man, according to the present 
arrangement of Cuvier, Blumenbach, &c., 
and traced the commencement of society 
from barbarism to civilization: he then 
traced the comparative anatomy of the ear, 
and the gradation of organization in dif- 
ferent animals, shewing its perfection in 
man above all others ; “and passing down 
from the monkey, dog, elephant, and horse, 
to other quadrupeds; thence to birds, rep- 
tiles, and fishes; and so on, to the lowest 
links of the animal chain. On this subject 
he agreed with Haller, the father and foun- 
der of physiology, that the situation and size 
of parts must be learned from man—their 


Parieties. 


345 


uses and motions must be drawn from 
animils. In entering on the diseases of the 
ear, he observed, that although they were 
noticed by the ancients, even in the time of 
Hippocrates, who flourished 400 years before 
the birth of Christ, yet it was only in a ge- 
neral way ; it was reserved for modern times 
to render it animportant branch of study—a 
knowledge which cannot be learned in the 
closet, but is only to be acquired by daily 
practice and experience, joined with an 
anxious zeal for improvement. The rapid 
progress in every science is now such as to 
augur and hold out the most flattering pros- 
pects that the age of prejudice is past, and 
that the mind is now fully open to the con- 
viction of truth. This improvement he 
strongly instanced in several cases of deaf 
and dumb which had come under his care, 
and been successfully treated ; and he pointed 
out the superiority and necessity of such 
treatment, in early infancy, to the present 
mechanical mode of education. In this lec- 
ture, Mr. Curtis exhibited a curious and ex- 
pensive collection of anatomical preparations 
of the ear, from France and Italy; likewise 
the choicest preparations of Mr. Brooks’s 
late museum, by which he explained the 
causes of disease, with the mode of relief. 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


In the course of November will be pub- 
lished, Part XVII. of The Animal King- 
dom, described and arranged, -in conformity 
with its organization, by Baron Cuvier, 
Member of the Institute of France, &c. &c. 
with additional descriptions of all the species 
hitherto named, and many notbefore noticed ; 
together with much: original matter. By 
Edward Griffith, F.L.S., and others. 
Part will contain a continuation of the Order 
Passeres, Class Aves. It has been carefully 
collated with the second edition of the 
Regne Animal, now publishing in Paris; 
and will be illustrated by seventeen highly 
finished engravings, of birds of different 
descriptions. 

Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture, with 
Fifty-four Illustrative Engravings by various 
Artists, from the Drawings of the Profes- 
sor. In royal 8vo. 

_Mr. Lockhart’s Life of Cervantes, in 
small Syo. 
. Lieut.-Col. Leake is engaged on a Com- 
plete History of the Morea. 3 vols. 8vo. 

Francis Palgrave, Esq., of the Inner Tem- 
ple , announces The Rise and Progress of the 

nglish Commonwealth, from the first Set- 
tlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. 
With an Appendix of Documents and Re. 
cords, hitherto unpublished, illustrating the 
history of the Civil and the Criminal Juris- 

_ prudence of England. 2 vols. 4to. 
» The Journal of a Naturalist. With plates. 


fe. Bvo. 5 ; 
M.M. New Series.—Vot.. VI. No. 35. 


This © 


Dr. Southey’s Life of General Wolfe. 
Printed uniformly with the “ Life of Nel- 
son.” With a Portrait. 2 small vols. 
- Annals of Jamaica. By the Rev. G. W. 
Bridges, A.M.,. Rector of the Parish of St. 
Ann, Jamaica. Vol. 2, Svo. 

The Life and Services of Captain Philip 
Beaver, R. N., late of H. M. Ship Nisus. 
8vo. By Captain W. H. Smyth, R. N. 

History of the Rise, Progress, and Pre- 
sent State of Agriculture. In a Pocket 
Volume. 

A Series of Colloquies on the Progress and 
Prospects of Society. By Robert Southey. 
With Engravings. 2 vols. Syvo. : 

Sermons, Docrinal and Practical, for Plain 
People. Small 8vo. By G. R. Gleig, 
M.A.,. M.R.S:L. 

A Dissertation, proving that Ulysses is 
the Author of the Homeric Poems. 8vo. 
By Constantine Koliader, Professor in the 
Lonian University. 

Personal History of Napoleon Buonaparte. 
Two pocket volumes, beautifully printed, 
and illustrated with numerous Engravings in 
‘Wood and Steel. 

Sir Walter Scott’s Essays on Planting 
and Gardening. One pocket volume. 

Lives of British Painters, Sculptors, and 
Architects, with many Engravings. 3 vols. 

History of the Jews, from the Farliest 
Times to the Present. In 2 pocket vals. 

A History of the Reformation in Eng- 
land. One pocket vol. 

4A 


546 


A new volume, being the third of Death- 
Bed Scenes, and Pastoral Conversations. 8vo. 

Historical Account of Discoveries and 
Travels in North America, including the 
United States, Canada, the Shores of the 
Polar Sea, and the Voyages in Search of a 
North-west Passage ; with Observations on 
Emigration. By Hugh Murray, Esq., 
F.R.S.E., &c.; Author of “ Travels in 
Africa, Asia,” &c. 2 vols. 8yo. 

Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Paul Jones, 
Chevalier of the Military Order of Merit, 
and of the Russian Order of St. Anne, 
&c. &ce. Now first compiled from his Ori- 
ginal Journals, Correspondence. 

The Life and Adventures of Alexander 
Selkirk; containing the real Incidents upon 
which the Romance of Robinson Crusoe is 


founded. By John Howell, Editor of the - 


« Journal of a Soldier of the Seventy-first 
Regiment ;”? “ The Life and Adventures 
of John Nicol, Mariner,’ and Author of 
“ An Essay on the War-Galleys of the 
Ancients.”” Small 8vo. 

Scenes of War; and other Poems. 
John Malcolm. Foolscap 8vo. 

Rational Readings. By the same Author. 
16mo. 

Biographical Sketches and Authentic 
Anecdotes of Dogs, exhibiting remarkable 
Instances of the Instinct, Sagacity, and So- 
cial Disposition of this Faithful Animal. 
By Captain Thomas Brown, F.R.S.E., 
F.L.S., M.W.S., &c., Author of “ Tllus- 
trations of the Conchology of Great Britain 
and Ireland,” and “‘ General Ornithology.” 
Small 8vo. 

Greek Extracts, chiefly from the Attic 
Writers; with a Vocabulary. For the use 
of the Edinburgh Academy. 12mo. 

My Grandfather’s Farm ; or, Pictures of 
Rural Life. 12mo. 

A Guide to the Universal Trader ; being 
a Complete and Systematic View of the 
Monies, Weights, Measures, &c. of all Na- 
tions, with their Proportions to those of 
Great Britain and France. Compiled by 
the late William Stenhouse, Accountant, 
Edinburgh, Author of the Tables of Interest, 
&c. With a Treatise on Exchanges, by 
James Trotter, Accountant, Edinburgh. 

Quakers and Cock Robins; or, Hypo- 
crisy Unmasked. By Lieut.-Col. Samuel 
Dales, F.S.A. 

The. Man of Two Lives, a Narrative. 
Written by himself. 

A Second Edition of Pelham; or, the 
Adventures of a Gentleman, corrected by 
the Author, is on the eve of publication. 

Tales of Woman ; in which the brightest 
and most elevated parts of the Female Cha- 
racter are to be exhibited. 

The Portrait of Viscountess Dillon, en- 
graved by Thomson, from a Miniature by 
Mrs. Mee, will form the 48th of the Series 
of Portraits of the Female Nobility. 

Dr. Richard Bright, of Guy’s Hospital, 
has in the Press a Second Volume of his 
Medical Reports. 


By 


List of New Works. 


[Nov. 


A New Translation of the History of 
Herodotus, intended for the Use of General 
Readers, with short Notes and Maps. By 
Isaac Taylor, junior. 

The Proprietors of the “‘ Boy’s Own Book”’ 
are preparing for speedy publication an ele- 
gant Volume, of a decidedly novel charac- 
ter, devoted to the most elegant recreations 
and pursuits of Young Ladies. 

Eminent Women ; their Lives and Cha- 
racters; designed for the improvement of 
Female Youth. By Miss Jane Porter. No. 
I. will be published on the 1st of December. 

An Essay on the Minute Anatomy and 
Physiology of the Human Eye. By H. W. 
Dewhurst, Esq. Also, by the same Author, 
a Complete Course of Lectures on Human 
and Comparative Anatomy. 

The Imperial Remembrancer; being a 
Collection of valuable Tables for constant 
Reference and Use; including all the Mea- 
sures, Hackney Coach Fares, New Rates for 
Watermen, Stamp and Excise Duties, &c. 
Tt is to appear with the Almanacks. 

Mr. Sheppard, the author of Thoughts on 
Devotion, has in the press a work, entitled, 
a View of some of those Evidences for the 
Divine Origin of Christianity which are not 
founded on the authenticity of Scripture. 

At Christmas will be published, The 
Housekeepers’ Oracle; or Art of Domestic 
Management. To which will be added, a 
Variety of useful and original Receipts. By 
the late Dr. Kitchiner. In one vol. 12mo. 

A volume of Tales and Confessions. By 
Mr. Leitch Ritchie. 

A New Year’s Gift, printed in Gold, to 
be entitled The Golden Lyre; consisting of 
the finest Passages from the Poets of Eng- 
land, France, Germany, and Italy. 


LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


ANNUAL PUBLICATIONS, INTENDED 
FOR NEW YEAR’S GIFTS. 
Winter’s Wreath, 12s, 

Anniversary, 21s. 
Forget-me-not, 12s. 
Friendship’s Offering, 12s. 
Literary Souvenir, 12s. 
The Bijou, 12s. 

The Gem, 12s. 

The Amulet, 12s. 

The Keepsake, 21s. 

The Juvenile Forget-me-not, a Christ- 
mas and New Year’s Gift, or Birth-Day 
Present, for 1829. Edited Mr. S. C. Hall. 8s. 

New Year’s Gift, and Juvenile Souvenir. 
Edited by Mrs. Alaric Watts. 7s. 6d. | 

The Juvenile Keepsake. Edited by T. 
Roscoe, Esq. 8s. 

The Christmas-Box, an Annual Present 
for Young Persons. Edited by Crofton 
Crocker. 6s. 

Le Petit Bijou for 1829, entirely written 
in French, by M. D’Emden. 8s. 

GERMAN POCKET-BOOKS FOR 1829. 

Urania ; with Opitz’s Designs to Riirger’s. 
Geditche. 11s. 


1828.J 


Ophea ; with Ramberg’s Designs to 
Oberon. 10s. 
Minerva: with Ramberg’s Designs to 


Faust. 10s. 
Franentaschenbuch ; heransgegeben Von 


Georg Déring. 10s. 
Penelope ; heransgegeben Von Theodor 
Hell. 9s. 


BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

Nollekens and his Times, comprehending 
a Life of that celebrated Sculptor, &c. &c. 
By John Thomas Smith, Keeper of the 
Prints and Drawings in the British Mu- 
Seum. 2 vols. 8vo. 28s. boards. 

The Duke of Rovigo’s Memoirs. Vol. 
4, 8vo. 16s. boards ; which completes the 
work. 

History of the Rebellions in Scotland, 
under the Marquis of Montrose and others, 
from 1638 to 1660. By Robert Chambers. 
18mo. 3s. 6d. 

Some Account 
Hawkstone, 
8vo. 4s.; 
boards. 

Journal of what took place at the Tower 
of the Temple, during the Captivity of Louis 
XVL, King of France. By M. Clery. 
Translated from the French by John Ben- 
net. 12mo. 5s. boards. 

Memoirs of the late Empress Josephine, 
the Courts of Navarre and Malmaison. Post 
8vo. 10s. 6d. boards; inF rench, 8s. 

Historical and Descriptive Account of the 
Royal Palace at Eltham. By John C, 
Buckler. 8yo. 5s. boards. 

Goodwin’s History of the Commonwealth. 
Vol. 4. 10s. boards; which completes the 
work, 


of the Antiquities of 
in the County of Salop. Post 
demy 8yo. India proofs, 6s. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


A Supplement to an Analysis of the Con- 
stitution of the East-India Company, em- 
bracing the important Laws as to Criminal 
Justice and insolyent Debtors, passed last 
Session ; together with some Preliminary 
Observations. By Peter Auber, Esq., As- 
sistant Secretary. to the Hon. the Court of 
Directors. In royal 8vo. 10s. 6d. boards. 

The Young Ladies’ Arithmetic ; being 
‘an easy Introduction to the Knowledge of 
Numbers ; for the Use of Schools and Pri- 
vate Families. By Miss M. A. Allison. 
12mo. 2s. half-bound. 

_Valpy’s Second Greek Delectus. 9s. 6d. 
boards. 
__ The *Coffee-Drinker’s Manual. Trans- 
lated from the French. 18mo. 2s, 6d. 
Duties and Advantages of Early Rising, 
_ @xtracted from various eminent Writers. 
18mo. 4s. 6d. 
__ The Book of Health, a Compendium of 
~ Domestic Medicine, deduced from the Ex- 
perience of the most eminent Modern Prac- 
titioners. 8yo, 5s, 
_ - Every Man’s Book, for 1829, containing 
_ Twenty-one Public Acts, passed last Ses. 
and a Mass of Information of general 
t. 


List of New Works. 


547 


A_ Plan for supplying with Pure Water 
the Cities of London and Westminster, and 
of materially improving and beautifying 
the Western Parts of the Metropolis ; with 
numerous Plates, by M. J. Martin, the Ar- 
tist. 1 

A Treatise on the Laws of Literary Pro. 
perty. By R. Maugham. 8yo. 10s. 6d. 

The Jew Exile; a Pedestrian Tour and 
Residence in the Highlands and Islands of 
Scotland. 

Permanent and Field Fortification, with 
Attack and Defence: for the Use of Schools, 
and Self-Instruction. By C. Irving, LL.D. 

An Essay on the Science of Acting. By 
a Veteran Stager. 12mo. 5s, boards. 

An Essay on the means of Discovering 
the Sense of Words. By Rev. J. Philips 
Potter, M.A. 8vo. 9s. boards. 

Pronouncing Dictionary of themost com- 
monly-used Words in the English Lan- 
guage, pointing out the Erroneous and Vul- 
gar Pronunciation of which some Words are 
liable, the elegant and fashionable Manner 
of pronouncing others, and the most general 
and correct accentuation of those in which 
Lexicographers differ. 12mo. 2s. 

The Amateur’s Perspective ; being an 
Attempt to present the Theory in the sim- 
plest Form, and so to methodize and ar- 
range the subject, as to render the Practice 
familiarly intelligible to the Uninitiated in 
a few Hours of Study. By R. Davenport, 
Esq. 4to. 18s. boards. 

An Account of the Poor Colonies and 
Agricultural Workhouses of the Benevolent 
Society of Holland. By a Member of the 
Highland Society of Scotland. 12mo. 
boards. 


NOVELS. 

The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury; a Novel. 3 vols. post 8vo. 31s. 6d. 

Life in India; or, the English at Cal- 
cutta. 3 vols. 12mo. 28s. 6d. boards. 

Experience ; by the Author of Correc- 
tion: a Novel. 4 vols. 12mo. 22s. bds. 

Felicia Alphery ; by the Author of Her- 
wald de Wake. 3 vols. 12mo. 16s. 6d. 
boards. 

The Spy Unmasked; or, Memoirs of 
Enoch Crosby, alias Harvey Birch; a Se- 


quel to the Spy. 2 vols. 12mo. 10s. 
POETRY. 
Rienzi; a Tragedy. By Miss Mitford, 


12mo. 3s. 6d. 

A Universal Prayer ; Death; a Vision 
of Heaven ; and a Vision of Hell. By R. 
Montgomery. 4to. 15s. boards. 

Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and 
other Matters, selected from the Time’s 
Journal. 12mo. 7s. Gd. boards. 

Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North 
of Scotland, chiefly Historical and Legen- 
dary, and hitherto unpublished. By Peter 
Buchan. 2 vols. post 8vo. 21s, boards, 

Twilight Hours: Fragments written in 
the Year 1827. By S. N. A. Decennova- 
rian. 12mo. 

4A2 


548 


RELIGION, MORALS, &c. 

The Last Days. By Rey. E. Irving. 
8vo. 12s. boards. 

Jesus the Messiah. 12mo. ds. boards. 

Scripture Natural History for Youth. 
By Esther Hewlett. With numerous iin- 
gravings. 2 vols. 

Directions for Teaching the Scriptures. 
By J. Gibbs, Minister of Banff. 18mo. 
4s. 6d. : 

Scripture Lessons, selected from the Pro- 
phetical Books of the Old Testament, with 
brief Explanatory Notes, for the Use of 
Schools. By F. D. Lempriere. 12mo. 

Past Feelings Renovated, or Ideas occa- 
sioned by the Perusal of Dr. Hibbert’s Phi- 
losophy of Apparitions. 12mo. 7s. boards. 

Tiustrations of Prophecy. 2 vols. 8vo. 
21s. boards. 

A Volume of Sermons. 
C. B. Taylor, M.A. 12mo. 

Practical Lectures on the Historical Books 
of the Old Testament. By Rev. H. Lind- 


By the Rey. 


List of Patents. 


[N ov. 


say, M.A., Perpetual Curate of Wimbledon, 
Surrey. 12mo. 

Biographical Notices of the Apostles, 
Evangelists, and other Saints, with Reflec- 
tions, adapted to the Minor Festivals of the 
Church. By the Right Rev. R. Mant, 
D.D., Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. 
8vo. 13s. boards. 

Two Sermons upon the Scriptural Doc- 
trine of Faith. By the Rev. W. R. Bed- 
ford. 8vo. 2s. 

Four Sermons, preached in the Parish 
Church of Monk’s Eleigh, in the County of 
Suffolk, previous to the Confirmation held 
at Hadleigh in 1827. By W. Sanderson, 
M.A. 8vo. 2s. sewed. 

The Last Supper, or Christ’s Death kept 
in Remembrance. By the Author of 
“ Morning and Evening Sacrifice.’” 12mo. 
7s. boards. 

Sermons on Various Subjects, Doctrinal 
and Practical. By the Rey. J. Procter, 
A.M. 8vo. 10s. boards. 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


New Patents Sealed in October 1828. 

To Peter Rigby Wason, Esq., of the 
Middle Temple, barrister at law, for an im- 
provement in stick sealing wax.—Sealed 
25th Sept. ; 6 months. 

To James Neville, of New Walk, Shad 
Thames, Surrey, engineer, for an improved 
apparatus for obtaining mechanical power 


from falls and running : streams of water.— . 


25th Sept. ; 6 months. 

To Thomas Fowler, of Great Torrington, 
Devon, stationer, for an improvement in 
“raising and circulating hot water, hot oils, 
-and other hot fluids = domestic and other 

~purposes.—2d Oct. ; 6 months. 

To John Brunton, of West Bromwich, 
Stafford, engineer, for improvements in the 
apparatus for manufacturing coal gas and 
coke, and also improvements in the method 
-of arranging such apparatus.—2d Oct. ; 
6 months. 

To David Napier, of Warren-street, Fitz- 
roy-square, Middlesex, engineer, for im- 
provements in machinery applicable to letter- 
press printing.—2d Oct. ; 2 months. 

To Thomas Tippett, of Gwennap, Corn- 
wall, engineer, for improvements in the 


construction and mode of working engines, - 


_ with steam and air, and in the boiler or 
generator of steam, and in the application 
of such improved engines to a new method 
of propelling of vessels and other floating 

odies.—9th Oct. ; 2 months. 
To Samuel Lawson and Mark Walker, 

- of Leeds, York, machine makers and flax 

~ spinners, for improvements in machinery for 
preparing and. dressing hemp, flax, silk, 
and other fibrous substances.—9th Oct. ; 

- 6 months. 

To Henry Duxbury; of Pomeroy-street, 


_ organ or barrel-organ, with a self-acting 


_ building or under repair. 


_ ments or places by the combustion of tallow 


Kent-road, Surrey, gentleman, for a new 
machine for splitting hide and skins.— 
9th Oct. ; 6 months. e 

To Edward Hancorne, of Skinner-street, 
London, nail-manufacturer, for certain im- 
provements in making nails.—16th Oct. ; 
6 months. 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in November 1814, eapire in the present 
month of November 1828. 


1. J. Longhurst, London, for an olian 


wheel. 

10. J. Walters, London, for improve- 
ments in the construction and fastening of 
Sframe-timbers or binds of ships, whether 


— W. Howard, Brentford, for an im- 
proved apparatus or gear for working 
ships’ pumps ; also applicable to draining, 
§e. 

— L. Didot, Paddington, for improve- 
ments in the means for illuminating apart- 


or other inflammable materials. 
12. W. Bewicke, Deptford, for an im- 
proved method of manufacturing verdigris. 
17. E. Massey, Coventry, for improoes 
chronometers and pocket-watches. 
— H. Hall, London, for an improved 
method of preparing and spinning hemp, 
Slax, §c., communicated to him by a fo- 
reigner. 
22. R. Barlow, London, for a machine 
or instrument called “ the hydrostatic mie 
blowing machine.” 
28. Robert Dickinson, Esq., Lon 
Sor his improvements in the art of sadlery. 


‘don about the year 1798. 


.sons, where he ultimately died. 


1628. ] 


[ 549 J 


BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 


MR. VAN DYK. 

Harry Stoe Van Dyk was born in Lon- 
His father, as 
we learn from a contemporary publication, 
“was a native of Holland; his mother, of 
the Cape of Good Hope. ‘They came to 


_reside in London about the year 1797. 
_Mr. Van Dyk was principal owner and 


captain of a ship, in which he made voyages 
between London and Demerara. On the 
passage home of his last voyage, he was 
boarded on the south-west coast by a 


. French privateer, commanded by the cele- 


brated Captain Blacke; and after making 
considerable resistance, in which he was 
severely wounded, was taken, carried to 
France, confined in one of the French pri- 
Shortly 
after this event, Mrs. Van Dyk quitted 
London for Demerara, with her family, to 
take possession of a plantation there, which 
was, in consequence of her husband’s death, 
involved in some difficulty. She, however, 
succeeded in her undertaking, resided there 
for some years, married, in 1817, Dr. Page, 
a gentleman in the medical profession, and 
died not long afterwards.” The youth, her 


_son, then left Demerara for Holland, and 
_ for some time resided at Westmaas, with a 


clergyman, a friend of his parents. With 
him he acquired his knowledge of the Latin 
and French languages, in the former of 
which he was a proficient. In his own lan- 
guage, also, he subsequently acquired a 
critical correctness. His talent for poetry 


_ was evinced at an early age. 


_ the year 1821. 


Mr. Van Dyk returned to London about 
For some time he relied 
for his support chiefly on remittances from 


_ his brother, who occupied the plantation in 
- Demerara; but latterly, that resource fail- 
_ ing, he rested on his own exertions for the 


booksellers, music publishers, the periodical 


press, &c. His “‘ Theatrical Portraits” dis- _ 


played considerable smartness. As a song 


. writer, Byron and Moore were his models; 


_ able originality of genius. 


yet his efiusions were not without consider- 
“ In 1825, he 


_ translated, in conjunction with Mr. Bow- 
_ ring, Specimens of the Dutch Poets, in one 


uvolme, entitled Batavian Anthology, for 
which each obtained a very handsome medal 


_ from His Majesty the King of Holland, 
through his ambassador in London, with a | 


flattering letter, acknowledging the receipt 


. of the copies which were forwarded by the 


_ translators to his majesty.” 
. Share in this volume, Mr. Van Dyk’s pub- 


Besides his 


_ lications are, “Theatrical Portraits,” “The 


Gondola,” “Songs set to Music,”’ &c. Had 
he lived, another volume of his, consisting 


_ principally of short legendary poems, would 


probably ere this have seen the light. Un- 


fortunately, on Christmas-day last; he was 


seized with a pulmonary affection, which 
terminated fatally, at Brompton, on the 5th 
of June. 

The turn of Mr. Van Dyk’s mind was 
romantic and melancholy; yet, in society, 
he was the life of all around him. It is 
gratifying to know, that his friends watched 
him in his illness with the most anxious 
affection ; and that, though unayailing, he 
had the best medical assistance. His re- 
mains were interred in Kensington church- 
yard. 


THE RIGHT HON. DENIS BROWNE. 


This gentleman, brother of the late, and 
uncle of the present Marquis of Sligo, was 
born in August 1763. His mother, the 
Countess, was Elizabeth, only daughter and 
heiress of Denis Kelly, Esq., Chief Justice 
of the Island of Jamaica. 

Mr. Browne was one of the representa- 
tives of the county of Mayo in Parliament 


“more than five-and-thirty years; during 


which extended period, he was considered 
to hold paramount sway over its internal 
discipline and local interests. Excepting 
as a grand juror of the county, he had, for 
some years previously to his decease, retired 
from public life.» While in his performance 
of the duties appertaining to the office just 
mentioned, at the late assizes, he was seized 
with an illness, which terminated his exist- 
ence, at his residence, Claremorris, on the 
14th of August. 

Mr. Browne was governor of the county 
of Mayo, and a member of His Majesty’s 
ptivy council in Freland. He married, in 
1790, Anne, the daughter of Ross Mahon, 
Esq., by whom he had a family of eight or 
nine children. 


LORD ORIEL. 
The Right Honourable John Foster, 
Lord Oriel, of Ferrard, in the county of 
Louth—a privy councillor in England—a 


. governor of the county of Louth—one of 


the corporation for improving the port of 
Dublin—a trustee of the linen manufac- 
ture—a member of the Royal Irish Aca- 
demy, &c.—was born on the 28th of Sep- 
tember, 1740. His lordship was the eldest 
son and heir of Anthony Foster, of Collon, 
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ire- 
land, by his wife, Elizabeth, the youngest 
daughter of William Burgh, of Dublin, 
Esq. He received his education at the 
University of Dublin, where he was con- 
temporary with the celebrated Mr. Grattan, 
Mr. Fitzgibbon, afterwards Chancellor of 
Ireland, &c. In 1776 he was called to the 
Trish bar, while his father, the Chief Baron, 
was yet on the bench. To him, however, 
law was little more than a nominal pursuit. 


550 


He turned his attention chiefly towards sta- 
tistical subjects, in the study of which he 
became a proficient. Shortly after his call 
to the bar, he was returned M.P. for the 
county of Louth. He soon became as con- 
spicuous for talents as for knowledge. He 
particularly distinguished himself by the 
introduction of a new system of corn laws 
for the kingdom of Ireland; through the 
adoption of which, that country, from being 
unable to supply more than two-thirds of 
her people with bread, was enabled not only 
to feed the whole of her inhabitants, but 
actually to export grain to the amount of 
£200,000 annually. 

Mr. Foster’s next great object was the 
linen manufacture of his native country ; 
and by the regulations which, on his advice, 
were from time to time introduced, the 
character of the fabric was greatly raised, 
and the demands of the foreign markets 
secured and widely extended. Notwith- 
standing these salutary efforts, Mr. Foster 
was exceedingly unpopular amongst the 
lower classes. ‘The manufacturers of the 
capital were either starving for want of em- 
ployment, or kept alive by eleemosynary 
contributions. Resisting, upon philosophi- 
cal principles, the introduction of protecting 
duties in favour of these famished artizans, 
he incurred the hatred of the people, who 
regarded the measures which he conscien- 
tiously, and patriotically opposed, as calcu- 
lated to give them bread. His having de- 
clared an opinion against promoting the 
silk manufacture of Ireland, also raised him 
a host of enemies; and at one time, such 
was the general detestation, it was thought 
necesary to give him a guard for the safety 
of his person. 

In the year 1785, Mr. Foster was ap- 
pointed Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, 
an office for which, by his comprehensive 
and methodical mind, added to his exten- 
sive knowledge of the resources of the coun- 
try, he was admirably qualified. In 1786, 
however, he resigned the chancellorship, on 
being chosen speaker for the House of Com- 
mons. For several years he most ably dis- 
charged the duties of that high office. 

As a politician, Mr. Foster was generally 
thought to be more favourable to the in- 
terests of Britain than to those of Ireland, 
whenever there might be a difference or 
competition between them. He always 
professed himself adverse to the admission 
of Roman Catholics to the privileges of the 
constitution ; and, upon the introduction of 
the bill for allowing them to vote at elec- 
tions, he delivered a speech against that 
measure, confessedly the best that was made 
in either house upon the subject. However, 
he proved a strenuous opponent of the union 
between Great Britain and Ireland ; and, 
since the accomplishment of that event, he 
has not made a very conspicuous figure in 
the sphere of politics. 

Mr. Foster married, in the year. 1764, 
Margaretta Amelia Burgh, daughter of 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


‘life at New York, early in the month of 


[Nov. 


Thomas Burgh, of Birt, in the county of 
Kildare, Esq.; who was created Baroness 
Oriel, of Collon, in the county of Louth, 
in 1790, and Viscountess Ferrard, of Oriel, 
in her own right, in 1797, with remainder 
to the male issue of her husband. Mr. 
Foster was raised to the English peerage, 
by the title of Baron Oriel, in July, 1821. 
By his lady, who died in 1824, he had two 
sons and a daughter. His eldest son is 
dead: his second, now Lord Oriel, mar- 
ried, in 1810, Harriet Sheffington, Vis- 
countess Massereene in her own right, 
daughter and sole heiress of Chichester, 
fourth and last Earl of Massereene ; and his 
daughter married, in 1801, the present Lord 
Dutterin and Claneboye. 

Lord Oriel was a high-bred man, dis- 
playing more of the lofty manners of the 
last age, than of the easy and familiar 
habits of the present. Yet, in private life, 
most amiable and respectable —a kind 
friend, an indulgent landlord, a truly esti- 
mable man. His style of living was mag- 
nificent ; and his ardour for the improve- 
ment of his estates, grounds, &c., amounted 
almost to a passion. 

His lordship died at his beautiful seat at 
Collon, on the 23d of August. 


GOVERNOR CLINTON. 

George De Witt Clinton was the young- 
est son of Samuel Clinten, formerly the 
British Governor of the State of New York. 
He was born in that town in the year 1740, 
and educated to the bar. He continued in 
his profession until the commencement of 
the Revolution in 1775, when he entered 
into the military service of America, in 
which he soon attained the rank of Colonel 
and Major-General. He acquired much re- 
putation in the two first campaigns. - When 
the independence of America had been de- 
clared, he took an active part in forming a 
constitution for the state of New York ; 
and, in 1787, after the completion of its 
code of laws, he was elected its Governor. 
The estimation in which he was held by his 


countrymen could not be better attested than . 


by the fact that, with, we believe, only two 
exceptions, he has been always re-elected to 
the same high and honourable office. In 
1795, having expressed his wish to retire on 
account of ill health, Mr. Gay was elected 
as his successor; but, in’ 1801, that gentle- 
man’s health having also declined, and 
Mr. Clinton’s been restored, he was again 
elected. Since that period, he has been 
elected Vice-President of the Union. 
Governor Clinton’s efforts were uniformly 
directed towards the benefit of the state over 
which he presided, by promoting education, 
and every description of internal improve- 
ment. The great canal which is to join the 
Western waters with Hudson’s river was 
undertaken and prosecuted chiefly through 
his influence. This patriotic and esteemed 
individual terminated his long and useful 


1828.] 


February. His death was sudden, being 
occasioned by the rupture of a blood-vessel 
in the heart. Both houses of the legislature 
of New York immediately passed resolutions 
for going into mourning, and paying other 
honours to his memory. His funeral took 
place on the 14th of February, accompanied 
by every possible token of respect and sor- 
row. 


SIR THOMAS BOULDEN THOMPSON. 

Vice - Admiral Sir Thomas Boulden 
Thompson, Treasurer of Greenwich Hos- 
pital, &c. was born at Barham, in the 
county of Kent, on the 28th of February, 
1766. His father, Mr. Boulden, married 
the sister of the late Commodore Edward 
Thompson, an officer of eminence, and a 
gentleman extensively known in the polite 
and even in the literary world. His poems 
are still in high request amongst the choice 
spirits of the navy. 

In June 1780, young Boulden, the sub- 
ject of this brief memoir, assumed the name 
of Thompson ; under the auspices of his 
uncle, he entered into active service, on 
board the Hyena frigate; and soon after- 
wards accompanied the fleet under Sir G. B. 
Rodney to the relief of Gibraltar. 

In the following year, Mr. Thompson 
served in the West Indies, obtained a lieu- 
tenancy there, and distinguished himself by 
capturing a French privateer of superior 
force. 

Some time after the termination of the 
American war, Lieutenant Thompson joined 
the Grampus, of 50 guns, bearing the broad 
pennant of his uncle; upon whose death 
he succeeded to the command of the Nau- 
tilus sloop, in which he continued about 
twelve months, when he returned to Eng- 
land, and was paid off. 

Captain Thompson obtained post rank on 
the 22d of November, 1790. In 1796, he 
was appointed to the Leander, in which he 
joined the Mediterranean fleet under Earl 
St. Vincent. Soon afterwards, he accompa- 
nied Sir Horatio Nelson in his unfortunate 


Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 


551 


enterprise against Teneriffe. In that affair, 
he was amongst the wounded. 

Captain Thompson was in the battle of 
the Nile; and, five days after, he fought his 
memorable action with Le Généreux, of 78 
guns, and 900 men. Notwithstanding the 
superiority of force, he did not yield until 
after a close and inveterate conflict of eight 
hours ; at the expiration of which time, the 
Leander, greatly disabled, and with her 
decks full of killed and wounded, had be- 
come totally unmanageable. 

For his gallant conduct upon this occa- 
sion—the defence of the Leander being con- 
sidered without parallel, even in the annals 
of the British navy — Captain Thompson 
received the honour of knighthood. 

In 1799, he commanded the Bellona, off 
Copenhagen ; and, in the action there, he 
lost one of his legs. 

About the year 1806, Sir T. B. Thomp- 
son was nominated Comptroller of the 
Navy ; an office which he held till February 
1816, when he succeeded to the treasurer- 
ship of Greenwich Hospital. He was created 
K.C.B. on the 2d of January, 1815; and 
G.C.B. on the 14th of September, 1822. 

Sir Thomas sat several years in Parlia- 
ment, as one of the representatives of the 
city of Rochester, his seat for which he ya- 
cated on receiving his last appointment. He 
died at his residence, Hartsbourne Manor 
House, in Hertfordshire, on the 3d of March. 
On receiving the melancholy intelligence, 
his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, 
addressed a letter of condolence to Lady 
Thompson, sympathising with her upon the 
loss which not only she, but the country, had 
sustained in the death of so distinguished 
an officer; at the same time telling her, 
that, knowing she had a son, a lieutenant 
on the South American station, he had re- 
served for him a commission as captain, 
which should be presented to him on his 
return; and, farther, his Royal Highness 
promised that he would not lose sight of 
him.—Sir T. B. Thompson’s remains were 
interred on Monday, the 10th of March. 


ee 


MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 


By the time this Report will get abroad, the harvest of corn and seeds may be deemed 
completely finished throughout the three kingdoms ; and, although with abundant difficul- 
ties and heavy expense in too many parts, on the whole, with far greater success than 
could haye been even hoped. It was quite natural and in course, under the late circum- 
stances, and in a case relating to bread for the national supply, for the public mind to be 
powerfully excited, and for gloomy apprehensions and alarms suddenly to arise. Such 
fervonrs, whether in regard to prospective good or evil, to large or defective crops, are ever 
in extremes. Just so it has proved, and fortunately, on the present occasion. Accounts, 
indeed, fayourable enough to surprise us, are coming from various parts of the country ; 
and, on the whole, alarm has, in a considerable degree, subsided. ‘This also has been 
confirmed, so far as our personal observations have extended over several counties. After 
all, in this truly miscellaneous year, both in respect to weather and the earth’s produce, 
aged Es remains ill-luck plus satis to individuals, in deficiency both of quantity and qua- 
lity of bread-corn, by consequence, to the public. 

In Cornwall and the extreme west, and also in some few parts of the north, they boast of 
wheat crops, equal in hoth respects to the crops of last year, and scarcely deem worthy of 


/ 


bo2 Monthly Agricultural Report. [ Nov. 


quotation their small sprinkling of sprouted corn--their rains during the summer, as in 
most parts of Ireland, being genial showers, with dry intervals. Their barley-crop late 
harvested, but generally bright, fine, and heavy. By a singular anomaly, oats, so abun- 
dant elsewhere, the worst crop they have complained of during many years, and particularly 
defective in straw. Plenty of seed-wheat of fine quality, both old and new—the new white 
proving the best sample, yet the sudden brisk demand has maintained it at a high price. 
With the above exception, the report on all their crops and their harvesting, appears highly 
satisfactory. The pilchard fishery has been remarkably successful, and labourers are, generally, 
well employed. From Cumberland and its vicinity, the accounts are nearly as satisfactory. 
They seem to have escaped all the difficulties of the harvest; their wheat nearly an ave- 
rage quantity and quality ; oats with a vast bulk of straw, and good prospect of yield; with 
the best crop of barley that they have gathered during many years. 

Several of our correspondents from different quarters go so far as to assert, that the stock 
of old wheat at Michaelmas was actually double in amount to that of the foregoing year. 
Without warranting the accuracy of this calculation in any particular quarter, we remain 
confirmed in our former opinion of the ample sufficiency of the stock—a fortunate circum 
stance, considering the general inferiority of the new sample. The great demand on this 
stock for seed, and for mixing, together with the speculative views of the holders of bonded 
foreign wheat, obviously occasioned the late yery sudden rise in price ; and the eagerness 
of our country holders not to miss their share of the benefit very naturally produced an 
equally sudden decline in the London merket, which governs all others, and which, in @ 
late week, had arrivals of wheat and flour to an amount unprecedented for some years past. 
The governments of both France and England have been laudably solicitous to secure a 
foreign supply ; and, with our ample and excellent stock of well-stored potatoes, no appre- 
hension need be entertained of a want of bread: at the same time, it ought not to be 
expected cheap. The average weight of our new wheat is laid at 4tbs. or 5tbs. per impe- 
rial bushel below that of last year. The old stocks of malt and hops were considerable. It 
is said that some samples of very fine old wheat-haye been sold at £5. 10s. the quarter, and 
the London loaf has reached 13d. ‘ 

Hop-picking has concluded under happier auspices than expected, and the crop tallies 
very evenly with that of wheat, in regard to amount and quality. Of turnips and mangel- 
wurtzel there will he plenty, though it is supposed the crop of neither will be remarkable for 
size and weight of bulb. Now is the time for those who have the prudent foresight to draw 
and store, at least, a considerable part of both. Clover-seed hath not deceived us ; it is a 
bad crop. Young clovers, and grasses of all kind, most luxuriant; but the great flush of 
grass, as we apprehended, has not forwarded the cattle in proportion, and, upon wet soils, 
has brought a suspicious unsoundness in the sheep. The scarcity of apples in the country 
seems a general complaint, which may be contrasted with their present considerable plenty 
in the metropolis, where, nevertheless, nonpareils are 18s. per bushel. 

Perhaps no living man has witnessed a more favourable season for sowing wheat, truly 
disgraced, indeed, by the foul and slovenly condition of the fallows. If any thing could 
possibly atone for this foul disgrace to British husbandry in the nineteenth century, it must 
be the late resource, in several remote districts, to the enlightened practice, recommended 
many years since, of paring and burning the stubbles. Tn the early sowing counties, the 
young wheats, the produce of old seed, have planted thickly and vigorously, and, in theix 
infancy, are of high promise. Expectation is not so sanguine in favour of those from new 
and infirm seed. The breadth of this favourite farmers’ crop, it is expected, will be amongst 
the largest hitherto known ; and, the present favourable weather continuing, all will be got 
in during the autumn—a signal advantage. The drill husbandry is once more making its 
appearance in the country ; not the sham or bastard drill, which has so long prevailed, and 
with so little enmity to weed vegetation—but the real system of that immortal, though 
slighted benefactor to his country, old Jeruro Tux, which admits not of the possible 
existence of weeds, either below or above ground, converts every arable farm into a garden, 
and would, if generally adopted, give employment to the whole body of our labourers, at a 
charge of labour far below the present—or, rather, at free cost; since the weeds upon most 
farms, according to the present practice, are a much heavier expense to the farmer than that 
of labour. If we can entertain any hope of the general renewal and spread of the real 
drill system, it must arise from the recent example of the great Coxe, of Holkam, who has 
made corn to grow where none could be grown before ; and who, in the course of half a cen- 
tury of unremitting attention, has changed a barren desert into a fruitful and profitable 
paradise, surrounded by a tenantry unparalleled for wealth, respectability, and intelligence, 
and contributing more towards the public subsistence than any other man living. Yet a 
man like this must not expect to enjoy an equal share of fame or of popular favour with the 

destroyers of the earth and of human life! For an account of the Tullian system and prac- 
tice, reference may be had to the “‘ New Farmers’ Calendar.” 

Nothing of novelty has occurred since last month, excepting that the price of pigs, which 
seemed rather to decline, has revived. Store cattle and sheep hold price, or have rather 
advanced, keep being still so abundant, and vast winter stocks leaving no apprehension of — 
want in the spring. Wool, where holders. are prudent enough to sell it, has had no 


? 


1828.] Monthly Agricultural Report. 553. 


advance; and to those who keep clip after clip, it is no easy matter to find room for such 
an incumbrance. We have lately heard of Merino sheep in parts of the country where we 
had no expectation of finding them—whence, probably, a growing inclination may be 
inferred of a renewed attempt to improve our fine or rather short wool. The price of good 
horses, instead of the autumnal reduction of former days, has increased.._ The importation 
of cart, and even of coach stock, continues ; and some fine strings of Belgian two years’ 
old cart colts have been exhibited in our fairs. As a specimen of price, rirTy guineas 
have been given for prime English two-year-old cart colts; yet, on the extension of com- 
mon-sense by the substitution of corn-fed oxen for horses in farm-labour, the present 
deponent can say nothing. He hath, however, one novelty to record, but not with any 
warrant ‘of approbation—making wine from mangel-wurtzel! The provident labourers 
must have benefited considerably by their earnings during the harvest; and their wages 
have advanced generally, though at no rate to a sufficient degree for their maintenance ; 
and the ensuing winter, in all propability, will be a trying one. : 

Smithfield.— Beef, 3s. 4d. to 4s. 4d.—Mutton, 3s. 8d. to 5s. —Veal, 4s. 10d. to 6s.— 
Pork, 5s. to 6s. 6d.—Raw fat, 2s. 4d. 2 . 

Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 52s., 78s., 100s.—Barley, 34s. to 50s.—Malt, 60s. to 
78s.—Oats, 21s. to 34s.—Bread, The London 4 Jb. fine loaf, 13d.—Hay 50s. to 100s. 
—Clover ditto, 80s. to 120s.—Straw 32s. to 42s, 

Coals in the Pool, 29s. to 40s. per chaldron. 


Middlesex, October 20th. 


[Errata in last Report.—For matting read malting. | 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 


Sugar.—The demand for Muscovadoes has been on the most extensive scale: we esti- 
mate the sales last week, at 6,300 hogsheads and tierees: The great proportion was sold 
at the advance of 1s. (stated on Tuesday last); but, towards the close of the week, good 
Sugars realized: a farther improvement of about ls., and the rise would have been much 
more considerable, but for the languid state of the Refined Market, and the readiness with 
which the holders of Muscovadoes met the demand. 

Coffee.—The demand for Coffee last week gradually improved, and all the ordinary 
descriptions so lately neglected sold at an advance of 2s. The request has since continued 
on an extensive scale ; and yesterday an uncommon briskness: commenced. On thearrival 
of the Flanders mail, a general advance of 2s. on the previous prices was readily obtained. 

Rum, Brandy, and Hollands.—In consequence of the decline in the Corn-market, the 
purchases of Rum have been on a limited scale : there are, however, no sales at any reduc- 
tion. ~ Some proof Leward sold at 2s. 4d. ; Brandies continue to be held with: great firms 
ness; Geneva is unvaried. : ‘ 

_ Hemp, Flax, and Tallow.—The demand for Tallow, which has lately been steady and 
considerable, became brisk yesterday ; very general sales were effected at an adyance of 6d. 
percwt. Hemp maintains the late rise ; in Flax there is little alteration. 


Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 2}.—Rotterdam, 12. 2}.—Antwerp, 
12. 2}.-Hamburgh, 13. 13.—Altona, 13. 13}.—Paris, 25. 35.—Bordeaux, 25. 60.— 
Frankfort, 151.—Petersburgh, 10.—Vienna; 10. 2.—Trieste, 10. 2.—Madrid, .363.— 
Cadiz, 363.—Bilboa, 36}.—Barcelona, 354.—Seville, 364.—Gibraltar, 46.—Leghorn, 483. 
—Genoa, 25. 40.—Venice, 47}.—Naples, 393.—Palermo, 119.—Lisbon, 46.—Oporto, 
464,—Rio Janeiro, 294/.—Bahia, 34/.—Dublin, 14.—Cork, 14. { 


Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold ‘in Coin, £0. 0s. 0d.—Foreign Gold in Bars, 
£3. 17s. 103d.—New Doubloons, £0, 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 93d.—Silver in Bars, 
£0. 4s. 14d. 


—— 


Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
‘WoLFe, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill.—Birmingham Cana, 294/.—Coven- 
try, 1,080/.—Ellesmere and Chester, 108/.—Grand Junction, 303/.—Kennet and Avon, 
28/.—Leeds and Liverpool, 450/.—Oxford, 690/.—Regent’s, 26/.—Trent and Mersey, 

} sh.), 8101.—Warwick and Birmingham, —/.—London Docks (Stock), 874/.—West 

dia (Stock), 215/.—East London Water Works, 218/.—Grand Junction, 56/,— 
‘West Middlesex, 69/.—ANliance British and Foreign InsuRANCE, 94/.—Globe, 160/.— 
Guardian, 214/.—Hope Life, 5}/.—Imperial Fire, 101/.—Gas-Licur Westminster Char- 
tered Company, 52%/.—City, 0/.—British, 8 dis. Leeds, 1951. 


M.M. New Series. —Vou. VI. No. 35. 4B 


7 [Nov. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 
Announced from the 22d of September to the 23d of October 1828; extracted from the 


London Gazette. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


T. Scriven, West Cowes, Isle of Wight, hatter. 
J. Woolley, Denby, Derbyshire, brickmaker. 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 97.] 
Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 


Allen, G. junior, Ridgefield, Manchester, calen- 
derer. [Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane ; Foulkes 
‘and Son, Manchester 

Allen, J. Coal Hatch-farm, High Wycombe, 
oer: [Newton and Sons, Great Carter- 

ane 

Allday, T. Birmingham, butcher. [Clarke and 
Co., Chancery-lane ; Colmore, Birmingham 

Barrow, T. Manchester, and G. Geddes, Stock- 

ort, commission agents. [Hurd and Johnson, 
emple; Hadfield and Grave, Manchester 
Beerge, J. and R. B. Ashburton, serge manufac- 
turers. [Wilde and Co., College-hill 
Bowen, O. Crawford-street, Mary-le-bone, draper, 
[Ashurst, Sambrook-court 
Benson, M. Liverpool, merchant. [Adlington 
and Co., Bedford-row ; Whitley, Liverpool 
Baker, W. J. St. John's, Clerkenwell, orange- 
merchant. [Matanie, Pancras-lane 
Blyth, J. Bury St. Edmunds, draper. 
Sambrook-court 
Bradley, W. Legburn, Lincoln, draper, 
Louth 

Barnby, G. Spalding, grocer. 
St. Swithin’s-lane 

Bailey, J. Bath, shoe-maker, [Mant, Son, and 
Bruce, Bath. 

Conolly, C. Piccadilly, jeweller. [Collier and 
Co.,Carey-street 

Checkley, T. Warwick, hosier. [White, Lincoln’s- 
inn ; Tibbits and Son, Warwick 

Cambridge, L. Bristol and Prince Edward’s 
Island, merchant. [Clarke and Co,, Chancery- 
lane. s 

Cambridge, L. and A. Bristol and Prince Ed- 
ward’s Island, merchants. [Brittan, Basing- 
hall-street 

Crowther, R. and F. T. High-street, Southwark, 


[Ashurst, 
(Wilson, 


[Pearces and Co., 


woollen-drapers. [Tanner, New Basinghall« 
street A 

Clarke, R. Ware, linen-draper. [Jones, Size- 
lane 


Cullaway, C. Prospect-row, Walworth, carpenter. 
{ Teague, Cannon-street 

Dunlap, T. Pontefract, grocer. 
lane, 

Day, T. Upton-upon-Severn, grocer, 
and Co., Chancery-lane 

Earl, J. T. Lewisham, plumber. 
Andrew’s court, Holborn 

Evetts, T. Birmingham, refiner of metals. 
ten and Co., Gray’s-inn 

Fleming, M: Fulham, spinster, schoolmistress, 
[Smith and Buckerfield, Red-lion-square 

Fenton, F. St. James’s-street, hotel-keeper. 
(Miller, Furnival's-inn 

Fensham, J. Wardour-street, 
(Turner, Basing-lane 

Fortune, T. Highington, Durham, cattle-sales- 
man. [Merediths and Co., Lincoln’s-inn 

Fox. W. B. Crawford-street, oil and colourman, 
[Blacklow, Frith-street 

Gaisford, W. Bristol, victualler. [Bicknell and 
Roberts, Lincoln’s-inn; Harmer, Bristol 

Gosling, J. Bocking, spirit-merchant. [Brown- 
ing, Hatton-court 

Gilbert, H. Bishopsgate-street Without, grocer. 
[Gates, Lombard-street 


[Jones, Size- 
[Clarke 
{ Pontifex, St. 
[Aus- 


picture-dealer. 


Gibbon, J. junior, Poplar, mast and block-maker. 
(Atkins and Davis, Fox Ordinary-court 
Henzell, E. W. College-wharf, Lambeth, coal- 
merchant. [Heathcote, Coleman-street 
Hastings, T. Huddersfield, woollen-cloth-mer- 
chant. [Clarke and Co.,Chancery-lane ; White- 
head and Co., Hudderstield 
Harley, J. junior, Northampton, plumber. [Vin- 
cent, Temple 
Hammar, C. Mark-lane, merchant. 
Gilbert, Mark-lane 
Hunton, J. Bishopsgate-street and Ironmonger- 
lane, linen-draper. [Osbadelston and Co., Lon- 
don-street 
Hardin, R,. Cannock, maltster and butcher. 
Dawson and Co., New Boswell-court; Salt, 
ugeley 
Hales, E. Birmingham, corn-dealer. [Norton 
and Chapman, Gray’s-inu 
Horwood, J. and W. Oliver, Maddox-street, 
house decorators. [Carlon, High-street, Mary- 
le-bone 
Hall, J. Crown Public-house, 
Goodman’s-fields, licensed - victualler. 
and Pinward, Nicholas-lane 
Hughes, G. Upper-street, Islington, and of Spring- 
street, Shadwell, wine-merchant. [Lowless and 
Stubbs, Copthal-court 
Ind, E. B. Cambridge, linen-draper., [Lythgoe 
and Chapman, Essex-street; Twiss, Cam- 
bridge 
Jackson, J. Montague-street, Portman-square, 
tailor. Mp hae Pancras-lane, Queen-street, 
Cheapside 
Jones, E. R. Welsh-pool, druggist. 
and Co., Nicholas lane 
Jones, C. T. Lower Brook-street, horse-dealer. 
(Robinson and Son, Half-moon-street 
Jenkins, S. Exmouth-street, ivonmonger and 
hardwareman.,. [ Wright, Newman street 
Kendall, J. Stratford, Essex, cow-keeper. [Hodg- 
son, Broad-street buildings 
Leek, C. S. Gray’s-inn-lane, wine-merchant. 
[Dicas, Austin-friars 
Lockwood, W. East Barnet, bookseller, stationer, 
and peliogimanter: (Fitch, Union-street, South- 
war 
Miller, R. senior, and R. junior, Bermondsey, 
glue - manufacturers. [Wilton and Walter, 
John-street, Bedford-row y 
Musgrave, W. P. Bread-street, auctioneer. [Tay- 
lor, New-inn 
Mason, G. Fiskerton, joiner. [Capes, Gray’s- 
inn; Caparn, Newark-upon-Trent 
Meyrick, W. junior, Bristol, carpenter. 
and Co., Henrietta-street ; Beddoe, Bristo 
Moscrop, S. Stockport, draper. [Appleby and 
Co., Gray’s-inn ; Richardson, Stockport 
Martin, J. Preston, corn-merchant. lobed and 
Co., John-street, Bedford-row ; oodburn, 
Preston 
Marsden, W. Clitheroe, Lancaster, common-car- 
rier and batter-merchant. [Abbotson, Kirkby 
Stephen 
Morgan, W. S. Brown’s Coffee-house, Mitre- 
court, Fleet-street, commission-merchant, [ Hen- 
man, Bond-court, Walbrook 
Newman, W. Luton, straw-hat-manufacturer. 
Taylors, Featherstone-buildings ; Williamson, 
uton 
Oliver, R. Willow-walk, Bermondsey, glue-manu- 
facturer, and Oxendon-street, Haymarket, en- 
graver. [Brooking and Surr, Lombard-street 
Peploe, G. Marsh-place, Lambeth, coachmaker. 
{Evans andCo., Kennington-cross 


[Young and 


Rupert-street, 
[Noy 


[Bartlett 


Few 


1828.] 


Passmore, C. Teignmouth, linen-draper, 
ton and Co,, New Broad-street; 
Exeter 


Pain, J. Luton, straw-hat-manufacturer. [Tay- 
lors, Featherstone-buildings ; Williamson, Lu- 


[ Michael, 


ton 

Queen, C. Liverpool, wine-merchant. 
Red-lion-square 

Robertson, C., D. D. Milligan, and R. M. Dalzell, 
Fenchurch-street, merchants. 
Son, Bank-buildings 


Rickman, H. N. Worcester-street, Southwark, 
[Russell and Son, Lant-street, 


brush-maker, 
Southwark 


Roderick, D. St. Martin’s-court, victualler. [ Bur- 


- goyne and Co., Oxford-street 


Rumsey, W. J. Harp-lane, victualler. [Umney, 
[Constable and 


Chancery-lane 

Relfe, L. Cornhill, bookseller. 
Kirk, Symond’s-inn 

Routledge, J. London, goldsmith. 
King’s-arms-yard, Coleman-street 

Robinson, J. Stanhope, Durham, shopkeeper. 
[Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane; Shephard, Bar- 
nard-castle: Hampson, Manchester 

Row, W. junior, Kuott's-green, Essex, skin- 
broker. [Bourdillon, Broad-street, Cheapside 

Rorke, E. Liverpool, merchant. 
Change-alley ; 

Rippon, R. Leeds, joiner and builder. [Robin- 
son, Leeds 

Smale, W. Bedminster, victualler. [Hicks and 
Co., Bartlett’s-buildings: Peters, Bristol 

Stroud, KE. Chatham, grocer, Clarke, Newgate- 
street 


[Stephens, 


Syer, T. Sprowston, cattle-salesman, [Clarke 
and Co., Chancery-lane ; Dye, Norwich 
Salmon, W. West Malling, auctioneer, [Wilton 


and Co., John-street, Bedford-row 

Scott, D. Catharine Sluck, Northowram, York, 
dealer and chapman. [Edwards, Basinghall- 
street ; Stocks, Halifax 


Bankrupts. 


{Brut- 
Brutton, 


[Freshfield and 


[ Partington, 


555 


South, S, Horncastle, brickmaker. [Jenkins and 
Abbott, New-inn; Rogers, Boston 

Sanderson, T, Nottingham, lace-manufacturer. 
(Skidmore, Nottingham 

Southee, W. Canterbury, grocer. [Ronalds, Nico- 
las-lane 

Sweetenham, T. Burslem, earthenware-manu- 
facturer. [Walford, Grafton-street; Harding, 
Burslem 

Spice, W. Chertsey, grocer. 
street 

Tiffney, J. Huddersfield, woollen cord-manufac- 
turer. [Clarke and Co.. Chancery-lane; Ja. 
cob and Co., Hudderstield 

Tassimond, J. Leek, Stafford, silk-manufacturer. 
[Jenings and Co,, Temple; Coupland, Leek 

indalls T’. Hastings, linen-draper. [Jones, Size- 
ane 

Wilshere, M. Woolwich, currier. 
wich 

Williams, W. G. Throgmorton-street, auctioneer. 
[Dacie, Throgmorton-street 

Wilkinson, H. R. of the ship York, late of the 
ship Larkins, master-mariner [Atkins and 
Davis, Fox Ordinary-court 


(Gates, Lombard- 


[Suter, Green- 


Worley, I. Fish-street-hill, hotel-keeper. [Holt, 
Threadneedle-street 
Wilson, C. C. Furniyal’s-inn, scrivener, [Dodd, 


junior, Caroline-street 

Winfield, W. Stoke-ferry, Norfolk, corn-mer- 
chant. [Walter, Symond’s -inn; Wayman, 
Bury St. Edmunds 

Wilmot, T. Sloane-square, broker. [Wrentmore 
and Co., St. Mildred’s-court 

White, W. H. Leominster, brazier. [Eitch, 
Union-street, Southwark ; Coates, Leominster 

Woolhouse, W.H. Darnall, Attercliffe-cum Dar- 
nal, Sheffield, cutler aud victualler. [Hardy, 
Sheffield 

Youngman, G. J. Bury St. Edmund’s, grocer. 
(Bromley, Gray’s-inn; Leech, Bury St. Ed- 
mund’s. 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


Rey. J. Frampton, to the Vicarage of Tetbury, 


Gloucester.—Hon. and Rey. W. Wodehouse, to 
the Rectery of Falmouth, Cornwall.—Reyv. T. 
Robinson, to the Archdeaconry of Madras.—Rey. 
F. Lunn, to the Vicarage of Butley-cum-Baltons- 
borough, Somerset.—Rey. J. Stanton, Domestic 
Chaplain to the Marquis of Nerthampton.—Rey. 
J. Johnson, Domestic Chaplain to the Marquis of 
Hastings._Rey. T. Roy, to the Vicarage of God- 
lington, Beds.—Rey. W. Fallowfield, and Rey. 
C. Perring, Chaplains to the Sheriffs of London. 
—Rey. T. P. Pantin, tothe Rectory of Westcote, 
Gloucester.—Rey. M. Clove, to the Chancellor- 
ship of the Choir of Hereford Cathedral,—Rey. 
G. Boulton, to the Rectory of Preston Capes, 
Northampton.—Rey. R. Venables, to the Livings 
of Nantmell and Llangre, Radnor.—Rey. W. 
Cowpland, to the Rectory of Acton Beauchamp, 
Worcester.—Hon. and Rey. M. Grey, to the Liy- 
ing of Bishopsgate, London—Rey. W. F. Hook, 


to the Vicarage of the Holy Trinity, Coventry.— 
Rey. F. J. Newbold, to the Rectory of Stickney, 
Lincoln.—Rey. G. J. Cornish, to the Vicarage of 
Kenwyn, with the Chapel of Kea annexed, Corn- 
wall.—Rey. R. Little, to the Curacy of Yar- 
mouth; and the Rey. J. H. C. Blake, to the Cu- 
racy of Shalfleet, both Isle of Wight.—Rey. S. 
Smith, to be Chaplain to the Lord Mayor.—Rey. 
A. T. R. Vicary, to be Priest Vicar in Exeter Ca- 
thedral.—Rey. E, Griffin, junior, to the Vicarage 
of Weston by Welland, Northampton.Rev. Dr. 
Radcliffe, to the Vicarage of Chute, Wilts.—Rev. 
W. Renton, to the Perpetual Curacy of Tilstock, 
Salop.—Rey. E. C. Ogle, to the Prebendary of 
Gillingham Major, Olim Bamsbury, Salisbury 
Cathedral.—Rey. W. Collett, to the Perpetual 
Curacy of St. Mary, Thetford, Suffolk.—Reyv. T. 
D. Atkinson, to be Minister of St, Philip’s, Shef- 
field. 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


: CHRONOLOGY. 

' September 24.—Arrived at Falmouth the Bra- 

zilian frigate Imperatrix, haying on board Donna 

Maria II, Queen of Portugal, and her suite. 
26.—At Waterman’s Hall, 150 watermen were 


fined in different penalties, for not attending to 
the new regulations, insolence to passengers, &c. 
&e. 

30,—Alderman Thompson chosen Lord Mayor 
for the year ensuing. ; 


4B2 


556 ‘ 


October 1.—One hundred pounds was voted, by 
the subscribers at Lloyd’s, to a poor fisherman in 
Newfoundland, who had saved the crew of a ves- 
sel wrecked on a voyage from Ireland to Canada, 
and subsisted 152 survivors for some time!!! 

— Aletter to the Chairman of the Committee 
at Lloyds from the Foreigh Office, informing him 
that His Majesty’s Government had received in- 
formation, that it is the intention of the Emperor 
of Russia to establish the blockade of the Darda- 
nelles. 

— Proclamation issued by the Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland for the suppressing of illegal meetings. 
~ 6. The Queen of Portugal arrived in London, 
and took up her residence at Grillon’s hotel, 
Albermarle Street. 

8—The London University opened; nearly a 
thousand persons were present in the theatre of 
anatomy. 

9.—The Clyde frigate, of 46 guns, launched at 
Woolwich. 

13.—News arrived from Wurtemberg of the 
death of the Dowager Queen, Oct. 6. 

14.—Orders issued from the Lord Chamber- 
lain’s Office for the court’s going into mourning. 
Same day, the Duke of Norfolk, as Earl Marshal, 
issued orders from the Herald’s College, ordering 
a@ general mourning. 

MARRIAGES. 

"At St. George’s, Bloomsbury, T. Coventry, es4., 
to Elizabeth, only daughter of Mr. Justice Little- 
dale.—Miss Hanson, ci-devant Countess of Ports- 
mouth, to Mr. Alder, whosename occurred during 
the lunacy inquisition of the noble lord, and dur- 
ing the subsequent proceedings in that commis- 
sion.—Colonel Henry White, M.P., Dublin, to 
Eleanor, eldest danghter of W. S. Dempster, 
esq.—Lieut.-Col. R. Beauchamp, son of the late 
Sir T, B, Proctor, bart, to Miss Sophia Ball.—At 
St. James’s, R. Talbot, esq., to the Hon. Mrs. E. 
Bouverie.—At Mary-le-bone, T, Vardon, esq., to 
Laura Anne, niece to the late Sir Martin Stapyl- 
ton, bart.—J. Campbell, esq,, to Grace Elizabeth. 
third daughter of Lieut.-Gen, Hay, Lieut.-Gover- 
nor of Edinburgh-castle. 


DEATHS. 


At Kingston-house, the residence of the Earl of 
Listowell, Catherine Bridget, Viscountess Ennis- 
more, relict of his lordship’s eldest son, whom she 
surviyed but one year. Her ladyship was sister 
of the late, and aunt of the present, Lord Clon- 
brook.—Rey. T, H. Backhouse, brother to Mr, 
Backhouse, under secretaryfof state for foreign 


Incidents, Marriages, &c. 


[Nov. 


-affairs.—At Streatham, Rev. H. Hill, chancellor 
of the choir of Hereford Cathedral.—Right Hon. 
John Thomas Erskine, Earl of Mar.—At Bromp- 
ton, 71, Mrs, M. A. Beckles, sister to the late J. 
Beckles, attorney-general of Barbadoes.—-Eliza- 
beth Catherine, lady of Sir James Stuart, bart.— 
Sir George Grey, bart., commissioner of Ports- 
mouth Dock-yard.—G. Rennie, esq., the ccle- 
brated agriculturist, and brother to the late John 
Rennie. esq.—At Hampstead, at an advanced age, 
Mr. Heaviside, the celebrated surgeon.—W. H. 
Ware, esq,, many years conductor of the orchestra 
at Covent Garden.—27, Mr. R. P. Bonnington; 
he was an eminent artist, and his remains were 
followed to the grave by the president and other 
members of the Royal Academy.—In Regent- 
street, at her father’s house, 17, Mlle. Verney, 
whose beauty had been mischieyously bruited 
about; she died of a fever, brought on by the 
grief occasioned by the annoyances sustained by 
her father from the conduct of the populace, and 
from the want of an efficient police !!!—Lady Lis- 
ton, wife of the Right Hon. Sir Robert Liston, 
formerly His Majesty’s ambassador to Constanti- 
nople.—81, Sir T. Hanmer, bart.—Maurice Jones, 
esq., high steward of Montgomery.—65, the Rev. 
T. Powell; he officiated 35 years as curate of 
Sedgley.—At Aswarley-house, 66, Sir Thomas 
Whichote, bart. 


MARRIAGES ABROAD. 


At Florence, Count G. B. de Walhslatt, grand- 
son to the late Field Marshal Prince Blucher, to 
Madeline, second daughter of the late Lord Chief 
Justice Dallas.—At Hamburgh, in presence of the 
British Consul, G. Anfrere, esq.,to Mlle, Caroline 
Wehbrtmann.—At Paris, British Ambassador’s, 
Eugene Ibert, esq., son of the Rev, P. Bert, Modé- 
rateur des Vallées, to Miss H. Wallinger. 


DEATHS ABROAD. 


Her Majesty Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Prin- 
cess Royal of England, and Dowager Queen of 
Wurtemberg.—At Paris, 75, Thomas Thompson, 
esq., banker of Hull; he had been M.P. for Mid- 
hurst several years.—At Geneya, the Hon. and 
Rev. H. A. Bores.—At Genoa, the lady of Sir H. 
Bunbury, bart., daughter of General Fox, and 
niece of the late Right Hon. C. J. Fox.—At 
Naples, W. T. Honeyman, esq.—At Paris, W. A. 
Madocks, esq., of Tanyr-Alt, Carnarvon, many 
years M.P. for Boston.—At Montauban, General 
Count Andreossi, formerly ambassador from Na- 
poleon to the British nation. 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES; 
WITH THE MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 


The exhibition of pictures, by the ancient mas- 
ters, from the collections of the nobility and 
gentry of Neweastle and neighbourhood, was 
opened October 8. 


The aggregate amount of steam-engines, ashore 
snd afloat, in Durham and Northumberland, ex- 
ceeds the strength of 20,009 horses. The engine 


atthe Tyne Main Colliery is 200 horse power, it 
works three sets of pumps, and lifts from the 
depth of 47 fathoms upwards of 2,000 gallons of 
Water per minute. 
High Main coal seam, in the county of Northum- 
land took fire, and continued to burn for 30 
years. x 

Arrangements are making for nepali, Sun- 
derland theatre on a large scale. 


be 


About 150 years ago, the — 


1828.] 


“« We were,” says the Durham County Adver- 
tiser, of September 27, “on ‘Tuesday last, pre+ 
sented with some fine ripe strawberries, part of 
a second crop produced this season in the garden 
of Mr. Hancock, of Gilesgate; they are of the 
early scarlet kind. Inthe same garden are young 
apples, nearly as large as hazle-nuts, growing on 
the same trees from which Mr. H. is now receiy- 
ing ripe fruits. 

A branch bank of the Bank of England is 
established at Newcastle. A gentleman being 
asked the other day what business the folks were 
doing, said, “ They take coffee at twelve, daily.” 

A vessel lately arrivec at Sunderland from 
Sierra Leone, manned with negroes; the crew, 
who left England with her, having fallen victims 
to the destructive climate. 

' On the same evening that the aurora borealis 
was observed at Ackworth (see Yorkshire), it 
Was noticed at Durham), with very similar ap- 
pearances. 

_A robin red breast, which has taken up its 
abode in Sunderland Charch for four or five win- 
ters past, repossessed itself of its old quarters on 
Sunday morning the 5th of October, when it en- 
tertained, or rather disturbed the congregation, 
by the frequent exercise of its musical powers. 

Cuthbert Ellison, Esq., M.P., is about to retire 
from the office of high sheriff of Durham; and 
will be succeeded Ly Charles Clavering, Esq., of 
Axwell-park. 

An abundant second crop of strawberries was 
growing on the third week of October, in the 
garden of Mr. Thomas Clifford, Chester-le-street. 
A part were gathered that week perfectly ripe. 

Married.| At St. Andrew’s, Auckland, James, 
Appleton, Esq., to Miss Hall.—At Sunderlandt 
John Cook, Esq., to Miss Amelia Huntrods.—As 
Grindon, Mr. Wm. Sedgwick, aged 70, to Mise 


Ann Robinson, aged 24.—At Earsdon, Georg 
Willins, Esq.,to Miss Ellen Parkin. 


_Died.| At Headlam, Jobn Wade, esq.—At 
Neweastle, Mrs. Ellison; R. Wade, esq. 


YORKSHIRE AND LANCASHIRE. 


The receipts on account of the York Musical 
Festival haye amounted to £16,500; those at 
Manchester, to about £15,000. ‘The expenses of 

4 the former were £14,000, and those of the latter 
upwards of £10,000, so that, at least, the sum of 
nearly £7,000 bas been collected for the purposes 
of charity, in both instances. 

A public breakfast has been given at Salford, 
: and dinners at Manchester and Liverpool, as a 

mark of respect to the Right Hon. R. Peel, seere- 
i tary of state for the home department. 
? ' ‘Phe sum of £607. 15s, 83d. has been collected 
at Huddersfield, at five sermons, preached at the 
anniversary of the opening of the Independent 
Chapel. 

The third Yorkshire Musical Festival was held 
onthe 23d, 24th, 25th, and 26th of September. It 
was attended by 21,000 persons; and the receipts 
was £16,000. 

A beautiful exhihition of the aurora borealis 
was seen at the village of Ackworth, between 10 
and 12 o’clock in the evening of Monday, the 29th 
of September. At-first, it appeared like a dawn- 
ing twilight, along the northern horizon, brightest 
to the north-west, interspersed with pillars of dim 
silver light. The usual height of the columns was 


Ss Ble, ool 
- 


Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, §c. 


557. 


from 30 to 45 degrees, but they sometimes darted 
to the zenith, and again sunk nearly away in 
the horizon. Occasionally, billows of light flame 
seemed to play ever the sky, passing upwards, 
and from west to east, with the rapidity of flying 
clouds. : : 

On the 9th of October, a singular meteoric phe- 
nomenon occurred at Springfield, near Bawtry. 
Mr. Hawley, of that place, was standing at his 
door observing the aurora borealis, when he saw 
a brilliant meteor pass in the direction of from 
east to west, and full at abont 100 yards distanee. 
Mr. H. inspected the place next morning, and 
found four pieces of a substance resembling char- 
coal, but nearly as heavy as lead. The grass 
surrounding the place where these pieces were 
taken up, was entirely destroyed for a distance of 
five or six yards. 

The officers, non-commissioned officers, and pri- 
vates of the late Richmond Forested Yeomanry, 
which were disbanded last year, have presented 
their late commander, Major Hartley, with a 
splenaid piece of plate. 

At a meeting of the Bible Society at Bradford, 
on the 10th instant, a popish priest, Mr. Mad- 
docks, interrupted the proceedings, by speaking 
against the circulation of the word of God. He 
described the society as the grand cause of a 
most fearful increase of crime which had taken 
place since its establishment; and also as the 
cause of disunion inthe church. He also pursued 
the same course at the evening meeting, and 
spoke on both occasions as long as the chairman 
would permit him, There was to be a public dis- 
cussion with the reverend gentleman on the 24th 
of October. 

Married] At Scarborough, R. Spoffreth, esq., 
to Miss Jefferson.—At Ouseburn, the Rev. T. H. 
Croft, to Miss Thompson.—At Leeds, J. N. Briggs, 
esq., to Miss Sarah Maude.—At York, M. L. 
Dames, esq., to Miss Julia Ombler.—At Calver- 
ley, Wm. Turney, esq., to Miss Wheeler.—At 
Battey, Wm. Gelderd, esq., to Miss Thornton. 


Died.| At Doneaster, Edward Hannings, esq. 
—At Rippon, J. Atkinson, esq.—At Beverley, 
Stephen Soame, esq. 


CHESHIRE AND DERBY. 


It appears from the Report made at the Gene- 
ral Meeting of Subscribers to the Buxton Bath 
Charity, that, from September 4, 1827, to Septem: 
ber 1, 1828, £601. 15s. 4d. had been received by 
subscriptions ; and that 808 persons had been ad- 
mitted within that period to its benefits, besides 
394 additional patients, who had received relief in 
medicine and the baths, but no pecuniary assist- 
ance. . 4 

Married.| At Alderley, H. Adeane, esq., to 
anlee Abigail, daughter of Sir J. T. Stanley, 

art. 

Died.) At Bredbury, Mrs. Betty Leech, mo- 
ther of 16 children, grandmother to 120, and great- 
grandmotber to 100.—At Mellor, 73, S. Oldknow, 
esq. The chapel of All Saints, in Marple, had 
become ruinous, and for its re-erection about 
£1,000 was raised; he undertook the building; 
and his liberal mind so enlarged on the scale laid 
down, as to expend nearly £4,000 above the sum 
subseribed; he likewise made several public roads 
at his own expense, 


HUNTINGDON AND CAMBRIDGE. 


The Recorder, at the Cambridge town sessions, 
congratulated the grand jury on the apparent 


558 


improved state of the town, there not being a 
single case of any importance brought before 
them. 

Died.| At Cambridge, 68, Mr. J. Newby; he 
had been in the employ of the Society of Trinity 
49 years. 


WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. 


The Roman Catholic Chapel at Leamington 
was lately opened, when Dr, Walsh, the bishop 
of the midland district officiated, attired in pon- 
tificalis ; having the mitre on his head, and the 
crosier in his hand, he ascended the steps of the 
altar, and delivered an extemporaneous sermon. 

The business at our Town Sessions has for 
some time past been extremely light; and at our 
County Sessions, on Thursday last, there was 
not a single prisoner for trial—a circumstance 
“past all parallel’? within our recollection.— 
Northampton Mercury, No. 34, Vol. 108.— 
Oct, 18. 

Died.| Near Birmingham, 81, T. Richards, 
esq.—At Silverton, 102, Mary Adams; her mo- 
ther and grandmother’s ages both exceeded 100 
years. 


WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 


The excavations carrying on by Mr. Rudge in 
the site of thetransept of the Abbey Church of 
Evesham, are proceeding towards the completion 
of a regular plan (begun in 1811) of the whole of 
the church, 280 feet in length; an account of 
which is intended to be published by the Society 
of Antiquaries, as soon as the workmen haye com- 
pleted their final operations. 


GLOUCESTER AND MONMOUTH. 


The President and Vice-Presidents of the Glou- 
cester Infirmary have circulated an appeal for 
additional subscriptions, as by the addition of 
the new wing, the expenditure is increased £600 
per annum; the building is uow capable of ac- 
commodating 170 patients, 

The labouring classes of Bisley and Chalford 
are reduced to a state of extreme poverty and 
distress, in consequence of the want of employ- 
ment ; many families being destitute of the neces- 
sary articles of food and clothing. The respect- 
able inhabitants fear that the approach of winter 
will be pregnant with miserable consequences to 
their humble but industrious neighbours ; and the 
minister and churchwardens will receive with 
pleasure, and properly apply, any sums that may 
be placed at their disposal. 


NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 


The first pike of the new bridge over Sutton 
Wash was driven on Tuesday last, and the New 
Cut, and the works connected with this great and 
very useful undertaking, are in a state of rapid 
progress.—Norfolk Chronicle, Oct. 4. 

We are sorry that the Bury Musical Festival 
did not succeed in the good intentions of its pro- 
moters, on behalf of the Suffolk General Hospital ; 
the expences haying amounted to nearly £2,400, 
and the receipts to only £2,192, 17s. leaving a 
deficiency of £207! 

The New Corn Exchange at Norwich has been 
recently opened, and is one of the finest of the 
kind in the kingdom. 

The Directors of the Norfolk and Suffolk Insti- 
tution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts opened 


Provincial Occurrences: Warnick, Northampton, &c. 


LNov. 


their Gallery October 14; it contains 119 various 
specimens of painting, of ancient as well as of 
modern masters. 

Married.[| Rey. G. Ranking, of Ipswich, to 
Eliza, youngest daughter of the late T. Maitland, 
esq., and sister of Sir P. Maitland. 


Died.| At Oulton, 91, Mrs. George; leaving 
83 children, grand-children, and great grand- 
children.—At Great Yarmouth, Mr. R. C. Smith. 
—At Beccles, Mrs. Farr, daughter of Sir T. 
Gooch, bart. 


OXFORD AND BERKS. 


It appears by the abstract of the treasurer’s 
account of the disbursements of the county of 
Oxford, that the sum of £7,630. 2s, 5d. was ex- 
pended from Michaelmas Sessions, 1827, to Tri- 
nity Sessions, 1828, Between 4 and £5,000 
of the above was paid for criminal and civil juris- 
prudence! 

Died.| At Oxford,the Rey. A. Nicoll, Regius 
Professor of Hebrew; 73, Mr. R. Walker, known 
to the scientific by his experiments and dlscoyeries 
on artificial cold.—At Waterstock, Elizabeth, wife 
of W.H. Ashurst, esq., M.P. 


BUCKS AND BEDFORDSHIRE. 


The Shefford new bridges were opened to the 
public September 20; they are composed of iron, 
except the brick piers, and are very neat in ap- 
pearance. 


HERTFORD AND ESSEX. 


A public dinner was given at the Market-house 
at Ware, September 23, to celebrate the anniver- 
sary of the musical festival, and the re-establish- 
ment of the market, with the building of the Mar- 
ket-house, 


HANTS AND SUSSEX. 


A bronze statue of His Majesty has been erected 
on the Steyne, at Brighton ; the artist, Chantrey. 

A public meeting has been held in Basingstoke 
Town-hall, for establishing a pitched market, 
when upwards of £800 were subscribed for that 
purpose; and the corporation remits all tolls for 
14 years. 


WILTS AND DORSET. 


The Chairman at the Dorchester Sessions con- 
gratulated the grand jury on the state of the ca- 
lendar, which, though not light in point of num- 
bers, yet, on comparing it with those of corre- 
sponding sessions in preceding years, might, as 
regarded offences, be taken as evidence of the de- 
crease of crime in this county. t 

Penny posts are established from Dorchester to 
Charminster, Stratton, Frampton, Maiden New- 
ton, Cattistock, and Evershot. The letters for 
Cerne and neighbourhood are now forwarded by 
a horse post, giving the inhabitants an interval 
of upwards of three hours between its arrival and 
departure ; the same messenger proceeds to Syd- 
ling, with the letters for that place. Similar ac- 
commodation is extended to Winterborne, Steeple- 
ton, Martin’s Town, Portesham, and Abbotsbury. 

The town of Evershot was much exhilarated on 
Thursday last, at the commencement of a daily 
mail from Dorchester thither. Having hitherto 
had a very tardy communication with the post- 
office, the improvement was duly appreciated by the 
inhabitants, and greeted with a merry peal on the 
bells, and joy and exultation were the order of the 


1828.] 


day, The inhabitants will now correspond with 
London in 36 hours, whereas, they have only been 


able to do so, hitherto, by the old channel of com- 


munication, in six days!!! 


DEVON AND SOMERSET. 


At the Devonshire Sessions, the Chairman, in 
addressing the grand jury, said, “That, in recur- 
ring to the list in the calendar, he saw, with deep 
regret, a great mass of alleged crime; and trifling 
as might be deemed many of them, they exceeded 
seventy in number; and when it was recollected 
that little more than ¢wo months had elapsed since 
there was a general gaol delivery, it was an 
amount of delinquency fearful to contemplate,”— 
«‘ The magistrates,” he said, ‘‘ had determined to 
give two additional general sessions in that court 
every year.” 

The Quarter Sessions for Somerset commenced 
at Taunton, when the grand jury were congratu- 
lated on the exceeding lightness of the calendar; 
« indeed much lighter than he had known it for 
years past,’ said the honourable gentleman who 
addressed the grand jury. 

Mr. Pascoe, civil engineer, of Exeter, has fur- 
nished the Committee with a survey and plan of 
the new line of road from Barnstaple to Braun- 
ton, for the formation of which application is in- 
tended to be made at the next session of Parlia- 
ment, by which the distance will be reduced to 
4 miles, the distance by the present road being 
6 miles and a half; and the intended new line will 
be, confessedly, one of the most beautiful that can 
be conceived, being close by the side of the ma- 
jestic Taw, perfectly level, and nearly straight ; 
the estimated expenze £5,000. 


Died.) Jane, wife of Sir Henry Maturin Far 
rington, bart., of Spring-lawn, Heavitree. 


CORNWALL. 


The Members of the Royal Institution of Corn- 
wall held their Annual Meeting at Truro; and 
the support now afforded by the President of the 
Royal Society, the two county members, and 
other gentlemen of influence in the county, affords 
reason to believe that the Society may be enabled 
to display its valuable and increasing collection 
in a more adequate manner ; and that its museum 
may be regarded asa proper depository for the va- 
rious antiquities with which this county abounds ; 
and that its collection of natural history may be 
commensurate with its native riches, and the faci- 
lities offered by the constant intercourse with 
foreign climes through His Majesty’s packets. 

There is at the present time, at the Wheal 
Hope Mine, a high pressure condensing engine, 
constructed by Captain Grose, which raises 
6,400,0001bs. one foot, by the consumption of each 
bushel of coals, equal to the labour of eighteen 
men. 

Bythe French brig Le Mercure, Cabaret, mas- 
ter, which recently arrived at Penzance, from 
Brest, nine Maltese came passengers, having 
been released from slavery at Tunis,and conveyed 
by a French frigate to Brest, and from thence 
forwarded, by the British Consul at the latter 
port,to England, as British subjects. 


SCOTLAND. 


In one extensive distillery in this quarter, for 


Devon, Somerset, Cornwall, Scotland, §c. 


559 


the year ending llth October, 1827, there was 
distilled 3,844,000 gallons of wash; of which the 
total produce was 481,000 gallons of raw grain 
spirits. From the 10th October, 1827, to the pre- 
sent period, there have been distilled in the same 
work, 6,000,000 gallons of wash—the total pro- 
duce of which is 600,000 gallons of raw grain 
whiskey ; the duty on which, at 2s. 10d. a gallon» 
(without drawback), amounts to £85,000. The 
quantity of grain mashed was 7,200 bolls. Raw 
grain whiskey is freely selling at present at7s. a 
gallon, which would make the return £210,000. 
The distillery never ceased working during the 
warmth of summer. This was accomplished by 
machinery being fixed in the cooling room, which, 
by the incessant circulation of air over the coolers, 
reduced the heat of the worts 10 degrees below 
the common temperature, and enabled the work 
to go on without intermission. Such is the ex- 
tent of the demand for the Irish and English 
market, that it is in contemplation to increase the 
distillery one half its present dimensions. The 
other raw grain distilleries in the west of Scot- 
land are also in a similar state of activity —Glas- 
gow Post. 


Died.) Sir Evan Cameron, of Fassifern, N.B. 
bart., aged 90 ; Sir Evan obtained his baronetey 
in consequence of the gallant cenduct of his son, 
Colonel Cameron, “the valiant Fassifern,’ who 
fell at the head of his brave 92d, on the field of 
Waterloo. The title was the free spontaneous 
gift of our gracious sovereign, who thus sought 
to alleviate the sorrows of the aged chieftain, by 
reflecting back upon him the honours earned by 
his gallant son. 


IRELAND. 


In consequence of the agitated state of this un- 
fortunate country, the Lord Lieutenant, being 
resolved to suppress and put down all illegal 
meetings, and to preventthe recurrence thereof, 
has thought fit to issue a proclamation, solemnly 
and strictly warning all His Majesty’s liege sub- 
jects from henceforth to discontinue the holding 
or attending any such meetings or assemblies. 
It is dated October 1; and signed, by His Excel- 
lency’s command, F. Leyeson Gower. 


Mr. Lawless has been arrested [by order of 
government, for heading a riotous mob at Balli- 
bay. He has been bailed, himself in £400, and 
two sureties in £200 each. 

Dividing the population of Ireland into four 
grand classes, with respect to age, the last census 
presents to our view the following lamentable 
picture of the state of a country abounding with 
every means of industry, and with able and will- 
ing hands to cultivate it, in the most civilized 
period of the world:—Infants of 5 years and un- 
der, 1,040,666—one half, at least, badly clothed 
and fed. Children, from 5 to 15, 1,748,663— 
1,300,000 destitute of education. Operatives, 
from 15 to 70, 3,931,660—1,094,845 destitute of 
employment. Aged, from 70 to 100, 81,191—a 
great portion of whom are paupers. What claims 
for employment! What claims for education! 
not to speak of the claims of the aged and others, 
totally helpless, as to their own exertions, or any 
that their kindred (even where they may have 
kindred) can make for them. Something has 
been done in the way of employment and educa- 
tion; more is doing; but a thousand times more 
still remains to be done. 


[ 560 ] 
DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 
From the 26th of September to the 25th of October, 1828. 


Bank [3 Pr. Ct./3 Pr. Ct./3$Pr.Ct./33Pr.Ct.|N4Pr.C. Long India | India | Exch. | Consols 

3 Stock. | Red. }|Consols.}Consols.| Red. Ann. Annuities. | Stock. | Bonds, | Bills. | forAcc. 
26} — ee a ee — | 1023 = — |92 94p| 7677p | 88} 
A — |sas{ — — | 1024 | - = — | 7677p | 87% 8 
29 —_— _ —_— — = _ — _— — —_ — 
2 i. SR 4 ey 1018 3 ey 2393 241] 85 90p| 7478p | 863 °Z 
ct. _— : 

1 ee =) #865 = iw hao Z = 83p_ | 7275p | Sit 

2 pes — | 862 = — | 10133 = 240 | 85 86p| 7375p | 85 
si — | 863 = — | loi § = — | 87 88p| 75 76p | 85 
4s (4 eee ee — | 1014 $ ae 239 | 89 90p| 7576p | 864 % 
6 | = ey : = Sonlnory z _ — | 89p_ | 7476p | 863.7 
7s — | see s74} — — | 10182 = 239 |90 9Ip| 7576p | 87%, 
a re = 87} = — | 101g 2 me — | 90 9Ip| 7576p 7 2 
ieee apes TT ea i hee — | 101Z 2 — _| — 484 6p! 75 Zep |'868) 2 
103] an 868 ey EO TOT i — | 84 86p| 7576p | 86% 
a 2083 | 85g 6} 86, 3| 932 | 93g § iors 193 3 237 — |7576p | 868 2 
13 | 208 85% _ | 86 933 | 932 § | Jol = = — | 7576p | 868° 3 
14] 208 9 | 85§ 4 | 864 ==, | oss 2.1 10) 191 5-16 — | 85 86p| 7576p | 86 

15 | 2083 9 | 853 4 | 854 869] 933 # | 934 %| 1012 3] 19 3-16 — | 84 S86p| 7576p | 864. 
16 | 208 9 | 847° 6 | 852 set 934 933 94 | 1014 $ 19} '2363 373| 86 7576p | 85¢ 6 
17 | 2073 84) 843 5 | 853 2] 93E | 938 § 101k 3 194 237. | 84 S5p| 7576p | 85g 6 
19 — — — — —_ _ — — —_— — — 
20} — | saz 5% 854 %1 — | 932 43] 1012 19 = 84 7475p | 853. 6 
21 | 2073 83] 854 | 854 86] 932 § | 938 @ | lold 19 1-16 — |84 85p| 7475p | 864 
22 -- set 853 86 | 93 938 £ | 1014 19 1-16 236 85p 7475p | 85% 6 
23 | 2074 83) 85: 854 86 | 93: 934 94 | 1014 19 1-16 236 84 85p| 7475p | 85g 6 
24 8} | 854 4] 854 86 | 937 944] 942 | 1014 19 1-16 — |85 86p| 7576p | 85 : 
2 | — | 853 g| set 2] 944 | 942-8] 10122] 192 3-16 = 86p | 7576p | S63 § 


E, Eyton, Stock Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street. 
— ’ 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 


From August 20th to September 19th, 1828. 
By Wixtiiam Harris and Co. 50, High Holborn. 


é Therm. Barometer. ‘Sige i Winds. Atmospheric Variations. 
g | 2 Se 
2 s : = ; : 
Be ee ae 
2 2/8] :] 4] ¢|9A.M./10PM.) “|. | 9A.M, | 10P.M. [9 A. M.| 2P. M. {flo P.M. 
Se =) og ce | os < S 
nm eialalals a |= 
20 53 | 67 | 50 | 30 06 | 30 07 | 50} 50 SE SE Fine Fine Fine 
21 1 58 | 67 | 51 | 30 02] 30 04] 49] 48 SE SSE —— _ — 
22 58 | 66 |:58 | 29 75} 29 84] 47 | 49 S sw | Foggy} — a 
23 O 60 | 68 | 56 | 30 00] 30 Y1 | 50} 51 Sw SW - Fine = 
24 61 | 69} 59 | 30 OL} 29 977 51 | 52 Ww WSW Fine — — 
25 62 | 68 | 60 | 29 85] 29 75) 51 | 47 w SW _ _ — 
26 65 | 73 | 56 | 29 67 | 29 72] 51 | 49 SW WNW — — = 
27 60 64 | 72 | 50 | 29 76 {| 29 71} 54 | 53 NW NW Rain Rain Clo. 
28 | 45 60 | 67} 51 | 29 60] 29 50] 53} 52 Ww NW Show.| — | Rain 
29 62 | 65 | 54] 29 45] 29 43] 51/56] WNW WNW | Clo. Clo Clo. 
30 C 56 | 62] 52 | 29 56 | 29 57 | 54 | 54 W W Fine Fine a 
Oct. 
1 58 | G6 | 48 | 29 48) 29 57] 55.| 54 Ww Ww Clo. - Fine 
2 56 | 61 | 45 | 29 68 | 29 81] 55 | 54 Ww NW Yine — — 
3 46 | 62 | 54] 29 83] 29 72| 43 | 52] WNW SW Foggy _— — 
4 8 60 | 63 | 54 | 29 43} 29 53] 52 | 54 ss W Ww Show. | Clo. Clo. 
5 57 | 64 | 53 | 29 31 | 29 37] 53 | 53 SW SW Fine _— = 
6 57 | 60 | 50 | 29 22] 29 41] 52] 54 Ww wsw — — | Fiue 
7 7 54 | 61 | 52] 29 52) 29 41) 54] 54 Ww w = Fine Show. 
8 & 56 | 60 | 50 | 29 41 | 29 57} 51 | 51 WNW NW ms Clo. Clo, | 
S 56 | 60 | 48 | 29 81} 29 96 | 51 | 54 NW NW — Fine Fine 
10 53 | 60/51 | 30 O00 | 29 95) 53 | 55 Ww W — Clo Clo. 
ll 53 | 60 | 52] 30 14 | 30 25) 56 | 55 WNW WNW — Fine Fine 
12 56 | 62.) 50) 30 29 | 30 32) 54 | 54 Ww Ww = Fine _- 
13 51 | 60 | 50} 30 27|30 21] 55 | 52 Ww NNW | Foggy | — Foggy | 
14 52 1°57 | 52 | 30 23 | 30 24] 54} AQ NW NNW Fine — Fine | 
15 55 | 59 | 51/30 21) 30 19) 54] 53 NNW WNW — —_— — 
16 py | 54 | 63 | 52} 30 17 | 30 18 | 55 | 54 NNW NN V Foggy | Clo. Foggy | 
7 56 | 59 | 4 | 30 03 | 30 00] 54 | 55 NW NNW = Fine Clo. ; 
18 46 | 55 | 45 | 30 19 | 30 17] 54 | 50 ENE. E Fine — Fine |} 
19 47 | 54 | 39 | 30 04] 29 99 | 50 | 52 E E — i _— 


The Quantity of Rain fallen in the Month of September was 2 inches and 32 100ths. % : 


THE 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 


New Series. 


Voz. VI.] DECEMBER, 1828. [ No. 36. 


THE BRUNSWICK CLUBS. 


In the spirit of Burke’s immortal language—“< when bad men con- 
spire, good men should combine”—we rejoice at the establishment of 
Brunswick Clubs. No measure could have been more essential, for 
treason was already stalking through the land ; and no measure could 
have been more suitable to the manliness of the Britig ,»nind, the dignity 
of the cause, or the secure triumph of reason, true polcy, and the uncor- 
rupted Constitution. We saw an insolent and ignorant gang of bigots 
assembling daily in open scorn of law, uttering sentiments unheard of 
since the reign of the French revolution ; and while their characters were 
as base, and their intentions as atrocious, as any that marked the blackest 
time of subversion, held up, on the one hand, as the public organs of 
the Irish nation, and, on the other, confidentially received and cherished 
by the public instruments of the ministry. 

Whether the Ivish government was capable of feeling the degradation 

of this pusillanimous and short-sighted policy, or adopted it in the mean 
and hypocritical deference to rabble clamour, which characterizes the 
tenth-rate minions of office—whether the familiar reception of individuals 
_ whom no Irish gentleman would permit to cross his threshold, were the 
natural impulse of manriers reared in early licence, and giving proof of . 
their origin by a career, whose description must be left to its associates 
and its victims—the fact was unquestionable: the reception, the gay 
confidence, the familiar conviviality were there, to the astonishment and 
alarm of every man capable of knowing right from wrong, or of estimating 
he irrecoverable depth into which public functionaries could be flung by 
the contamination of such names. 
But, whatever were the results to those who thus stooped their necks 
under the heel of the Popish Association, its results to the country have 
been of the most signal value. When the intellect, the property, the 
principle, and the religion of Ireland—all included in the single word 
-ProresTantism—found that they were cut off from their natural con« 
nexion with the source of British polity in Ireland, they remembered the 
strength that was in their own manliness, union, and knowledge. Those 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 36. 4 C 


562 The Brunswick Clubs. (Dec. 


were strong holds, that neither the temporizing of an unpurposed cabinet, 
the tergiversation of lawyers who had betrayed every side in succession, 
nor the loose coxcombry of a legislator of spurs and feathers, could shake. 
In the language of a British peer, whose words will pass into a proverb, 
and the proverb into the principle of safety to the empire, they felt that 
“they must not put their trust in princes, nor in prelates—in the depo- * 
sitories of power, nor even in the chosen guardians of religion ;” they 
must look to the defence of the national interests by the national vigour, 
and where every man had to lose by inactivity, by giddy confidence in the 
corrupt, or guilty fear of the overbearing, privileges without which life 
would not be worth preserving for an hour—they must call round them 
their fellow-possessors of freedom, and see how far their muster might 
fight the battle of the Christian faith and of the constitution of their 
country. 

It was on those principles, the noblest that can stir the heart of man, 
that the Brunswick Clubs were founded; and who shall say that it was 
not full time? The cry of civil war had gone through the land. It was 
trumpeted from the lips of every orator of the Popish Association. 
“ We are masters of the whole force of Ireland,” says one—“ we have 
all its military passes in our hands, all its provisions, all its munitions of 
war, all its people.” ‘We have America at our back,” says another ; 
“and, as we once invaded America to keep up the despotism of the 
British government, so shall America invade us to put it down.” “ Let 
England tremble,” says a leader; “let England, brutish as she is 
bloody, tremble—let the country of our tyrants be reduced to her ori- 
ginal insignificance, and feel that the chains of Irishmen may be con- 
verted into their swords.” “ Look to the new aspect of Europe,” says 
another authority among those infuriated fools: “with France, Austria, 
and Spain, popish ; with the steam-vessel bringing invasion to a matter 
of calculation, and the English shores within sudden reach of every 
power of indignant Europe ; are there no hopes for the renewed ener- 
gies of Irish independence ?>— Again, look to’ Ireland !—was there ever a 
country so organized? I tell the government that the whole land is 
bound by a great secret confederation—that every county, every town, 
every village, has its leaders, and its troops—.that the men of Ireland — 
are regimented, armed, disciplined, and eager for the first summons.” 

The government listened to this. The language was repeated in a 
thousand forms ; they listened still. The metaphoric treason was soon — 
embodied into more vigorous figure. Armies of popish ruffians by the — 
twenty thousand, breathing blood and rebellion, accoutred in the © 
established uniform of Irish insurrection, and manceeuvring with the. 
discipline of regular troops, started up at the summons, marched in the — 
face of day through the country, with the menaces and the power of con- — 
querors, and gave the most insolent and ostentatious defiance to the law. — 
Will it be believed that the government still looked on? Buta memo- — 
rable example soon showed what the nation can do, and must do, for 
themselves, if they will be saved. A tool of the Popish Association, one — 
of the most vulgar and base of its brawlers, big with the triumph of riot, — 
and secure in the supineness of authority, was sent—will the words be 
capable of credence?—“ To rouse the north.’ He proceeded in the true 
spirit of his mission, and moved forward, at the head of every disturber 
whom he could gather, to the amount, by his own statement, of from 


1828.] The Brunswick Clubs. 563 


fifty to a hundred thousand men. He did rouse the north. But it was 
tu a sense of their duty, as honest and brave men, who found that they 
must rely on no strength but that which God and the Constitution have 
given to every man to defend himself. The north were roused in arms 
—they knew the absurdity of waiting to claim tardy justice ; and, on 
the borders of their province, the men whose fathers had bought the 
Revolution of 1688 with their blood, stood, musquet in hand, to repel 
marauding and murder, under whatever pretext their cottages were to 
be sacked, and their lives sacrificed. 

Then the secret of this boasted heroism was found out ; the Catholic 
army of the faith shrank at once—the brawler at their head trusted for 
his safety to his heels—the popish parliament suddenly discovered that 
the time of glory was not fully ripe, and discountenanced the warrior ; 
and—last and most unexpected result—the dormant Cabinet opened it: 
eyes, discovered that mobs of legislators and apostles, gathered by the 
hundred thousand, from the raggedness, ferocity, and superstition of the 
Trish hovel, were not the safest settlers of the state, and actually ordered 
the seizure of the defeated chieftain. 

Yet even this lagging deference to common sense was due to the 
English Cabinet. The Irish were at the moment involved in an integ- 
change of gracious civilities with the hero, which might have compen- 
sated a less sensitive spirit for the withering of his laurels. The young 
secretary, a nobleman whom we lament to see plunged from his accom- 
plished pursuits’ into the mire of provincial office, was occupying his 
polished paragraphs in elucidating the law to the law-breaker ; and the 
old viceroy was smilingly conducting this model of native graces into the 
presence of his daughters and his wife, when the missive of the Privy 
Council came, like a thunderclap, to break up the whole commerce of 

_ republican and royalist courtesies. 

- __-But one act of resolution, wrung from the reluctant bosom of the 
Cabinet, was enough for one season ; and the blacker offenders are suf- 
fered still to insult the feelings of the country. The popish parliament 
is still furious, and labouring in its vocation of spreading fury through 
the land ; and the whole tribe of the scribblers and spouters are 
hourly pouring out libels on individual character, treasons against the 
connexion of the countries, and open incentives to rebellion, that, in 
less tender times, would have summoned indignant justice to raze the 
walls, burn the journals, and send orators, warriors, and scribblers, to 
_ New South Wales for the term of their forfeited lives. 

Under those circumstances of insolence in the aggressors and supine- 
ness in the defenders of the Constitution, the Protestant community has 
been compelled to take its defence into its own, hands—to assemble, 
and show its numbers—to speak, and declare its principles —and, by its 
firmness and vigour, shew that it is not to be extinguished at the 
mercy of either indolence or bigotry. England, in conformity to her 
character, took the lead, and the British Brunswick Clubs already com- 
rehend a vast multitude of the most honourable, informed, and patriotic 
‘men of the empire. The meeting on Penenden Heath, showed the 
actual superiority of the friends of the Constitution, in public weight 

d in personal respectability. Their numbers refuted, at a glance, the 
perpetual exaggerations of radicalism ; and the myriads that figure in the 
speeches and journals of ebehions cme down into a ludicrous 


564 The Brunswick Clubs. [ Due. 


minority. The popish advocates, on the occasion, exhibited as contemp- 

tible a display as their partisans, and fully justified the long laments of 

the revolutionary journals on their wretched inferiority. We. disdain 
alluding to personal defects ; but what demon of burlesque could have 
driven that most helpless of decrepit haranguers, Lord Darnley, to ex- : 
pose the debilities of his understanding on so conspicuous a stage. Was 

there to be found among the ranks of political and personal foolery, no : 
less palpable and notorious a subject of ridicule than this poorest of poor : 
vilifiers of the nobility of England? Had not his annual admiralty 
harangues—his burlesque ignorance of every subject, beyond the details 
of a workhouse, or the detection of a peacher—the perpetual yawn of 
the House of Lords, and the general fugitatior, whenever he rose, 
given sufficient warning against the mischief that must result to any 
cause, luckless enough to have a supporter in Lord Darnley ? 

Then came my Lord Camden. This noble lord has, by that 
timidity which nature sometimes gives to save men of feeble powers 
from utter exposure, been kept so long from the public eye, that he 
might have been forgotten. But his exposure was decreed, and he 
must exhibit himself to his contemptuous country, in the character of a 
popish orator. We pass over the arguments of his speech ; if they could 
have, by possibility, convinced himself, it would be only a profounder 
instance of the emptiness of this venerable personage. But let us come 
to his facts—one of them is, “ that he put down the Irish rebellion.” 
With all our preparation to hear extravagance from the lips of the babes 
and sucklings’ of popery, we were not prepared for this monstrous 
aggression upon our understandings. Undoubtedly the newspapers say 
all sorts of extraordinary things, without the slightest consideration for 
the character of the persons into whose mouths they put them. But 
Lord Camden has not yet started forward to contradict this bitterest of 
all satires upon himself. We have heard of no sudden and indignant 
denial of this attribution of a public service, whose very mention should 
have stirred up his spirit from its lees, and made him demand whether 
the inventor of thetale was not actuated by a merciless determination 
to drag into light the public impotence of the ci-devant lord-lieutenant 
of Ireland. Lord Camden should have recollected, that, whatever 
quality of his nature was adverse to the length of his memory, his 
failure, his recall, and the mission of the Marquess Cornwallis to Ireland, 
were events too near our time to afford the colouring that the fancy 
loves. 

The Marquess Cornwallis gave the country the full benefit of con- 
trast; he was a man of sense and spirit, who found rebellion raging, 
and put it down ; who found the friends of the constitution shaken and 
scattered, and summoned them to its defence ; who found Ireland a 
burthen to the empire, and who, by the mixture of vigour with mild- 
ness, of justice with mercy, struck a blow at Irish Jacobinism from 
which it never rose, till it found how ridiculous a British Government 
could again be made by a ridiculous representative. 

The third orator was Lord Teynham. They could not have chosen 
a more appropriate sharer of the honour—England could not have fur-_ 
nished his rival. This noble personage, though not long in possession 

of his peerage, is already well enough known to require no description 
of ours. He is a peculiarly delicate topic, and we refer for his character 
to the newspapers. 


1828. ] The Brunswick Clubs. $65 


But, far from blaming the three noble lords for volunteering in the 
cause of Rome, we rejoice that they have pushed themselves forward 
into the very breach of the time-honoured church of Mary of merciful 
memory. We congratulate the peerage on the line by which those 
heroic patriots have separated themselves from the dull defenders of 
the constitution, and only wish that they may long bring the vigour of 
their imbecility, the resources of their ignorance, and the integrity of 
their financial experience, to the grand alliance of popery. 

So much for the cause of Rome in England. But in Ireland the 
advocacy is of a-sterner nature. It stands forth in the real flesh and 
blood shape of subtle malignity and daring turbulence. It has a 
parliament, foaming out hourly insults against the Constitution, and a 
priesthood, as dark as ever were created by idolatry, as reckless as they can 
be made by sullen ambition, and armed with as fierce a hostility to 
Protestantism and Protestants as can be roused by hatred of a religion 
which puts their superstitions to shame, and by scorn of beings whom 
popery denounces as the victims of eternal fire. 

The first great impediment to peace is the constitution of the Romish 
clergy of Ireland. The whole system was invented with the double 
purpose of alienating the clergy from their native land and lawful king, 
and of transferring their allegiance, in body and soul, in things temporal 
and things spiritual, in the most common relations of life as keenly as in 
the most ostentatious observances of their religion, to a stranger, who, 

___ being an actual potentate, may be at open war with their king, is always 

_ deeply connected with the rival sovereignties of the continent, and is, 

__ by habit and principle, the unceasing and public enemy of the national 
belief. 

To this stranger the oath of allegiance of the popish bishop and priest 

___is couched in the most direct terms that can bind man. 

The popish bishop swears to obey the commands of the pope in all 
things. (No matter whether these commands enjoin him to dethrone 
his king.)—To keep all the secrets communicated to him by the pope. 
(No matter whether they are treason to his king.)—To disclose all 
secrets to the pope, that he thinks may be injurious to his authority, 
temporal or spiritual. (No matter whether the preservation of those 
secrets be of vital importance to his king, or entrusted to himself under 
the most solemn obligations of secrecy—whether received under the 
oath of a privy-councillor, or gathered at the confessional.)—To defend 
the territorial rights of the pope. (No matter whether that pope be at 
open war with his king.)—To exert all his efforts, personal and public, 
to enlarge the powers of the popedom. (No matter whether the imcrease 
of the papal power be in direct opposition to the interests, the policy, 
and the peace of his country, or this obedience may not be the first 
step to treason, the service of the national enemy, and the invasion or 
civil war of the land.) It must be remembered in all this, that if the 
pore be unlikely, from his distance and territorial weakness, to be the 
direct enemy of the British empire, he is the direct ally of France, 
Spain, Austria, the Italian States, and every other popish kingdom of 
Europe ; that he lives on their pensions, is created by their influence, 
_ and is ready to second, by the whole weight of his authority, and the 
means of his perpetual connexion with the priesthood, any project of 
aggression which may be in the mind of the enemies of British freedom 


566 The Brunswick Clubs. [Dec. 


and religion. That such a connexion with a foreign power should be 
suffered to exist under the British government, is one of those wonders 
of short-sightedness and contradiction which turn politics into contempt. 
Dearly has the country rued it already—more dearly still shall it rue it 
yet. A manly government would have at once appealed to the common 
sense of mankind, scorned to own the takers of such an oath among its 
subjects, and made the taking of it high treason by law. 

With the Romish clergy themselves the whole principle of their 
government is the most unqualified tyranny. The pope is by the 
constitution of popery bound by xo law whatever, except that of pushing 
the claims of his see to the utmost possible pitch. His will is the law. 
He has no assessor, no control, no code which he cannot abrogate at a 
word. His government is the most complete despotism ever known. 
He can impose whatever oath he pleases to-day—he can dissolve it 
to-morrow. ‘Treaty with him is absurd ; he can discover that it is not 
for the good of the church, at any time he chooses, and the treaty is 
ipso facto null and void. For the great standing eanon of the Romish 
system is, that all obligations injurious to the interests of the Romish 
see are, by their very nature, extinguished. If the pope at this hour 
were to sanction the abjuration of papal allegiance by his Irish clergy, 
he might abrogate his concession in the next. “But the impossibility of 
making the concession with any actual validity is so well known, that 
if the present pope, in dotage or fear, in corruption or conscience, were 
to make this concession, essential .as it is to the safety and prosperity of 
Ireland, no Irish priest could be found to avail himself of it, if any Irish 
government could be found mad enough to confide in it. For it would 
be a nonentity in the very act of passing, and the next pope would 
unquestionably dissolve the compact. The fact is, that by this oath a 
grasp is laid upon the British empire which no pope can relinquish ; a 
connexion is established by the Irish priesthood with Rome, and through 
it with foreign powers, which no Irish priest, in the prospect of prefer- 
ments, bishoprics and cardinals’ hats, will ever relinquish; and if the 
pope and the priests together were by miracle willing to abate the 
nuisance, it would be still secretly but irresistibly insisted on. by the 
popish sovereigns, who see in it at once the means of perplexing the 
British government, of keeping open a point of attack in case of war, 
and undoubtedly, to the minds of those bigotted and priest-ridden princes, 
an opportunity, not yet desperate, of bringing back to Romish idolatry 
the Protestant portion of a country, which lay once, like themselves, in 
the unbroken darkness of the most sullen and merciless superstition of 
the world. / 

The tyranny of the pope binds the prelate—the tyranny of the prelate 
binds the rector—the tyranny of the rector binds the curate. Of all 
those ranks not one man can indulge in a single act of human choice, 
but by permission of his supreme master. His meals, ‘his books, his 
hours, his habits, are all regulated for him by the ordinance of the 
church. He dares not eat, he dares not speak, he dares not connect 
himself with his country, serve his kind, or worship his God, but by the 
sullen and prescriptive mandate of a church, which propagates perpetual 
repugnance to lawful government, through the medium of perpetual 
submission to an Italian priest, and keeps its miserable adherents in the 
toils at once of slavery and rebellion. 


1828.) The Brunswick Clubs. 567 


Of those there are nearly two thousand parish priests officiating in 
Ireland. But the numbers and virulence of the Romish agency, are not 
to be estimated by even this formidable enumeration. The more hazar- 
dous class are the regulars, tribes of monks, still less connected with 
the public interests, if possible, than the parish priests, and still more 
bound to Rome. Those men, whom common wisdom in the govern- 
ment would have driven, root and branch, out of the country, plunder- 
ers and perverters as they are—the open agents of foreign influence, 
and the unquestionable missionaries of every doctrine that can yet grow 
into national disturbance—are already crowding into Ireland, purchasing 
lands, by what funds none but themselves can tell, usurping the educa- 
tion of the popish children, and, in all their proceedings, carrying on the 
most notorious, yet the most secret correspondence with Rome. 
Among those are the Jesuits, a race of criminals, whom the scorn and 
terror even of popish Europe expelled from every kingdom scarcely 
half a century since; to whom every breach of obligation, moral 
and divine, was familiar ; and who in Spain, Portugal, France, and 
Italy, were alike charged with poisoning and treason—the pollution of 
private morals, and the assassination of kings. Yet those we have, 
with a negligence, which better deserves the name of frenzy, suffered to 
establish themselves within a few miles of the Irish metropolis, there to 
stimulate the efforts of papistry, to direct the progress of insurrection in 
Catholic rents, harangues, and rabble musters, and to be in a condition 
to keep up, like their missionary brethren, a perpetual and most myste- 
rious correspondence with-the general of their order; who reigns over 
their movements with more than kingly despotism, and who, by the laws 
of his order, constantly resides in the capital of conspiracy, Rome. Of 
the tremendous materials that are stored in these successive deposita- 
ries of public explosion, who can doubt? Or who can more doubt that 
there is any alternative for the British government between weakly con- 
ceding all, and wisely and manfully declaring that concession has gone 
to its full extent ; and that the protestant laws and liberties must be no 
longer lowered into the toy of a faction, whom no concession would 
satisfy, short of absolute supremacy. But the British government can 
be strong only as the organ of the nation ; and it is to put the govern- 
ment in possession of this strength, that the Brunswick Clubs have been 
established. When the minister comes down to the House, he will now be 
at no loss for the public judgment. If he waver, he will have the saving 

knowledge that the eyes of the nation are upon him. If he be resolute, 
he will have the noble confidence, that the hearts and hands of the 
F bravest, wisest, and most honest population of the earth, are ready to 
sustain him in the cause of freedom and religion. 
; If we are to be told that those things are best left to parliamentary 
discussion, we must spurn the advice, let it come from what quarter 
it may. The man who referred the question of cutting his own 
throat to the wisdom of another, would be but a feeble emblem of 
the nation, that left it to a minister, and a House of Commons, to 
decide at their ease, whether it should be slave or free. On the minor 
questions of polity, we may defer to the experience of the Legislature. 
But where the most incurable evils may be the result—where the ques- 
tion is plain to every man—and where the God, that has put into the 
national heart the feeling of civil and religious freedom, has put into the 


568 The Brunswick Clubs. [Dec. 


national hand the power of defending them, we should deserve our fate, 
if we folded our arms, and lazily lingered for the shaping of the Cabinet 
opinion, whether we were or were not to be undone. It is the first and 
most imperious call of our hazarded rights and our insulted understand- 
ing, to assemble, and, by all legitimate means, pronounce the will of the 
British people. 

On Thursday, November the 3d, the leading Protestants of Ireland 
were convened in Dublin, for the purpose of forming a Brunswick Club. 
The assembly was immense—of the highest importance, in point of rank, 
property, and intelligence—and their speeches and resolutions were 
worthy of their character and their cause. The chair was taken by the 
Earl of Longford, a nobleman of large fortune, and among the most 
estimable and honourable of the peerage. 

The Earl of Mayo, pledging himself to the firm support of “ the Pro- 
testant Church, the Protestant King, and the glorious Constitution as it 
was settled in 1688,” proposed the First Resolution :— 

“That, associated as we are on the principle of defending the integrity of 
our Protestant constitution against the dangers to which its existence is at 
this day exposed, we conceive it our duty, in the present posture of affairs, 
to employ every means which a legal and constitutional exercise of our privi- 
lege, as British subjects, can place at our disposal, in order to effect its pre- 
servation.” ; 


The Earl of Enniskillen, declaring, “ that the time was arrived when 
it was absolutely incumbent on every Protestant in Ireland to oppose the 
machinations of the enemies of the Constitution, and to stop the progress 
of that disaffection which they were labouring to spread through the 
land,’ moved the Second Resolution :— 


“ That the constitution, which we thus willingly pledge ourselves to sup- 
port, was the effect of that great national Settlement of these countries, the 
Revolutiou of 1688, under which the system, designated by the law by the 
name of Popery, was completely excluded from the civil constitution of this 
country—not merely because it had been denounced as erroneous in matters 
of religion, but because it had been found, by experience, to involve a political 
system unsuited to the free spirit of the nation, and inconsistent with the inde- 
pendence of the crown.” a 

This resolution was seconded, and elucidated, in a long and able 
speech, by Mr. Moore, one of the representatives of Dublin. 

The Hon. General Taylor, pronouncing, that “ the Catholic Associa-~ 
tion had usurped the Government of Ireland, that unqualified emancipa- 
tion meant nothing less than the overthrow of the established Govern- 
ment, and that toleration was perfectly incompatible with the spirit of 
Popery,” moved, that— 

“No change whatever has taken place, that we can discover, to warrant a 
departure from the policy and principles which governed those who conducted 
the great constitutional settlement of the Revolution, investing the political 
power of the state in Protestants exclusively, as the best safeguard of the 
Protestant religion, of the Protestant establishment of those countries, of the 
Protestant succession to the crown, and of the civil and religious liberties of the 
empire. ¢ 

Viscount Castlemaine moved the Fourth Resolution :— 


“ That, under the Protestant constitution of the state, as completed and 
established by the Revolution of 1688, toleration unlimited has been extended 


1828.] The Brunswick Clubs. 569 


to all religious sects and persuasions—civil and religious liberty, in the highest 
possible degree, possessed and enjoyed equally by all classes of his Majesty’s 
subjects—and all the objects and purposes for which civil governments are 
instituted, adequately fulfilled and accomplished.” 


The Ear] of Rathdowne, exhorting his Protestant countrymen “to be 
temperate, firm, and, though last not least, to be wigilant,”—a warning 
which cannot be too deeply inculcated on both Ireland and England,— 
moved the Resolution— 


“ That, in the present crisis of danger to the Protestant constitution of the 
realm, and from the alarm that prevails among a great number of his Majesty’s 
Protestant subjects of Ireland, from the daring proceedings to which an unlaw- 
ful and unconstitutional assembly, calling itself the ‘ Catholic Association,’ has 
resorted, evidently with a view to the subversion of the constitution,—it is 
imperatively incumbent on all who revere the principles on which the Bruns- 
wick Club of Ireland is founded, to associate themselves for the purpose of 
promoting the true and independent expression of Protestant public opinion— 
to facilitate the progress of petitions to the legislature and the throne, and to 
exhibit their union of sentiment in support of our glorious constitution.” 


The remainder of the business consisted of arrangements for the pro- 
pagation of the principles of the Club, for the holding of other meetings 
through the country, and the presentation of petitions to the two Houses 
of Parliament, and an Address to his Majesty, explanatory of the objects 
of the Brunswick Associations—the successive resolutions for which were 
sustained by a number of able and manly speeches from Members of 
Parliament, and other personages of public distinction, all uniting in the 
sentiment, that the Irish Agitators required not freedom, but subversion ; 
that to give them the power of entering the Legislature, would be in the 
first place to throw the whole Irish Representation into their hands, in- 
asmuch as the priests would not suffer the rabble of the forty shilling 
voters to return a single Protestant Member ; and, in the next, would be 
the introduction of a hostile and unprincipled body of demagogues, 
bound together by their dependance on the priesthood, into the right of 
making the laws for’a Protestant State and Church, both of which they 
were, by their corrupt religion, and by their criminal politics, pledged to 
embarrass, and finally destroy. 


Thus far have the men of Ireland advanced in the great duty of rescu- 
ing themselves and their liberties from the hands of a furious faction. 
Well and wisely have they taken their defence into their own hands, 
waiting for no ministerial subtlety, or proud contempt of religious and 

- moral principle, to make its bargain of their privileges with the cunning 
or the cupidity of Popish rebellion. Let their respect for the ability of 
the British Cabinet be what it may, woe be to those who leave themselves 

to be trafficked for in a Concordat, or bandied from Pope to Populace by a 
Cabinet Vote. Let the Protestants of the Empire raise their voice, and 

hi the depositaries of power be treacherous, they will be forced to learn 

_ wisdom from fear ; if they are honest, they will welcome this irresistible 

auxiliary. But, in all events, let the Protestants raise their voice, and 
their triumph is secure. 


M.M. New Serics.—Vou. VI. No. 36. 41) 


570 J [Dec. 


THE VISION OF TEARS. 


Besipe her death-pale daughter’s bed 
The mourning mother stands ; 

The day is dead—slow night hath fled— 
Yet still the mother’s hands, 

All night and day, are lifted there 

In many a soul-taught, silent prayer ; 

And still the sigh of dumb despair, 
Love’s wild farewell—the natural knelf 
Of hopes and hours remembered well— 

Goes forth upon the sickened air, 
And makes the virgin-sufferer weep 
When most her lids seem sealed in sleep. 


A delicate and graceful girl, 
A grown-up child was she ; 
A clear and ever tranquil pearl 
In life’s all-heaving sea. 
Her spirit like a flower sprung uy, 
In love’s own light she grew ; 
Filling her heart, that fragrant cuys, 
With passions pure as dew ; 
But gifted with so high a sense, 
Formed in such utter innocence— 
So finely strung, so quickly wrung, 
A whisper from an infant’s tongue 
Affected her with thoughts intense : 
’T was rare to see, in one so young, 
That deep, divine intelligence. 


And now, when death is at her side, 

She grieveth less, in pain or pride, 

To feel the cloud of sickness fall 

Over her spirit, like a pall,— 

Than for the trust, the ties that must 

Dissolve upon her darkened dust. 

She weeps to see her mother weep, 
And sickens with her sighs ; 

She cannot keep her soul asleep, 
Though night be in her eyes. © 


At length the moaning mother yields ~ 
Her grief to slumber’s shadowy folds ; 
And lo! along its phantom-fields 
A vision she beholds. 
She sees a band of beauty glide, 
A troop of children fair, 
With snow-eclipsing brows, and hair 
In heaven’s first sunshine dyed. 
In each uplifted white hand shews 
A torch, whose flame is purer far 
Than ever fell from sun or star ; 
Tis Life, without its veil of woes ; 
The Mind that brightens with our birth, 
The innate heaven of human earth. 
If as a sign those torches shine, 
The light within us is divine. 


1828.] 


The Vision of Tears. 


The mother’s eye hath found 
Among those angel-children one, 
Her own—the death-dim child of sun. 
She comes with wild buds crowned, 
And every unnamed flower 
That courts the crystal shower. 
Along the golden ground, 
That seemeth not by footstep pressed, 
With many a seraph-sound ~ 
She moves more radiant than the rest, 
And side by side together glide 
The Mother and her Pride. 


But lo! the flame so bright before, 
The spirit-fire her fair child bore, 
It burneth in the sighing air 
A trembling token of despair. 
«* Ah! see, my lovely child, behold, 
Thy light, thy life, is quenched and-cold; 
The other torches bear no blot— 
But thine—it beameth not ! 
Some wind hath touched its holy flame, 
Some dew that from the desart came. 
Where nothing seems designed to fade, 
Why walk’st thou in the shade ?” 


Strange light is in the maiden’s eyes, 
Sad music in her tone. 

« Alas!” the virgin-victim cries, 
“ The shade by thee is thrown ! 

Thy tears, my mother, how they fall— 
In glee or grief the same ; 

Oh! weep them, mother, on my pall ; 
Those tears have dimmed my flame. 
Each still and solemn shower—each sigh 
Hath doomed my dazzling hope to die. 
These life-like fires that round thee shine 
Are sudden, sacred things ; but mine, 

Oh! mine was formed so sensitive, 
That whilst you weep it cannot live !” 


The mother hears the Voice, and wakes. 
The bright forms fade, the vision breaks ; 
But, like a bird, each breathing word 
Held music which her heart hath heard. 
She finds that oft our life depends 

Even on the tone, the glance of friends. 
She tends her child without a sigh ; 

She watches, and her eyes are dry, 


4D 2 


oe 


571 


_ way2-'] " pre. 


VILLAGE SKETCHES; No... XIE. 
Hannan Binet. 


Tur Shaw, leading to Hannah Bint’s habitation, is, as I perhaps have 
said before—(for really it is too much to expect one to remember one’s 
own nonsense to the month’s end)—the Shaw is a very pretty mixture of 
wood and coppice ; that is to say, a track of thirty or forty acres covered 
with fine growing timber—ash, and oak, and elm—very regularly 
planted ; and interspersed here and_ there with large patches of under- 
wood, hazel, maple, birch, holly, and hawthorn, woven into almost impe- 
netrable thickets by long wreaths of the bramble, the briary, and the 
briar-rose, or by the pliant and twisting garlands of the wild honey- 
suckle. In other parts, the Shaw is quite clear of its basky undergrowth, 
and clothed only with large beds of feathery fern, or carpets of flowers, 
primroses, orchises, cowslips, ground-ivy, crane’s-bill, cotton-grass, 
solomon’s seal, and forget-me-not, crowded together witha profusion and 
brilliancy of colour, such as I have rarely seen equalled even in a gar- 
den. Here the wild hyacinth really enamels the ground with its fresh 
and lovely purple ; there, 


* On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad, 
Dwells the wood-sorrel, with its bright thin leaves 
Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root 
Creeping like beaded coral ; whilst around 
Flourish the copse’s pride, anemones, 

With rays like golden studs on ivory laid 

Most delicate ; but touched with purple clouds, 
Fit crown for April’s fair but changeful brow.” 


The variety is much greater than I have enumerated ; for the ground is 
so unequal, now swelling in gentle ascents, now dimpling into dells and 
hollows, and the soil so different in different parts, that the sylvan Flora 
is unusually extensive and complete. 

The season is, however, now too late for this floweriness: and, except 
the tufted woodbines, which have continued in bloom during the whole 
of this lovely autumn, and some lingering garlands of the purple wild- 
veitch, wreathing round the thickets, and uniting with the ruddy leaves 
of the bramble, and the pale jestoons of the briary, there is little to call 
one’s attention from the grander beauties of the trees—the sycamore, its 
broad leaves already spotted—the oak, heavy with acorns—and the deli- 
cate shining rind of the weeping birch, “ the lady of the woods,” thrown 
out in strong relief from a back-ground of holly and hawthorn, each 
studded with coral berries, and backed with old beeches, beginning to 
assume the rich, tawny hue, which makes them perhaps the most 
picturesque of autumnal trees, as the transparent freshness of their young 
foliage is undoubtedly the choicest ornament of the forest in spring. 

A sudden turn round one of these magnificent beeches brings us to 
the boundary of the Shaw, and leaning upon a rude gate, we look over 
an open space of about ten acres of ground, still more varied and 
broken than that which we have passed, and surrounded on all sides by 
thick woodland. As a piece of colour, nothing can be well finer. The ruddy 
glow of the heath-flower, contrasting, on the one hand, with the golden- 4 
blossomed furze—on the other, with a patch of buck-wheat, of which the 


1828. | Hannah Bint. 573 


bloom is not past, although the grain be ripening, the beautiful buck- 
wheat, of which the transparent leaves and stalks are so brightly tinged 
with vermilion, while the delicate pink-white of the flower, a paler persi- 
caria, has a feathery fall, at once so rich and so graceful, and a fresh and 
reviving odour, like that of beech trees in the dew of a May evening. The 
bank that surmounts this attempt at cultivation is crowned with the 
late foxglove and the stately mullein ; the pasture of which so great a 
part of the waste consists, looks as green as an emerald ; a clear pond, 
with the bright sky reflected in it, lets ight into the picture ; the white 
cottage of the keeper peeps from the opposite coppice ; and the vine- 
covered dwelling of Hannah Bint rises from amidst the pretty garden, 
which lies bathed in the sunshine around it. 

The living and moving accessories are all in keeping with the cheer- 
fulness and repose of the landscape. Hannah’s cow grazing quietly 
beside the keeper’s pony ; a brace of fat pointer puppies holding ami- 
cable intercourse with a litter of young pigs; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, 
and chickens scattered over the yard; Hannah herself sallying forth 
from the cottage-door, with her milk-bucket in her hand, and her little 
brother following with the milking stool. 

My friend, Hannah Bint, is by no means an ordinary person. Her 
father, Jack Bint, (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of 
being called John, indeed, in our parts, he was commonly known by the 
cognomen of London Jack,) was a drover of high repute in his profes- 
sion. No man, between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield, was thought 
to conduct a flock of sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of 
lanes and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, and Jack 
Bint’s famous dog, Watch; for Watch’s rough, honest face, black, with 
a little white about the muzzle, and one white ear, was as well known at 
fairs and markets, as his master’s equally honest and weather-beaten 
visage. Lucky was the dealer that could secure their services; Watch 
being renowned for keeping a flock together, better than any shepherd’s 
dog on the road—Jack, for delivering them more punctually, and in 
better condition. No man had amore thorough knowledge of the proper 
night stations, where good feed might be procured for his charge, and 
good liquor for Watch and himself ; Watch, like other sheep dogs, being 
accustomed to live chiefly on bread and beer. His master, although not 
averse to a pot of good double X, preferred gin ; and they who plod 
slowly along, through wet and weary ways, in frost and in fog, have 
undoubtedly a stronger temptation to indulge in that cordial and reviv- 
ing stimulus, than we water-drinkers, sitting in warm and comfortable 
rooms, can readily imagine. For certain, our drover could never resist 
the gentle seduction of the gin-bottle, and being of a free, merry, jovial 
temperament, one of those persons commonly called good fellows, who 
like to see others happy in the same way with themselves, he was apt 
to circulate it at his own expense, to the great improvement of his popu- 
larity, and the great detriment of his finances. 

All this did vastly well whilst his earnings continued proportionate to 
his spendings, and the little family at home were comfortably supported 
by his industry : but when a rheumatic fever came on, one hard winter, 
and finally settled in his limbs, reducing the most active and hardy man in 
the parish tothe state of a confirmed cripple, then his reckless improvidence 
_ stared him in the face ; and poor Jack, a thoughtless, but kind creature, 
and a most affectionate father, looked at his three motherless children 
with the acute misery of a parent, who has brought those whom he 


574 Village Sketches : [ Dec. 


loves best in the world, to abject destitution. He found help, where he 
probably least expected it, in the sense and spirit of his young daughter, 
a girl of twelve years old. 

Hannah was the eldest of the family, and had, ever since her mother’s 
death, which event had occurred two or three years before, been accus- 
tomed to take the direction of their domestic concerns, to manage her 
two brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep house during 
the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, 
of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of accepting 
parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongst the pea- 
santry ; but which forms the surest safe-guard to the sturdy inde- 
pendence of the English character. Qur little damsel possessed this 
quality in perfection ; and when her father talked of giving up their 
comfortable cottage, and removing to the workhouse, whilst she and her 
brothers must go to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, and, with- 
out disturbing the sick man by any participation of her hopes and fears, 
proceeded, after settling their trifling affairs, to act at once on her own 
plans and designs. 

Careless of the future as the poor drover had seemed, he had yet kept 
clear of debt, and by subscribing constantly to a benefit club, had secured 
a pittance that might at least assist in supporting him during the long 
years of sickness and _ helplessness to which he was doomed to look for- 
ward. This his daughter knew. She knew, also, that the employer in 
whose service his health had suffered so severely, was a rich and liberal 
cattle-dealer in the neighbourhood, who would willingly aid an old and 
faithful servant, and had, indeed, come forward with offers of money. 
To assistance from such a quarter Hannah no objection. Farmer Oakley 
and the parish were quite distinct things. Of him, accordingly, she 
asked, not money, but something much more in his own way—“ a cow ! 
any cow! old or lame, or what not, so that it were a cow! she would be 
bound to keep it well; if she did not, he might take it back again. She 
even hoped. to pay for it by and by, by instalments, but that she would 
not promise!” and partly amused, partly interested by the child’s earn- 
estness, the wealthy yeoman gave her, not as a purchase, but as a pre- 
sent, a very fine young Alderney. She then went to the lord of the 
manor, and, with equal knowledge of character, begged his permission 
to keep her cow in the Shaw common. “ Farmer Oakley had given 
her a fine Alderney, and she would be bound to pay the rent, and keep 
her father off the parish, if he would only let it graze on the waste ;” 
and he, too, half from real good nature—half, not to be outdone in libe- 
rality by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but 
reduced the rent so much, that the produce of the vine seldom fails to 
satisfy their kind landlord. 

_ Now, Hannah shewed great tact in setting up as a dairy-woman. She 
could not have chosen an occupation more completely unoccupied, or 
more loudly called for. One of the most provoking of the petty diffi- 
culties which beset people with a small establishment, in this neighbour- 
hood, is the trouble, almost the impossibility, of procuring the pastoral 
Juxuries of milk, eggs, and butter, which rank, unfortunately, amongst 
the indispensable necessaries of housekeeping. To your thorough-bred 
Londoner, who, whilst grumbling over his own breakfast, is apt to fancy 
that thick cream, and fresh butter, and new-laid eggs, grow, so to say, 
in the country—form an actual part of its natural produce—it may be 


1828. ] Hannah Bint. 675 


some comfort to learn, that in this great grazing district, however the 
calves and the farmers may be the better for cows, nobody else is, that 
farmer’s wives have ceased to keep poultry, and that we unlucky 
villagers sit down often to our first meal in a state of destitution, which 
may well make him content with his thin milk, and his Cambridge 
butter, when compared to our imputed pastoralities. 

Hannah’s Alderney restored us to one rural privilege. Never was so 
cleanly a little milk-maid. She changed away some of the cottage 
finery, which, in his prosperous days, poor Jack had pleased himself with 
bringing home ; the China tea-service, the gilded mugs, and the painted 
‘waiters, for the more useful utensils of the dairy, and speedily esta- 
blished a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, and 
poultry—for poultry they had always kept. 

Her domestic management prospered equally. Her father, who re- 
tained the perfect use of his hands, began a manufacture of mats and 
baskets, which he constructed with great nicety and adroitness ; the 
eldest boy, a sharp and clever lad, cut for him his rushes and oziers ; 
erected, under his sister’s directions, a shed for the cow, and enlarged 
and cultivated the garden (always with the good leave of her kind 
patron, the lord of the manor) until it became so ample, that the pro- 
duce not only kept the pig, and half-kept the family, but afforded ano- 
ther branch of merchandize to the indefatigable directress of the esta- 
blishment. For the younger boy, less quick and active, Hannah 
contrived to obtain an admission to the charity-school, where he made 
great progress—retaining him at home, however, in the haymaking, 
reaping, and leasing season, or whenever his services could be made 
available, to the great annoyance of the schoolmaster, whose favourite he 
is, and who piques himself so much on George's scholarship (your heavy 
sluggish boy at country work often turns out clever at his book), that it 
-is the general opinion of the village, that this much-vaunted pupil will, 
in process of time, be promoted to the post of assistant, and may, pos- 

‘sibly, in course of years, rise to the dignity of a parish pedagogue in his 
own person ; so that his sister, although still making him useful at odd 
‘times, now considers George as pretty well off her hands, whilst his 
elder brother, Tom, could take an under-gardener’s place directly, if he 
were not too important at home to be spared even for a day. 

In short, during the five years that she has ruled at the Shaw cottage, 

‘the world has gone well with Hannah Bint. Her cow, her calves, her 
pigs, her bees, her poultry, have each, in their several ways, thriven and 
prospered. She has even brought Watch to like buttermilk, as well as 
strong beer, and has nearly persuaded her father (to whose wants and 

. wishes she is most anxiously attentive) to accept of milk as a substitute 
; for gin. Not but Hannah hath had her enemies as well as her betters. 
Why should she not? The old woman at the lodge, who always piqued 
herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways, foretold, from the 
first, that she would come to no good, and could not forgive her for falsify- 
ing her prediction ; and Betty Barnes, the flattering widow of a tippling 
farmer, who rented a field, and set up a cow herself, and was universally 
discarded for insufferable dirt, said all that the wit of an envious woman 
could devise against Hannah and her Alderney ; nay, even Ned Miles, 
the keeper, her next neighbour, who had, whilom held entire sway 
over the Shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as much as so 


576 Village Sketches. (Dec. 


good-natured and genial a person could grumble, when he found a little 
girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar 
cocks and hens hovering around the buck wheat destined to feed his 
noble pheasants. Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragon 
of keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant looking, with his merry eye, 
and his knowing smile, striding gaily along, in his green coat, and his 
gold laced hat, with his noble Newfoundland dog, ( a retriever is the 
sporting word), and his beautiful spaniel flirt at his heels, could con- 
ceive how askew he looked, when he first found Hannah and Watch : 
holding equal reign over his old territory, the Shaw common. : 
Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are passing away. 
The old woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature ; and Betty Barnes, 
having herself taken to tippling, has lost the few friends she once 
possessed, and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die, too !— 
and the keeper ?—why, he is not dead, or like to die ; but the change 
that has taken place there is the most astonishing of all-—except, per- 
haps, the change in Hannah herself. 
Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were 
less pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in 
face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sun-burnt hair, 
and eyes, whose very brightness had in them something startling, over- 
informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age. At twelve years old she 
had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are : 
mended. Her complexion has cleared: her countenance, her figure, has 
shot up into height and lightness, and a sort of rustic grace ; her bright, 
acute eye is softened and sweetened by the womanly wish to please ; 
her hair is trimmed, and curled, and brushed, with exquisite neatness ; 
-and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, 
the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest 
degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. 
Never was such a transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, 
and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There he stands, the 
rogue, close at her side (for he hath joined her whilst we have been 
telling her little story, and the milking is over!)—there he stands—hold- . 
ing her milk pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with the other ; whilst 
she is returning the compliment, by patting Neptune’s magnificent head. 
There they stand, as much like lovers as may be ; he smiling, and she 
blushing—he never looking so handsome, nor she so pretty, in all their 
lives. There they stand, in blessed forgetfulness of all except each other; 
as happy a couple as ever trod the earth. There they stand, and one 
would not disturb them for all the milk and butter in Christendom. 
I should not wonder if they were fixing the wedding day. 


M. 


—— 


‘ 
: 


1828.] sbR7- 0 J 
ECHARD'S CONTEMPT OF CLERGY. 


Ecuarp is one of that strange school of prose writers who flourished 
in the interval between the decadence of the stately style of the writers 
of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and the establishment, in Queen Anne’s 
reign, of that style of writing which, with httle modification, has pre- 
vailed ever since. The prose writers of the days of the elder queen 
delighted in long, winding, involved sentences, dovetailed with innu- 
merable parentheses, and spun through whole pages without much - 
regard to the niceties of punctuation. They rejoiced also in abundant 
quotations, and strewed their margins thickly with references. Their 
writings have much more a foreign than an English air, and very often 
sound as if the author had thought in Latin. In the midst of this, how- 
ever, we very often meet with a single sentence of exquisitemelody, though, 
in general, this occurs more in the writings of the immediate successors 
of the Elizabethan writers than in her own time. Spenser furnishes some 
such occasionally in his Dialogue upon Ireland. His description of the wild 
flowers of Irish poesy, for instance, is a most harmonious passage. But 
we seldom meet them in Sir Philip Sidney ; and we believe if the most 
noisy admirers of the Arcadia of that mirror of chivalry were to confess 
the truth, they would have to avow that they often were inclined to nod 
over the tedious prosing of his interminable periods. 

In the divines of the days of King James and King Charles I.— 
particularly in Jeremy Taylor—such passages abound ; and even Baxter 
furnishes them occasionally. But still the texture of the style was 
coloured by their continual studies in Latin. Most, indeed, of the great 
prose writers of the time were accustomed to write habitually in that 
language. Milton’s English sentences are peculiarly cast in that form, 
and their ruggedness forms a strange contrast to the “ linked sweetness 
long drawn out,” of his yersification. The unhappy nature of the sub- 
jects on which he chose to write—the squabbling polemics and politics of 
the day—afforded but little scope for fine writing ; but the genius of the 
author of Paradise Lost occasionally glances forth even in these ungenial 
subjects. The sentence in which he compares England to an eagle clear- 
ing his long-abused sight—that in which he gives an inkling of his future 
poetic labours—and some others, are now familiar to the general reader. 
A hundred years after they were written, they were so completely 
unknown, that Warburton, in his controversy with Lowth, thought him- 
self quite secure in taking one of them verbatim, or at least with such 
alterations only as adapted it to the purpose on which he was engaged ; 
and Lowth, a professed English scholar, actually selected it in his answer, 
asa point of attack, for its bombastic fustian! Even now, with the 
exception of these purpurei panni, Milton’s prose works are unknown to 
the literary world ; and it is felt a much greater task to read his English 
than his Latin. Without deserving the very high praise of classicality 
which has been poured upon them, by persous, however, not very much 
distinguished as classical scholars, the two defences of the English people 
flow in a smooth, and sometimes even a Ciceronian style. The Doctrine 
and Discipline of Divorce, the Defence of Smectymnuus, &c. are as 
harsh and unmusical as “ a brazen canstick turned, or a dry wheel 
grating upon an axletree.” 

The circumstances of the time filled the serious writers on the par- 
liamentarian side with Hebraisms and Grecisms; and a display of such 
M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.36. 4 


578 Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. [ Dec. 


learning was the fashion among the sworn enemies of king and bishop. 
The return of Charles II. altered the mode. The imitation of the 
“ Prick-Eared Roundheads” was out of the question: on the contrary, 
it was a sufficient condemnation to any thing that it had been used by 
them. The residence of the mimic court so long on the Continent had 
made French fashionable ; and, unquestionably, the reign of Louis XIV. 
afforded admirable models of every kind of writing, except the epic and 
the highest tragic. But, unfortunately, all imitators are a servum 
pecus ; and our writers did not improve by the adoption of the French 
style. From their plays they borrowed only the rhyme and rhodomon- 
tade, for which they did not seruple to sacrifice Shakspeare. The comedies 
of Moliére, in the hands of his English imitators or translators, lost all 
their wit ; and if they retained their humour, they retained it in company 
with buffoonery exaggerated, and obscenity added. In this latter par- 
ticular, our English wits are particularly blameable. They had no model 
for their grossness in France, where, though society was corrupt and 
depraved, it assumed the mantle of decency. But, in England, a desire 
to shew as much detestation of the sanctimoniousness of the Praise-God- 
Barebones people as possible, led at once to the open expression of the 
utmost indecencies ; and Charles had neither the taste or the decorum to 
repress it. On the contrary, indeed, we may see, by Grammont and 
other reverend authorities, that he turned his court into grossness. It 
would be impossible, we think, to equal, even in the most licentious 
writers of antiquity, the mass of abomination which Jeremy Collier raked 
together, when he turned his vigorous and unsparing hand against the 
writers for the stage. 

But as we are not now considering the morality, but the style of the 
' writers of the reigns of Charles II. and James II.—a style which lingered 
even into the reign of George II.—we may pass this part of the subject. 
A general contempt for the elder writers seized upon all the persons of 
quality in those days; and even Dryden himself was so far infected 
with the spirit of the times, that he deemed it necessary to apologize for 
Shakspeare’s Tempest, which he assured his readers contained much fine 
poetry, though not quite polished enough, until he had taken it in hand, 
for the age. “ As if,” says Schlegel, indignantly—< as if the age of 
Charles II. was superior to that of Elizabeth!” ‘Their immediate pre- 
decessors they treated as dull fops (a favourite phrase of theirs), and 
determined that their own writings should be distinguished by a free, 
airy, and jaunty manner. This was their peculiar boast—that they wrote 
with ease ; and it was not immediately found out that easy writing was 
hard reading. The French, they saw, wrote as they spoke—the admira- 
ble fitness of their language for conversation putting no great difference 
between their written and their colloquial manner ; and, accordingly, in 
England, their followers determined on doing the same. Our language 
was never, at any period, suited for this—but least of all at the very 
time when the attempt was made. The conversation of the very highest 
circles of the court itself was of the lowest description—slang, cant, sell- 
ing bargains, double entendre, smut—every vice of vulgarity, in short, 
infected it. He who excelled most in these accomplishments was the 
wittiest fellow, the most sparkish man about town. Tom D’Urfey’s 
songs were the fashion ; and Tom dedicates his “ Pills to purge Melan- 
choly”—a collection which contains (among much curious and humorous. 
matter, we admit) songs of the most gross indecency, and the most dis- 


1828.] Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. 579 


gusting filth—to one of our queens ; with a boast, in his preface, that he 
had been a favourite of all the preceding monarchs of England : and he 
spoke the truth. Dryden informs us that he has often seen King Charles 
the Second leaning on Tom’s shoulders, to balance his unsteady feet, 
while Tom held a music-book to the king, who, in that posture, sang 
the bass to the poet’s treble, in presence of the court. 

The prose-writers took care that their style should be as familiar as that 
of the poet. The excess of their slipslop is scarcely credible to any one who 
has not examined them with some attention. Their sentences continually 
remind us of the low drolling of hackney-coachmen, or the eloquence of Bil- 
lingsgate. They appear actually to revel in nasty allusions, and are never 
deterred from hunting out a dirty simile to its minutest particulars, or 
from expatiating on a dirty story in its fullest details, from any squeam- 
ishness about a word. Swift, who was born in their time, borrowed this 
particular from them ; and he is the last of our writers to whom the 
reproach applies. It is from him rather than from Addison that we 
should date our present prose style—though occasionally, and particu- 
larly in his earliest composition, the Tale of a Tub, some traces of the 
school of Charles are visible. 

Sir Roger L’Estrange was perhaps the person who carried this mode 
of writing to its highest—except, perhaps, Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his 
translation of Rabelais. Urquhart had some apology in the original on 
which he was employed, though by no means so much as is imagined 
by those who have not examined Rabelais himself. Lord Woodhouselee 
would not have pronounced Sir Thomas’s translation as absolutely per- 
fect, if he had consulted the original with any care. In the boisterous 
and roaring parts of that strange romance, Sir Thomas is certainly at 
home : but he misses altogether the grave tone of Rabelais, and is quite at a 
loss when he attempts to convey the frequent touches of severe and stern 
irony, which abound amid bursts of buffoon and tumultuous merriment. 
But, certainly, except Sir Thomas, no other person can claim equal 
honour in this particular with his brother knight, Sir Roger. In his 
translation of A:sop, it is quite amusing to hear the language of the 
coffee-houses and taverns of the Strand or Fleet-street, the “ bargain- 
selling” of the green-rooms, or the cogging language of the Mint or 
Southwark, then the refuge of runaway-debtors, and other persons out 
of sorts with fortune—put into the mouth of the wild animals roaming in 
the forest. The lions, wolves, foxes, and sheep of Sir Roger were all 
qualified, by wit and manners, to sit as critics in the first rows of the pit 
on the night of a new piece, and to give their opinions upon it with all 
the modish grace of a town gallant over a flask of burnt claret at the 
Devil Tavern. In serious writers the same defects were visible. Locke’s 
style is vulgar and slovenly. Burnet is filled with low colloquialisms, 
which have rendered him the butt of Swift. The same might indeed 
be said of all writers of the time: but we intend to speak only of 
Echard. 

Laurence Echard was born in Suffolk, in 1636, and admitted of Catha- 
rine Hall, Cambridge, in 1655. He became, in process of time, Master 
of that Hall, and Vice-Chancellor of the University. He died in 1697, 
having spent a peaceful life in literary leisure. His principal works must 
have cost him little trouble, being merely thrown off to amuse himself. 
He writes precisely in the style which we have been describing, and the 
subjects on which he occupied his pen were those in which it is most 

4E2 


580 Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. (Dec. 


successful. Well adapted for vulgar comedy, it reads as if we listened 
to a professional droll ; and Echard’s principal work, “On the Grounds 
and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy,” is scarcely any thing else 
but a grave banter upon the style of education, and the manner of preach- 
ing prevalent among some divines of his time. The conception is 
Lucian’s, and is, ina great measure, founded upon the celebrated trea~ 
tise on the art of writing history by the wit of Samosata. Echard 
avows his strong predilection for the “ prodigious Lucian,” and also for 
the great “Don of Mancha,” and had certainly studied the latter in the 
then popular translation of Don Quixote. 

The book is hardly known now to general readers ; but it made no 
small noise in its day. Echard, who wrote anonymously, in his preface dis- 
claimed being a clergyman—we suppose suspecting that his performance 
would not be generally palatable among his clerical brethren. The pre- 
face itself is only remarkable for the following passage :—“I am not,” 
says he, “ I’ll assure you, any of those occasional writers, that, missing 
preferment in the University, presently write you their new way of edu- 
cation ; or, being a little tormented with an ill-chosen wife, set forth 
the doctrine of divorce to be truly evangelical.” This alludes to Milton ; 
and so slightingly did his contemporaries speak of our great poet! And 
the book which contains this sneer was published in 1670—three years 
after the publication of Paradise Lost! We do not remember that any 
of the biographers or critics of Milton have taken notice of the passage. 

Echard enters into his subject at once, and takes it for granted, without 
scruple, that the contempt entertained for the clergy was a thing so noto- 
rious that it needed ne proof. His business was only how to account 
for the existence of this universally-admitted fact ; and he begins with 
the beginning. He seeks its first cause in the education which they 
received—finding the greatest fault with the system of confining youth 
to a Latin and Greek education. Since Echard’s time, this most verata 
questio has been examined over and over, and it would be useless 
to repeat his arguments here. He is for giving them a more practical 
education :-— 


“Or suppose, they were taught (as they might much easier be than what 
is commonly offered to them) the principles of Arithmetick, Geometry, and 
such alluring parts of learning: as these things undoubtedly would be much 
more useful, so much more delightful to them, than to be tormented with a 
tedious story how Phaeton broke his neck; or how many nuts and apples 
Tytirus had for his supper. For most certainly youths, if handsomly dealt 
with, are much inclinable to Emulation, and to a very useful system of Glory ; 
and more especially if it be the reward of Knowledge ; and therefore if such 
things were carefully and discreetly propounded to them, wherein they might 
not only earnestly contend amongst themselves, but might also see how far 
they outskill the rest of the world ; a Lad hereby would think himself high 
and mighty, and would certainly take great delight in contemning the next 
unlearned Mortal he meets withal. But if instead hereof, you diet him with 
nothing but Rules and Exceptions; with tiresome repetitions of Amo’s and 
turlw’s; setting a day also apart to recite verbatim all the burdensome Task of 
the foregoing week (which I am confident is usually as dreadful as an old 
Parliament Fast) we must needs believe that such a one, thus managed, will 
scarce think to prove immortal by such performances and accomplishments 
as these. You know very well, Si7, that Lads in the general, have but a kind 
of ugly and odd conception of Learning ; and look upon it as such a starving 
thing, and unnecessary perfection (especially as it is usually dispens’d out 


unto them) that Nine-pins and Span-counter are judged much more heavenly ~ 


oe 


1828.] Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. 581 


Employments: and therefore what pleasure, do we think, can such a one 
take, in being bound to get against breakfast two or three hundred Rumblers 
out of Homey, in commendation of Achilles’s Toes, or the Grecian’s Boots? 
Or to have measured out unto him, very early in the morning, fifteen or twenty 
well laid on lashes, for letting a Syllable slip too soon, or hanging too long on 
upon it ; Doubtless, instant execution upon such grand Miscarriages as these, 
will eternally engage him to a most admirable opinion of the Muses.” 


This is a fair specimen of his style. He appears to have had a great 
dislike for Homer, which was a common feeling, indeed, among all the 
class of writers of which he was one. In his defence of his book—for 
he was immediately assailed—he recurs to this passage, which had been 
attacked by one of his antagonists: — 


« And as for the business of Homer, if the Answerer will promise me not be 
angry, I will for once chuse rather to be of My Lord Bacon's Opinion than his, 
who tells us in his advancement of Learning, ‘ That he can without any diffi- 
culty pronounce, that the Fables of Homer (notwithstanding he has been made 
a kind of Scripture by the later Schools of the Grecians) had no such inward- 
ness in his own meaning;’ but, however, as the Answerer well observes, there 
is somewhat else in Homer besides Achilles’ toes. But I profess, Sir, my 
mind did so run upon the so often commended Movcables of the Captain 
(xéde¢ wuts) that J might easily forget the Buckle-garters. But is there nothing 
else in that ancient and venerable Poet, but stories of Footmanship, and such 
like low accomplishment? Was it not he that laid down the first Elements of 
Physic and Chirurgery ; and gave the first glimpses for scraping of Lint, and 
spreading Plaisters upon Leather? Is he to be undervalued, that is not only the 
most Christian, but most Protestant of Poets ; in whose works you may not 
only find all practical Divinity, as fast as in the little book of piety itself; but 
most cases of Conscience warily resolved, and knotty Controversies acutely 
decided? Is he to be called a Rumbler, who glides as smooth as a star, or a 
fired Rocket of Tow ?—who was not like common confined mortals, born at 
one dull place ; but at no less than seven the most eminent Cities of the East ? 
Is he, with whose works Alexander alone could take rest, whereas the whole 
world besides could not content him ?” 


After some drolling about the commentators discovering all science in 
Homer, and some sneers by a side-wind at Virgil, he proceeds :— 


“ But withal, Six, I must beg leave to put in a caution or two, as to what 
was said a little before concerning Homer; and then not a word more of 
Homey all this year. And first of all I have made some little enquiry, con- 
cerning Alexander laying him under his pillow ; and I find that the Learned 
differ ; some placing him only upon a stool by the bed-side, and others over 
his Head upon a little Ridge; the ancient manuscripts not fully agreeing 
about ‘m0 and vz; and as for Rablais, 1 shall not undertake for his being of 
the reformed Religion ; but as to Divine Mysteries, | think that Homer and He 
may equally pretend; and though Comparisons are odious, yet I am some- 
what forward to acknowledge that the mighty Spirit of Garagantua, declining 
the vulgar way of coming into the World, and cunningly crawling up the 
Hollow vein, and so making his escape under his Mother’s Ear, is not much 
inferior either for Honour or Strangeness, to that seven-city Birth of Homer. 
I meet indeed sometimes with Idle, Extravagant People, that are so profane 


“as to compare his Poems to Chivy Chace, but such I always check, shewing 


them plainly, that when the Poet has a mind to recreate his Readers to pur- 
pose, then by the elegant help of his little tickling s:$, and &S, he could do 
it so effectually, that nothing ever came more delightful from the Town of 
Athens. What more Theorbo-like than to 9 jPel érevra Marne avdpwvre Sewvere, 
But indeed when the broad sides of Polwphloisboios, the Hippodamios, and the — 
Poluscarthmoios, are dreadfully discharged towards the upper end of the school, 


582 Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. [Dxc. 


and the noise thereof come grumbling down like a Cart over a Wooden 
Bridge, I will not say but that a small lad or so, of a tender constitution, 
may chance tocreep underneath the Table. But to make an end, Sir, of this; 
questionless there is a very peculiar and secret worth in several authors ; and _ 
if you want a bit of ancient authority, to plant classically upon the Title-page 
of your Book, there is none that is more fit, or has been more serviceable, 
than the worthy Poet before mentioned. Nay, so serviceable has he been in 
this kind, that I durst almost venture to say, that if he should by any misfor- 
tune be afterwards utterly lost, he might be so far picked up by Pieces out of 
Title Pages, that there should scarce be wanting one “roy & amopxerGorev0¢.”” 


Ina similar vein he disparages the reading usual at colleges, and recom- 
mends that good English books should be substituted for the poets of 
Greece and Rome. We are sorry that he has not given a list of those 
whom he would have recommended: Milton, certainly, would not have 
been one. The want of reading English books, he contends, prevents 
youth from acquiring a good English style :— 


« It is very curious to observe, what delicate Letters your Young Students 
write after they have got a little Smack of University Learning! In what 
Elaborate Heights and Tossing Nonsense will they greet a down right English 
Father, or a Country Friend! Ifthere be a plain Word in it, and such is 
used at home, this tastes not, say they, of Education amongst Philosophers, 
and it is counted damnable Duncery and want of Phansie: because, Your 
Loving Friend, or Humble Servant, is a common Phrase in Country Letters ; 
therefore the Young Lpistler is Yours to the Antipodes, or at least to the 
Centre of the Earth ; and because ordinary folks Love and Respect you, there- 
fore you are to him the Pole Star, a Jacob’s Staff, a Load-Stone, and a Damask 
Rose. 

« And the Misery of it is, this pernicious accustomed way of Expression, 
does not only oft times go along with them to their Benefice, but accom- 
panies them to their very grave; and for the most part an Ordinary Cheese- 
monger, or Plumb-seller, that scarce ever heard of an university, shall write 
much better sense, and more to the purpose than these young Philosophers, 
who injudiciously hunting only for great Words, make. themselves learnedly 
ridiculous.” 


Beyond question, if they followed the dialect in which this censure 
upon them is written, they could not be accused of aiming at a very 
elevated standard of composition ! 

But the mischief was not confined to letter-writing. The mode of 
education at colleges was the cause of “ the high-tossing and swaggering 
preaching—either mountingly eloquent, or profoundly learned :” and 
here begins the most amusing part of his book. He proceeds to give 
examples of false taste in preaching, as his model, Lucian, in the 
LuyyeaPay, gives examples of the false taste of his contemporary histo- 
rians. First we have the metaphorical preacher :— 


«* For example, perhaps one Gentleman’s Metaphorical Knack of Preach- 
ing comes of the Sea, and then we shall hear of nothing but Star-board, 
and Lar-board, of Stems, Sterns, and Forecastles, and such like salt-water 
language: So that one had need take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, 
and very warily attend to all the Sailor’s terms, before I shall in the least 
understand any Teacher. Now, although such a Sermon may possibly do 
some good in a coast Town, yet upward into the Country in an inland Parish, 
it will do no more than Syriack or Avabick. Another he falls a fighting with 
his Text, and make a pitched Battle of it, dividing it into the Right Wing and 
the Left Wing, then he Rears it, flanks it, intrenches it, storms it; then he 
musters all again, to see what word was lost, or lam’d in the Skirmish, and 


1828. ] Echard’s Contempt of Clergy. 583 


so falling on again with fresh Valour, he fights backward and forward, charges 
through and through, Routs, Kills, Takes, and then Gentlemen, as you were. 
Now, to such of his Parish as have been in the late Wars, this is not very 
formidable ; for they do but suppose themselves at Naseby or Edg-hill, and 
they are not much scared at his Doctrine ; but as for others, who have not 
had such fighting opportunities, it is very lamentable to consider, how shiver- 
ing they sit without understanding, ’till the Battle be over. The like instance 
might be easily given of many more discourses ; the Metaphorical Phrasing 
whereof, depending upon peculiar Arts, Customs, Trades and Professions, 
makes them useful and intelligible only to such who have been very well 
busied in such like Employments.” 


After several other styles have been humorously discussed, we come 
to one very amusing one :— 

“ But for a short text, that certainly was the greatest Break that ever was ; 
which was occasioned from those words of St. Luke, Chap. 23, Ver. 28. Weep 
not for me, Weep for yourselves, or as some read it, but weep for yourselves. 
It is a plain case, Sir; here are but eight words, and the business was so cun- 
ningly ordered, that there sprang out eight parts: Here are, says the Doctor, 
eight words and eight parts. 1. Weep not. 2. But weep. 3. Weep not, but weep. 
4. Weep for me. 5. For yourselves. 6. For me, for yourselves. 7. Weep not 
Sor me. 8. But weep for yourselves. That is to say, North, North and by 
East, North North East, North East and by North, North East, North East 
and by East, East North East, East and by North East. Now it seems not 
very easie to determine which has obliged the world, he that found out the 
Compass, or he that divided the forementioned Text : but I suppose the Cracks 
will go generally upon the Doctor's side, by reason what he did was done by 
undoubted Art, and absolute Industry; but as for the other, the common 
report is, that it was found out by meer foolish Fortune. Well, let it go how 
it will, questionless they will be both famous in their way, and honourably 
mentioned to Posterity. 


The ingenious divine who preached on “ Weep not for me,” &c. 
was Dr. Playfere, who flourished about the end of the reign of Eliza- 
beth ; and it must be confessed, that he and the other divines above- 
mentioned made almost as much of their texts as the facetious John 
Dodd did of the short text given him by the thieves—viz. “ Malt.” 

These extracts will suffice to shew Echard’s style. ‘There are many of 
his sketches of character, as of the dandy, the philosopher “ hot from 
Cartesius,” and others who despise the clergy, admirably well done ; 
but we have no space to extract them. We think a book on the preach- 
ing of the present day might be made a humorous one: there is as 
much room for it, as there was in the time of Echard. 

His other principal work is a dialogue against Hobbes (on whose 
steel cap, as Warburton observes, every theologian thundered), between 
Philautus and Timothy—the name of which, at least, was remembered 
by Swift, when he wrote his Dialogue between Mad Mullinix and 
Timothy. Echard was one of the Dean’s favourite authors. 


[ 584 >] [Dxc. 


THE WINTER CRUISE. 


A custom exists among the smugglers and fishermen, in the towns 
and villages on the Kentish coast, of engaging with shipowners residing 
there for the perilous adventures of a cruise to effect the landing of con- 
traband goods on some.distant shore. Ireland is chiefly the course these 
expeditions are bound for ; and many a smuggler’s wife, while listening 
to the dashing of the rough waves on the shore of her home, and the 
loud winds blowing harmlessly over the roof of her dwelling, has 
breathed a prayer that the same storm may be landing her husband’s 
cargo in safety on some unguarded beach, or filling the sheets of his 
good ship in eluding the pursuit of a revenue-cutter. These outfits 
are invariably made on the approach of November, and are denominated 
«The Winter Cruise.” The vessels are the property of individuals who 
have realized considerable sums in these speculations, and a fortune is 
frequently embarked in one vessel. The smuggler looks forward to the 
success of these adventures with sanguine hopes and beating heart ; and, 
while lamenting over past favours, prays for future good luck, which, 
if but moderate, makes him comfortable for life. During the absence of 
the men, their wives are allowed by the proprietors of the vessels a 
weekly stipend, sufficient for their maintenance ; but, on the arrival of 
disastrous news, the payments are discontinued. Many a hard hand has 
been softened by the tears mutually shed at the departures for the Win- 
ter Cruise ; and many a young wife has seen all that she loved launched 
on the ocean, to sleep in its bosom for ever. A mother, while bestow- 
ing her best wishes for a son’s success, and endeavouring to smile away . 
her apprehensions of what might befal, has looked upon him for the last 
time ; he has departed—hoping much, fearing littlk—never more to be 
seen or heard of. 

Folkstone, the scene of this tale, is only relieved by the hereditary 
good-nature of the inhabitants from a prevailing melancholy which every 
where presents itself, as bereaved mothers are pointed out to you, and 
widowed homes marked in every street. 

It was late one night in the month of January, when the flower of the 
young men of Folkstone were absent on the Winter Cruise, that fou: 
women were seated round a sea-coal fire, listening to the heavy rain fall- 
ing in the street, and the scolding wind as it echoed and rumbled in the 
chimney of the warm fire-place. One of the party—from her occupying 
the low-seated, patchwork-covered chair, and the peculiar attention paid 
to her by an indolent cat, who stretched, and purred, and quivered her 
nervous tale, while peering sleepily in her protector’s face—appeared to 
be the mistress of the house: she was a young woman, about five-and- 
twenty, with all the happy prettiness of a country beauty—albeit an 
indulged grief had thrown a pale tinge over the clear red that still shone 
in her cheek, as if struggling for mastery with an intruding enemy. 
Her features, though somewhat irregular, if but carelessly viewed, failed 
not to secure the, beholder’s stedfast observance, from the peculiar 
interest which a full blue eye and light arched brow lent to the contour. 
She was resting her face upon her hand, and looking at the red coals in 
the stove before her ;—the others seemed to have just concluded a bit 
of country scandal, or the success of the sale of a secreted tub of hollands, 
from the pursing-up of their lips, and the satisfaction with which each 
appeared to lean back in her chair. 


1828.] The Winter Cruise. 585 


« There,” said the young woman, “in that very hollow of the fire; I 
can almost fancy I see my James on the deck of the Mary, looking 
through his glass to catch a glimpse of some distant sail. Ah! now it 
has fallen in, and all looks like a rough sea.—Poor fellow!” This was 
spoken in that abstracted tone of voice, that monotonous sound of melan- 
choly, where every word is given in one note, as if the speaker had not 
the spirit, or even wish. to vary the sound. 

« That’s what I so repeatedly tell you of,” said a fat oid woman of the 
group; “ you will have no other theught ; morning and night hear but 
the same cry from you. Look at me—is'n't it fifteen years ago since my 
William, rest his soul, was shot dead while running his boat ashore on 
Romney Marsh? and am I any the worse for it? I loved him dearly ; 
and when I was told of the bad news, I did nothing but cry for whole 
days ; but me - was soon over—lI knew that fretting wouldn’t set him 
on his legs aga so I made the best of a bad berth, epee thought, if I 
should have pink a husband, all well and good ; if not, _why, I must 
live and die Widow Major—and there was an end of it.” 

« Ah! neighbour,” replied the young woman, “ you knew the fate of 
your husband—you were acquainted with the worst—you had not to live 
in the cruel suspense I endure: but if I knew that he was dead”—(and 
her voice grew louder, while the blood rushed into her fair cheek)— 
“ T should think of him as much as I do now, and would think and. 
think, and try to bring thoughts every day heavier on my heart, ull it 
sunk into the grave.’ 

This burst of affection fer her husband was amen’d with a loud laugh 
* by a young, black-eyed, round-faced girl, sitting in the opposite corner, 
‘ who, leaning over to the speaker, laying one hand en her knee, and 
: looking archly in her face, chuckled out—“< Come, come! she sha’n’t 
j take on so; if her first husband is gone, Susan shall have a second to 

comfort her.” ; 
_ © A’second husband, Anne!—No! no second husband for me. I Grud 
never wake in the morning, and look on a face sleeping on the pillow 
__ beside me, where had rested the head of one I had loyed, and who was 
> dead. No—I was asked three times in church, and married to ‘him 
lawfully ; ; and I am certain that, when a couple are once joined ‘in mar- 
riage—and in true love—their only separation is in death; and that is 
but for a time—they will hereafter meet, and never, never part again.’ 

—And then she locked up with her sweet blue eyes, and heaved such a 

sigh, and smiled sucha smile, that preved to her gossips how confirmed, 

was her innocent belief. 

« How fast it rains!” ejaculated a shrivelled old woman, who had 
hitherto remained silent. “ How fast it rains !’—and she drew her chair 
closer to the fire. “ It was just such a night as this when What's 
that—the wind? Ah! ’tis a rough night; I suppose it must be near. 
eleven o’clock.—Now, I'll tell you a story that shall make you cold as, 
stones, though you crowd ever so close to this blazing fire. It was just. 

such a night as this i! 

__ “ Gracious Heaven!” cried Susan, “I hear a footfall coming down 
the street so ‘like that which I knew so well ,—listen !—No, all is silent. 
~—Well, Margery, what were you going to tell us?” : 
_. “ Eh! bless us!” replied Margery, “ you tremble terrible bad, surely ; 
a, 8 the matter ?” 

« Nothing—nothing, dame ;—go on.” 

M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 36. 4 F 


| 


a 


586 The Winter Cruise. ‘[Dec. 


« Well,” said the old woman, “ it was just such a night as this——” 

«‘ Susan !” cried a voice at the door, in that tone which implies haste, 
and a fear of being heard—“ Susan! open the door.” BES 

“« Good God!” shrieked Susan, “ that voice !”—and all the women 
rose at one moment, and stood staring at the door, which Susan was 
unlocking. ‘“ The key won't turn the lock—'tis rusty ;—-who’s there ?” 
she breathlessly exclaimed, as in the agony of suspense she tried to turn 
the key, while the big drops stood quivering on her brow. She trem- 
bled from head to foot—her companions stood like statues—the lock flew 
back, the door opened—nothing was seen but the black night, and the 
large drops of rain which sparkled in the beams of the candle on the 
table.-—“ There is no one,” said she, panting for breath ; “ but, as I stand 
here a living woman, ’twas his voice.—James! James!” she cried, and 
put out her head to listen. She heard quick, heavy footsteps hastily 
advancing at the end of the street: presently a party of six or seven’ 
blockade-men rushed by the door, dashing the wet from the pavement in 
Susan’s face. They passed with no other sound than that made by their 
feet, and were quickly out of hearing. 

“I wish I may die,” said old Margery, “ but the blockade-men are 
chasing some poor fellow who has been obliged to drop his tubs ; for I 
saw the blade of a cutlass flash in my eyes, though I couldn’t see the 
hand that held it.” ‘ 

“ My bonnet! my bonnet!” cried Susan; “ there has more befallen 
this night than any here can tell. ”Twas his voice—stay in the house till 
I come back—’twas his voice !””—and she ran out through the still driving 
rain, in the direction of the party that had just passed. They took the 
street that led to the cliffs ; not a light was to be seen—lamps in a smug- 
gling town being considered a very obnoxious accommodation; and, 
though there may be a rate for watching, the inhabitants take especial 
care there shall be none for lighting, inasmuch as a lamplighter never yet 
breathed the air of Folkstone. Susan reached the cliffs ; the wind blew 
fresh and strong off the sea, and the rain appeared abating. She thought 
she saw figures descend the heights; and quickening her pace, stood 
on the edge, straining her sight to distinguish the objects flitting to and 
fro on the beach. She heard a faint “ hallo !”—the sound thrilled through 
every nerve—it was the voice she had heard at her door. She returned 
the salute ; but the buffeting of the wind choaked her timid cry. The 
halloo was repeated ; Susan listened with her very eyes. Her distended 
fingers seemed grasping to catch at sound. A sound did rise above the 
roar of the breakers and the rushing of the wind: it was the report of a 
volley of carbines fired on the beach. Susan screamed, and sunk on the 
edge of the cliff, overpowered with terror and anxiety. Quickly there 
was seen a flashing of Jights along the coast, and men running from the 
Martello-towers to the beach in disorder. Then was heard the curse for 
curse, the clashing of cutlasses and discharge of arms, and the hoarse 
shout of some of the smugglers, who had succeeded in putting their boat 
off from the shore with part of her cargo, which it appeared they had 
been attempting to work. . 

Susan well understood the import of these dreadful sounds, and reco- 
vering from her fright, was striving to ascertain from her station the 
position of the parties, when a hard breathing of some one, apparent 
exhausted, arrested her attention. It seemed to issue from beneath, ar 
looking over the summit of the cliff, she perceived the shadow of a man 


1828. } The Winter Cruise: 587 


cautiously ascending. He had almost accomplished his task, and was 
grasping a jutting fragment of stone, to enable him to rest a moment 
from the fatigue of his attempt. Susan heard him panting for breath, 
and, in endeavouring to discover whether he wore the jacket or the 
smock-frock (the latter being the usual working attire of the smug- 
glers), heard him sigh heavily. She thought it was a form she knew: 
she bent over the edge, and held her breath in the very agony of hope 
and fear. The figure stood with his back to the cliff, and looking down 
on the beach, ejaculated, “Oh, God!” It was in one of those moans 
which betray the most acute suffering of mind, which thrill through the 
hearer, and create that kindred overflowing of the heart’s tears which 
makes the sorrow of the afflicted more than our own. Susan heard the 
sound, and breathlessly answered—“ Who is it?” The figure sprang 
upwards at the response, and exclaimed— 

« Susan !” 

«“ James! James!” she cried. He caught a large tuft of grass to 
assist him in darting into her expanded arms, when the weed broke by 
the roots from the light sand in which it had grown ;—a faint cry, and 
the fall of a body, with the rattling of earth and stones, down the steep, 
were the sounds that struck terror, and madness, and dismay through 
the brain of poor Susan. 

She attempted to call for assistance, but her voice obeyed not the effort, 
and, in the delirium of the moment, she sprang down the cliff; but, for- 
tunately, alighting on a projection, and at the same time instinctively 
catching the long weeds, was saved from the danger her perilous situa 
tion had threatened: but still she continued her descent, stepping from 
tuft to stone, reckless whether she found a footing, or was precipitated to 
the base ; which the darkness concealing, all below looked like a black 
abyss. Susan alighted in safety on the beach: an indistinct form lying 
on the shingle met her view. 

. “James! James!” she cried, “ speak! let me hear your voice— 
for mercy’s sake tell me, are you hurt ?” 

No answer was returned ; she grasped his hand, and felt his brow ; 
but, on the instant, started from the form in horror—the hand was stiff, 
and the brow was deadly cold; and then, as if all her powers of utter- 
ance had become suddenly re-organized, she broke forth into such a cry 
of anguish, that it pierced through the noises of the night like the scream 
of a wounded eagle. A pistol-shot was heard ; the ball whizzed past the 
ear of Susan, and harmlessly buried itself in the sand of the cliff. A 
party of the blockade rushed toward the spot, and, by the light of a 
torch, discovered the poor girl stretched on the body of a smuggler. 
They raised her in their arms—she was quite senseless ; and holding 
the light in the face of the man, they saw that he was dead. 

«« She’s a pretty young creature!” said one of the men; “ it’s a pity 
she couldn’t let her sweetheart come to the beach alone, for she seems 
almost as far gone as he is ;—what shall we do with her, Sir?” 

This was addressed to a young man of the group, wearing the uniform 
of a midshipman,and whose flushed and disordered countenance proved 
that he had taken a considerable share in the late desperate encounter. 

“ Take her to the tower, Thomas,” said he; “ she may assist with her 

; evidence the investigation of this affair. The body of the man must also 
be carried to our station, for I dare say we shall grapple some of the 
rascals before the night’s work is Ne. Our lieutenant has ordered the 
e F 2 ; 


588 The Winter Cruise. [ Dee. 


beat to be pursued that put off in the scuffle ; and, as some of the cargo 
is now lying about the rocks here, we must look out for another squall.” 

One of the sailors sustained the still senseless Susan in his arms, while 
the corpse followed, borne by four others on their carbines. 

- « This fun was not expected, Infant Joe,” said one of the men to the 
gigantic figure who carried Susan in one of his arms, with as much ease 
as he would have conveyed a child, and who, in mockery of his immense 
bulk, had been so nicknamed. 

« No,” was the laconic reply. 

« ] think,” continued the other, “ ’twas your pistol settled that poor 
fellow, for he lay in the very point of the woman’s scream when you 
fired.” 
~ © Yes,” said Joe with a grin, “ mayhap it was; and I wish each of 
my bullets could search twenty of ’em at once as surely and as 
quickly.” 

« Halt!” cried the officer who was conducting the party; “if I 
mistake not I perceive a body of men, creeping on their hands and knees, 
at the foot of the cliff. Out with your torches, or we may be fair marks 
for a bullet.” 

- ‘Phe men instantly obeyed, and, at the same moment, discovered their 
progress was interrupted by a gang of armed smugglers, who instantly 
commenced a practical argument for the right of way by furiously 
attacking the blockade. At the first: fire, the ponderous bulk bearing 
the light form of Susan reeled and fell with its burthen on the earth ; 
and a smuggler was seen to rush wildly through the chaos of contending 
beings, hewing his passage with a short broad cutlass, and apparently 
having but one object in view. A retreat of the smugglers, and the con- 
sequent advance of their antagonists, brought him to the spot where 
Susan, still senseless, lay wound in the sinewy arm of the prostrate 
man-of-war’s man. He endeavoured to disengage her from his grasp ; 
and, on placing his hand on her neck, he felt that his fingers were stray- 
ing in warm and still oozing blood. He trembled, and gasped for 
breath :—there were two beings senseless before him—one must be 
seriously wounded, perhaps dying or dead. He dragged Susan from 
her thrall : the action was followed by a groan from the man, who faintly 
rose upon his knees, and made a grasp towards the female with one hand, 
and drawing a pistol from his belt with the other, discharged it at ran- 
dom, and again fell exhausted. The report was heard by some of the 
still contending party, and forms were seen hastening to the spot; but 
the smuggler had safely ascended the cliff with Susan, and sitting on the 
summit, wiped the drops of agony and toil from his brow, and placed 
his trembling hand upon her heart. At the first he could discover no 
pulsation ; he pressed his hand firmer against her side, and with a cry of 
jey sprang upon his feet—he felt the principle of life beat against his 
palm. He again clasped her in his arms, and, with the speed of a hound, 
ran across the fields leading from the edge of the cliffs, darted through 
the church-yard there, till his quick step was heard on the stones of the 
paved street. The inhabitants were at their doors and windows, anxious 
to catch the slightest word that might give them some intelligence of the 
‘conflict ; for the reports of the fire-arms had been heard in the town, and 
all there was anxiety and agitation: but the quick questions were unan- 
swered, the salutes were unnoticed—the form that rushed by them was 
heard to gasp hardly for breath, and they were satisfied that something 


1828.] The Winter Cruise. 589° 


desperate had taken place. The’smuggler gained the street Susan had 
set out from ; the women, and others who had joined them, were ga- 
thered round the door of the house, waiting with breathless impatience 
her revurn, and various were the conjectures of the night’s events ; when 
a voice, whose tones all knew, was heard to exclaim—< Stand o’ one 
side there ; a chair! a chair!” They made way for him in an instant ; 
he darted into the house, placed Susan in the arm-chair, and dropped on 
the floor, with his forehead resting on his arm. 

« James!” the women cried, “ are you hurt?” 

They received no reply; but his convulsive panting alarmed them : 
they raised him from the ground, while one of the wemen lighted a 
candle. At that moment a scream of dismay escaped from all: those 
who had stcod listening at the door rushed in, and were horror-struck 
on beholding poor Susan lying apparently lifeless in the chair, her face 
and neck dabbled with blood ; but she breathed, and not 2 moment was 
to be lost. Restoratives were applied to both, the blood was cleansed 
from Susan, and, to the joy of all, not a wound could be perceived. 
James had now sufficiently recovered to stand and bathe her temples: 
he kissed her cold, quivering lips—she slowly opened her eyes—the 
first object they rested upon was her husband! She started from the 
chair, and gazed at him with a mingled expression of terror and delight. 
James, seeing the effect his appearance produced, pressed her in his arms, 
where she lay laughing and crying, and clasping him round the neck, 
till the shock had subsided, when she sat like a quiet child on his knee, 
reposing her head upon his shoulder. None had as yet ventured to ask 
a question, but all impatiently waited till Susan should break the silence 
that had now followed the confusion of cries, tears, and wonder. But 
she seemed to liave no other wish on earth—she was in her husband’s 
arms—beneath their own roof—and that was question, and answer, and 
every thing to her. James appeared restless, and attempted ta rise ; 
but the motion was followed by the close winding of Susan’s arms round 
his neck. Then, as if suddenly resolved, and chiding himself for some 
neglect. he started from his seat. ee 

“ Susan,” said he, “ you are better now; keep yourself still till I 
return—lI shall be but a few minutes.” 

“ No, no,” cried Susan, grasping his arm with both her hands— 
“not again—go not again. I shall be able to speak to you presently ; 
don’t leave me now, James.” 

“ You mus’‘n’t persuade me to stay,” replied he; “I left the crew 


- fighting with the blockade when I saw you in that fellow’s arms ; but I 


must go back again, for life and death are in this night’s business.. One 
of us has been shot, poor Peter Cullen drowned—he would drink in 
spite of our orders, and fell‘overboard. I tried to save him; but I’m 
afraid’ he lies dead under the cliff, just-where I first saw you, Susan, 
when I lost my footing. But I must go back, and see the end of it— 
now don’t gripe me so hard, Susan--I must go. I dare say all’s lost— 
but I must go.” 

He struggled to release himself from Susan, when a smuggler rushed 
into the house, pale and exhausted ; he flung himself into a chair, and 
throwing a brace of pistols on the ground, exclaimed— 

« The boat’s taken—the tubs we had worked to the foot of the cliffs 
are seized too: we fought hard for it, but it was of no use ;’—and then 
he breathed a bitter curse in that low, withering tone, which seems 


590 Vhe Winter Cruise. (Daze. 


to recoil upon the head of the curser, and clings only to him that 
utters it. 

« Well, it can’t be helped,” said James, calmly seating himself ; “ it’s 
no use repining now—words and sighs won’t better it; though it is 
somewhat hard, after cruising about for three months, to lose our cargo 
at sea, and when we thought ourselves lucky that we escaped Cork gaol, 
and got back to Holland with an empty hold, and tried to do a little 
business at home, to make such a finish to all as we have done to-night. 
Poor Peter’s drowned too, Tom—d’ye know that ?” 

- © Ah!” said the other, “I thought it was all over with him when I 
saw him go ;—but how did you manage with him ?” 

. © Now it’s all over,” said James, “I'll tell you the whole affair. 
When I plunged in after him, I popped a tub under my arm, thinking 
we were opposite a point where there was no watch; for, thinks I, if I 
can work atub and save a man’s life at the same time, I shall do a clever 
thing: but I was some seconds before I could find Peter, it being so 
pitch dark. At last I saw something bob up to the top of the water, 
close to me—it was him, sure enough ; I made a grasp, and caught him 
by the hair—kept his head above the surface, and got ashore with him. 
At that moment, a blockade-man ’spied me, and fired a pistol: I heard 
some of them coming towards me, so I dragged Peter under the. cliff, 
and made for the town; but the men-o’-wars-men followed me up so 
closely, that I was obliged to drop my tub, and crowd all sail. I got 
near home, and thought I could manage to drop in without being seen ; 
but they had so gained upon me that I was obliged to run again right 
through the town, where I dodged them, till I found myself back again 
at the place where I had left Peter. I felt him, but he was stiff and 
dead, poor fellow. I then thought I'd try if I could hail you; but the 
only answer I got was a report of fire-arms on the beach: then I knew 
that you must be working the boat slap in the teeth of the blockade. I 
listened a minute or two, and all was silent; so, thinks I, they have 
either put out to sea again, or have succeeded in working the cargo.” 

“ Yes,” interrupted Tom, “ we had worked part of it, and had hid 
the tubs under the cliff, when we were discovered and attacked ; and 
three or four suddenly put off the boat, while we who were left had to 
fight it out, and get away as we could.” 

« Well,” continued James, “ I thought I’d mount the cliff and look 
out, and had got near the top—but what with wondering how you had 
managed, and thinking about poor Peter and our unlucky cruise, I felt 
very melancholy, and was pulling-up to take fresh wind, when what 
should I hear but my Susan’s voice! That so astonished me, that I lost 
my footing, and was capsized plump down again on the shingle. There 
was no bones broke, however ; and I was just about to hail Susan on the 
cliff, when I thought I saw some of the blockade coming ; and, says I 
to myself, ‘ you mus’n’t see me, my masters !’—so I crept close under 
the cliff, and passed them safe enough. Then, thinks I, ‘ I may as well 
find out where the lads are ;’ and thinking Susan would be up to the 
rig, and wait where she was, or go home again, I contrived to run along 
the bottom of the cliff, till I found myself tumbling among a lot of tubs. 
‘Oho!’ thinks I, < all’s right yet; and, while looking about, I per- 
ceived all of you creeping down the cliffs. You recognized me, if you 
recollect ; and we were just preparing to clear the tubs snugly away, 
when the enemy’s lanterns issued from a projecting part of the cliff. 


1828.] The Winter €ruise. 591 


Douse they went in one moment, and, in the other, there we were with 
the blockade, yard-arm and yard-arm ; but, when I first saw the light 
from their torches, what should I see but my Susan stowed in the arms 
of Infant Joe. In the surprise, I opened a fire upon him, but took a 
good aim notwithstanding ; I:saw him fall, and laying about me right 
manfully, I-seized upon my little brig, carried her away from the grap- 
pling-irons of the huge pirate, and towed her right into harbour—and 
here she is, safe and sound—there’s some comfort in that, ar’n’t there, my 
girl ?”—and a hearty kiss, with a murmured blessing, escaped from the 
lips of the rough young smuggler, as he again pressed the now happy 
Susan in his arms. 

Two of his companions now entered the house: they were cordially 
received by their acquaintances and neighbours assembled ; but the hang- 
ing of their heads, the ill-stifled sighs, and the languid manner of taking 
the hands outstretched to welcome them, proved how severely their bold 
hearts felt their chilling disappointments and unrewarded toil. A dead 
silence followed their entrance ; for what could be said? The journal of 
their cruise and misfortunes was recorded in every line of their brows. 
It was a sad meeting ; and sadness and silence love to be together. At 
length one of them, looking at James, said,— 

«We heard that you had brought down Infant Joe; but, just as we 
came into the town, we were told that he was only wounded, and had 
been carried to the tower, with a pistol-bullet in his right shoulder.” 

** In his right shoulder, eh?” said James, as he gave a loud whistle, 

and looked at Susan ; “it was close chance for you; my girl. Well, I’ve 
no wish for his death ; but, if we ever should meet again, I am just as 
likely to snap my trigger, and perhaps with better success:— But, Susan, 
my lass, I’ve been waiting all along to know how you came on the cliff 
at such a time; and I’m somewhat jealous, too, at that same Infant Joe, 
and the manner he was convoying you so snugly.” 
- Susan smiled, and related her share in the events of the night, and con- 
cluded by entreating James to relinquish his desperate and unprofitable 
pursuit—to forego all thoughts of again embarking in a Winter Cruise— 
and, when the employment of the coast failed to procure them a quiet 
subsistence, to remove to some happier land, where industry may reap 
its reward, and the strong arm and sweating brow know their hours of 
comfort and repose. apie 


ey 592-2 [Drc. 


e « 


= 


SOUTH AMERICAN SKETCHES: No. I. 


Facunvo QuiroGa, Governor of La Rioja, one of the interior Provinces 
of La Plata. 


Sourn America, though any thing but an exhausted subject of 
literary treatment, in the present day, has hitherto proved a marvellously 
dry and dull one, chiefly by reason (as it strikes us) of the peculiar 
views and motives which have attracted and actuated the various travel- 
lers who have been tempted to write upon it. Those persons have, for the 
most part, visited South America with trading views exclusively ; and, 
though views of this nature are sufficiently interesting to the individual 
pursuing them, and are not without a corresponding importance to the 
commercial departments of our community, they seldom include matters 
likely to afford scope for much readable writing, however well-informed 
the writer may be on the subject of which he treats, or however well- 
skilled in turning that subject to the best account. Nevertheless, to 
turn his subject to some account or other in the way of a written book, 
seems to have been a contemplated item in the calculation of every one 
who has lately visited this most interesting country. The consequence is, 
that we have more books on South American matters than can find 
readers, and more readers (few as there are) than can find either the 
entertainment or the instruction that they seek. 

The writer of the Sketches now about to be laid before the reader 
feels himself in an altogether different position, in the above respects, 
from almost every other of those South American travellers who have 
preceded him in presenting their observations to the world ; and, if for 
no other reason, for this simple one alone—that he visited the country 
expressly in search of mingled amusement and general knowledge, and 
entirely freed from those peculiar views which have a tendency to fix 
the attention to one class of information exclusively, while they not only 
take away the inclination, but greatly abridge the ability, of successfully 
appropriating or applying any other. Moreover, his desultory wander- 
ings were undertaken after a settled residence of many years in one part 
of the country, cut off from all intercourse with European society, and 
consequently perfectly familiar with the habits, feelings, manners, and, 
above all, the language of the people, and enabled to assume (as, in fact, 
he did assume) the dress and appearance of the natives themselves. 

These relative advantages over other travellers in South America were, 
perhaps, farther increased by the writer’s disposition to search out and 
appropriate the singular and the romantic in all that presented itself to 
his notice, in a country where the romantic and the singular abound 
more than in any other on the face of the globe. 

These, then, are the claims to attention which the writer of the follow- 
ing Sketches conceives himself to possess ; and he is not without hope 
that they will be looked upon as some set-off against that literary inex- 
perience of which he is far from being unconscious, and which, there- 
fore, he has no wish either to deny or conceal. 

Perhaps the English reader cannot be more promptly initiated into the 
manners, customs, and modes of feeling, which prevail in a particular 
and important district of La Plata, than by a brief biographical notice of 
one of the most extraordinary individuals of the present time—the facts 


1828. ] Facundo Quiroga, Governor of La Rioja. 593 


of which are gathered from a personal residence in the province itself, 
over which that individual at present 
* Holds sovereign sway and mastery.” 


Facundo Quiroga is the son of a wealthy estate-holder of those fine 
plains called the Llanos, forming part of the rich province of La Rioja, in 
which are situated the celebrated Famatina mines. Quiroga commenced 
his career of personal independence, by running away from his father, 
and associating himself with a band of vagabonds of all descriptions— 
thieves, deserters, and cattle-stealers. With these companions he led 
a wandering life for the space of three years, at which time the greater 
part of them were taken prisoners, and made soldiers of. As the hue 
and cry followed Quiroga also very closely, he disguised himself as a 
peon, or labourer, and went to Mendoga, where he worked ina vineyard 
for several months. 

Prior to the revolution, every working man was obliged to have a 
letter of licence, certifying his good character, without which he was 
liable to be sent to the army. During Quiroga’s forced sojourn at Men- 
doga, an alcalde, or judge, met him one day in the street, and asked him for 
his licence. Quiroga hesitated at first ; and then, putting his hand under 
his poncho apparently for the purpose of giving the paper, he suddenly 
drew his knife, and stabbed the alcalde, who fell dead on the spot. He 
then instantly made his escape, and wandered for more than four months 
among the wilds to the southward, leading the life of a savage. At 
length, he was tempted to return to the town, and some of his female 
acquaintances betrayed him. 

Amongst the Spaniards and their descendants (for what reason it would 
be difficult to divine), murder is looked upon as a very venial crime ; 
and it is scarcely ever severely punished. On the present occasion, the 
Spanish authorities contented themselves with making a soldier of 
Quiroga. 

About six months after this event, Beresford’s expedition arrived, and 
took possession of Buenos Ayres; when all the king’s troops were col- 
lected together to drive out the invaders, and Quiroga, among the rest, 
was marched to Buenos Ayres. Here he remained some years, when 
an unforeseen circumstance caused him to desert. He was one day placed 
as a centinel at the gate of the quartel (barrack), when an officer came 
up, and asked him some question ; to which he returned an insolent 
reply. The officer immediately drew his sabre, and gave Quiroga a 
blow with the flat of it ; upon which the enraged soldier sprang at his 
superior, disarmed him, and cut him down. By this time, some of the 
soldiers had made their appearance, with the intention of taking him into 
custody ; but his ferocious looks alarmed them, and he was allowed once 
more to make his escape. Having procured a horse, he again took the 
road to Mendoga, dressed as a gaucho, which was literally his own cha- 
racter; for he was capable of any of the feats practised by this 
half-savage class of the South American community: he could break-in 
a wild horse—lazo, hamstring, slaughter, and cut up a wild bull—fight 
with a knife or sabre—and endure hunger and thirst unrepiningly, when 
obliged by necessity. In riding, in particular, he was singularly skilful, 
and might almost be said to “grow upon his horse.” On his road to 
Mendoga, so audacious was he, that he even ventured to enter the town of 

M.M. New Scries—Vou. VI. No. 36. 4G 


504 South American Sketches : [Dec. 


San Luis, although he knew that his life was forfeited to the laws. 
Instead of taking a circuitous route, he rode boldly mto the Plaza; 
(great square), and dismounted at the door of a pulperia, (low tavern), 
where some guitar playing and dancing was going forward. As he was 
known to be a stranger, an alcalde soon made his appearance, and 
demanded his passport ; upon which he repeated his first exploit, as 
above alluded to. He made a motion as if to give the required docu- 
ment; but, instead of so doing, he drew a pistol, and shot the alcalde 
dead. He then instantly jumped upon his horse, and attempted to escape ; 
but his beast was flagged, and fell with him, so that he was taken 
without difficulty. 

As usual, he was put in prison, and his associates there were a number 
of the common soldiers belonging to the old Spaniards, who had been 
taken prisoners by San Martin in Chile. The ill-treatment which these 
men experienced had induced them to form a plot for the purpose of 
breaking out and taking possession of the town. This was at the time 
San Martin’s French agent, Dupuis, was the governor of the province of 
San Luis. This plan was soon communicated to Quiroga, who immediately 
entered into the plot with them, but with a purpose very different from that 
which actuated his new companions. Having procured files, the party 
disencumbered themselves of their fetters in the course of the night ; 
and, when the turnkey entered in the morning, he was instantly killed. 
Quiroga played what seems to have been his favourite part in this affair. 
On rushing out with his fetters in his hand, he used them as a weapon; 
fracturing, with one blow of them, the skull of the sentinel at the gate. 
He then seized his musketand bayonet; and, while the Spanish soldiers, 
to the number of about a hundred, ran along the streets, tumultuously: 
shouting “ Viva el Rey!” Quiroga remained in the rear, and, whenever 
any of the Spaniards lagged behind, he ran them through the back with 
his bayonet. In this way he had slaughtered upwards of twenty, before 
they found out the nature of his designs ; but then it was too late to 
revenge their murdered companions, as the troops of Dupuis approached 
in front, and engaged their attention. 

The half-armed Spaniards were now soon massacred, Quiroga being 
one of the most eager in their destruction; and, for these services, 
Dupuis rewarded himby giving hima lieutenant’s commission, with which, 
together with his freedom and these new honours, he soon afterwards 
returned to La Rioja, and arrived there just as an expedition was prepar- 
ing by Davila, the then governor of that province, against a military chief 
named Corro, who had just before revolutionized the province of San 
Juan, and rendered himself absolute. In this service, Quiroga soon 
attained the rank of captain ; in which capacity he contributed so much 
to the success of the enterprise against Corro (who was defeated and 
shot), that the governor gave him a commission, as second in command of 
the troops of the province—the governor's brother, a gallant young 
man, being the first in command. 

Quiroga now, for the first time in his life, began to entertain ambitious 
views, and to see the possibility of making himself absolute in his native 
province ; and the tyrannical conduct of the two Davilas, soon afterwards 
gave him the opportunity of putting his views into effect. The Governor 
had, just at this time, forced such heavy contributions on the inhabitants 
of the province, that all but those immediately connected with the govern- 
ment offices were inimical to him ; and Quiroga, who was very popular 


1828.) Facundo Quiroga, Governor of La Rioja. 595 


among the gauchos of the Llanos, soon found that they would prove wil- 
ling assistants if he attempted a revolution. 

After intriguing with his friends for a short time, he threw of 
the mask, and took the field against the Davilas, at the head of about 
three hundred gauchos, half of whom were armed with sabres, and the 
remainder with knives and lazos. The governor became alarmed at 
this formidable conspiracy, and held himself aloof from action ; but 
not so his more gallant brother. The latter, finding that his number of 
men was far inferior to those of Quiroga, left him in possession of the city 
of La Rioja, and retreated to Chilecito, where, having procured some old 
church bells, he caused four rude cannon to be cast for him by a silver- 
smith, with balls formed of the same metal. The balls and cartridges 
were packed up in boxes, placed on low wheels, so that they could be 
drawn along with a lazo fixed to a horse. To prevent the boxes from 
-splitting, they were bound up with raw hide; and, when Quiroga sud- 
denly made his appearance one morning, unexpectedly, at the head of 
his mounted gauchos, neither ball nor cartridge could be come at. How- 
ever, the appearance of artillery made the gaucho cavalry keep their dis- 
tance, and at last the boxes were opened ; but a werse error was now 
diseovered, for they found that the balls were too large for the bore of 
the cannon. Quiroga’s party finding they were not fired at, again put 
their horses to their speed, and came to the attack; but a discharge of 
blank cartridge put them all to flight. They again rallied, and a second 
discharge again dispersed them ; but they now found that the cannon 
were harmless, and, on the third attempt, they closed with their opponents, 
and rode down the artillerymen. Davila’s troops now all dispersed ; and 
their commander, finding that he was left alone, reined round his horse, 
with the intention of flying ; but it was too late, a party had cut off his 
retreat, and all that remained for him was to sell his life as dearly as 
possible. He, therefore, placed the rear of his horse against a mud hut, 
and killed his two foremost assailants with pistol-shots, stunning a third 
with the pistols, which he threw at him. A fourth he cut down, and his 
horse then fell dead under him, killed by a carbine-shot. He now disen- 
gaged himself from the fallen animal, and made it serve him as a rampart, 
ever which the other horses would not charge for some time; but 
the unceasing efforts of the gauchos at last obliged them. Davila 
now cut down his fifth opponent; but his sabre breaking with. the 
effort, he remained disarmed, and retreated into the hut. The gauchos 
with a furious shout of merciless exultation, now dismounted from their 
horses, and, rushing into the hut, after a vain struggle on his part, drag- 
ged him out by his long hair, on which he had greatly prided himself. 
One of the strongest of them then seated himself on the carcass of the 
dead horse, and, throwing Davila on his back across his knees, drew his 
head down by the hair, and after feeling the edge of his knife, with all 
the coolness of an experienced butcher, deliberately severed his head 
from his body ; for, before the fight commenced, Quiroga had given 
orders to his men that Davila should have no quarter. As soon as he 
was dead, they disfigured his body most brutally.* 

The governor, when he heard the news of his brother's defeat, fled 
away to Catamarca ; and Quiroga, who was anxious to extinguish the 


* This” fact was commiunicated to the author in the village of Chilecito, by Dona 
Manuela Davila, the beautiful and accomplished sister of the wofortunate commandant. 
4G 2 


596 Soulh American Sketches : [Dec. 


family, tried a great many arts in order to procure his return, promising 
to treat him kindly. But Davila was too well acquainted with the object 
of his opponent to again trust himself within reach of his sword. 

The members of the Cabildo now begged of Quiroga to take upon 
himself the office of governor ; but this did not, at the moment, coin- 
cide with his views. He considered that it was better for the present 
merely to retain the command of the troops ; by which means he would 
be more absolute than the governor himself, whom he might displace 
whenever it answered his purpose. He, therefore, with much pretended 
humility, told the Cabildo that an ignorant man like himself was not 
qualified to fill so important an office, and that they had better elect some 
one else: at the same time, however, he took care to have it privately 
intimated to them on whom it was that he wished their choice to devolve. 
This was a man named Agueros; who had, during many years, been a 
travelling pedlar, and who possessed all the cunning and chicanery of 
his profession. This plan succeeded to his wishes ; and Quiroga’s 
influence was now unbounded. He also, by this time, possessed enor- 
mous estates—almost half the Llanos being his property—with a large 
number of cattle and horses; so that he left Agueros at full liberty 
to exercise what peculation he pleased in his office, and turn it to the best 
account, so long as he took no political measures which were disagreeable 
to his employer. 

Quiroga now caused his house in the Llanos to be fitted up as a kind 
of fort, whither he removed Davila’s four unfortunate cannon, and sent 
to Cordova to purchase 300 muskets and sabres, on the state account, 
which were also deposited in his house. He now ruled with absolute 
authority, there being no appeal from him, even on a matter of life and 
death. He also maintained a body of twenty mounted gauchos con- 
stantly about his house, as a sort of body-guard, who were ready, 
on all occasions, to ride and do his bidding. At two hours’ notice 
he could, at any time, have 500 militia cavalry in readiness at his 
doors, to take their arms, and obey all his orders without questioning 
them ; and, to prevent the possibility of these men being tampered with, 
he always retained the arms in his own custody when there was no neces- 
sity for taking the field: in fact, no eastern pacha could be more abso- 
lute. At the same time, he did not disdain those arts which tended to 
make him popular among the people on whom he depended for support. 
His dress and amusements were constantly those of the gaucho; and, 
whenever any dispute occurred before him, in which a rich and a poor 
man were concerned, he invariably took the part of the poor man, and 
decided in his favour, right or wrong ; so that the poorer classes all spoke 
loudly in his praise, as the only refuge of the oppressed. He would 
sometimes kill a bullock, and set a barrel of wine running, to feast the 
gauchos, when they were collected together, and, by this means, ren- 
dered them devoted to his service. 

Although Quiroga is, in person, a small, spare man, with a downcast 
countenance, he is possessed of great muscular and constitutional strength ; 
and, owing to the influence which a strong mind always possesses over 
weak ones, he governs his followers as much by fear as by attachment. 
On one occasion, a man from the country came before him with a large 
sabre-wound on his arm, which he complained had been given him by 
one of the gauchos then on guard, without any provocation. Quiroga 
ordered the guards into the apartment; and the wounded man pointed 


j 


1828.] Facundo Quiroga, Governor of La Rioja. 597 


out the gaucho who had struck him. Quiroga addressed the gaucho as 
follows: “ I shall punish you for two reasons ; first, for the injustice you 
have done to this poor man ; and, secondly, for not having used your 
sabre more dexterously than in the infliction of a mere flesh-wound, 
which is a disgrace toa soldier of mine.” He then snatched a sabre from 
the man who stood next to him ; and the gaucho, fearing what was about 
to take place, lifted his arm to protect himself—when Quiroga severed 
his arm from his body at a blow, and it fell powerless on the floor.— 
“ Take him out,” he added, as the man was bleeding to death, “ and 
let the rest of you learn, from my example, how to strike.” The inflic- 
tion of such a blow from a small spare man like Quiroga, appeared to the 
men like the effect of magic, and they conveyed their dying comrade out 
of the apartment without a word. 

- Like most South American landholders, Quiroga does not despise any 
means of gain, however small; and, therefore, he keeps a shop at one end 
of his house, supplied with all the articles in request amongst the 
gauchos—as Manchester prints, men’s coarse clothing, shirts, jackets, 
drawers, ponchos, red baize for making them, brandy, wine, Yerva de Para- 
gauy, sugar, dried meat, bread, salt, red pepper, lard, tallow, candles, 
died fruits, knives, flints and steels, tinder-boxes, tobacco, paper, small 
common prints of the Virgin and saints, shoes, bridle-bitts, stirrups, 
hide-reins, lazos, balls, and every other article in request. Of course, all 
the gauchos who wish to stand in favour with him purchase their neces-: 
saries at his shop, in which one of his relations serves. By this means, 
he has a constant supply of ready money to pay his workmen, and the 
people about him ; and his profits are about cent. per cent. He kills one 
or two bullocks every day, and all the superabundant meat is sold in the 
shop. On one occasion, a poor man who had been to the shop passed 
by, with a very discontented air, the front of the house where Quiroga 
was sitting. The latter called him, and asked what was the matter ; he 
replied that the Capataz (bailiff) had refused to sell him a medio’s-worth 
(23d.) of beef. “ Where is your money?” replied Quiroga ; and the 
man gave it him. He was then ordered to throw his lazo over the horns of 
a fine fat ox in the corral, worth seventeen dollars ; he did so, and brought 
the animal to Quiroga, who said, “ Take him home, and kill him, that 
you may eat beef.” The poor man in astonishment replied, “ But, my 
patron, how shall I ever be able to pay for it ?”—~ Why,” replied his 
patron, “I have got your medio, and you have got my ox ; if you are 


_ satisfied, I am ; if not, I will return the money.” The man went away, 


and spread the story of Quiroga’s generosity far and near, who was more 
than repaid for his outlay in the popularity it procured him. 

Such apparently generous acts as these, occasionally performed, enable 
Quiroga to rule, as an absolute and merciless tyrant, withimpunity. No one 
dares to steal any of hisherds, which wander unmolested through the plains ; 
but if, by chance, such a thing occurs, the offender is instantly brought 
to his house, and shot without mercy, frequently upon the bare allega- 
tion of a spiteful neighbour. But, as a compensation for this, the country 
people are allowed to plunder any of the other estate-holders (estancieros ) 
whenever they can, with impunity. Quiroga is also a perfect adept in 
gambling, and constantly contrives to have some of the militia officers 
in his house to enable him to follow this pursuit, which he also turns 
to profit, and wins the whole of their money ; after which he lends them 
more, only to follow the same road ; and thus he contrives to keep them 


598 South American Sketches : (Dec. 


continually in his debt. Sometimes he will remit a portion of what is 
owing ; so that, partly by fear and partly by affection, he keeps them all 
dependant on him. Whenever he visits the town of La Rioja, he is almost 
constantly at the billiard-table, and is the best player there. Occasionally, 
when a player has nearly lost a game, he will purchase his chance of him, 
and invariably turns the tables on his antagonist. 

While Quiroga was. leading the kind of life described above, the 
pedlar-governor, Agueros, was also busy in his department, making the 
most of his office, which he was conscious he only held at the pleasure 
of a demi-savage, who could depose him with the same facility with which 
he had placed him in power, whenever his caprice or interest prompted 
him soto do: The mint of the province consisted of a coarse wooden 
frame, through which a coarser iron screw worked with a double lever, 
weighted with lead. This rude machinery served to cut out the plan- 
chets, and also to stamp the coin, which was performed by the repetition 
of two or more strokes. A mud furnace, a hammer, and anvil, for 
making the plates from the ingots, a pair of hand-shears, and a small 
laminating-mill, worked by hand, completed the equipment. At this 
elegant establishment, the miners had formerly been permitted to have 
their bullion coined, at a moderate per centage ; but the governor now 
took the concern into his own hands, and coined for the state, buying the 
bullion of the miners at his own price. For gold he paid at the rate of 
14 dollars per ounce, which, when coined, produced him about 19 dollars, 
Silver he purchased at 6 doilars per mark, and it produced him 9 dollars 
in the state of coin. And against this species of plunder the poor miners 
had no remedy ; for, if they-went to the shopkeepers to purchase goods 
with their bullion, they had to pay for them at a greatly increased rate. 
About a twelvemonth after the period of Agueros taking the coining 
department into his own hands, a man in Chilecito finding what enor- 
mous profits were made by the governor, contrived to procure some 
files, hammers, chisels, stamps, and an anvil, with the intention of 
making money on his own account; but the governor hearing of it, 
went and took possession of the whole plant without ceremony. 

Things were in this state until about the beginning of June 1825, 
when the wife of the governor, Agueros, wrote a letter (a great indica- 
tion of superior education) to a friend in the Llanos, in which she de- 
scanted very freely on the character of Quiroga, saying, that both her 
husband and herself considered him as a savage gaucho, without any 
pretensions to the station which he held. This letter, by some chance, 
fell into the hands of Quiroga, who opened it without hesitation, and 
read it. He then sealed it up again, and sent it forward to its destina- 
tion; so that nothing was known of the discovery he had made. But, 
from that moment, he determined in his own mind the deposition of 
the governor, for which he only wanted a convenient plea. This scon 
presented itself. On the pretence that it was necessary to lay out a new 
town for the residence of the miners, who were now increasing in num- 
bers, Quiroga caused it to be intimated to the new governor that he 
wished this to be done. The governor, delighted at the idea of being 
able to execute his masteris wishes, and thus curry favour with him, 
proceeded to the performance of the task with all the fawning com- 
plaisance of a slave. He certainly selected the best situation for such a 
purpose, viz. the site of a small village called Anguinan, situated about 
a league to the south-west of Chilecito. This village, composed of a 


1828.} Facundo Quiroga, Governor of La Rioja. 599 


number of straggling huts, containing about 150 souls, descendants of 
the indigenous inhabitants, or Indians, of the country, was situated in a 
small plain, through which ran a fine rivulet, serving to water a number 
of corn-fields, vineyards, orchards, &c., disposed in irregular figures, 
according to the fancy of the owners. The governor now applied to 
these poor people for their title-deeds, or grant (merced ) from the king 
for the possession of their lands ; but they had none to produce, as they 
merely possessed them from their forefathers, by the right of inheritance, 
without ever considering that the King of Spain had any thing to do in 
the matter. This was sufficient for Agueros, who immediately turned 
them out of their possessions, without giving them any remuneration 
whatever, and commenced the business of laying out and cutting streets 
through the cultivated grounds of the poor Indians, which just at the 
period had green crops upon them. The consequence was that the cattle 
got in, and every thing was destroyed. The governor then returned to La 
Rioja, applauding himself on the dexterity of his plan, without reflecting 
on the misery of the poor families whom he bad reduced to a state of 
starvation. But retribution was hanging over his head. 

The Indians, as their only resource, went in a body to the Llanos, to 
complain to Quiroga of the outrage. The cunning soldier had from 
the first foreseen what would happen. Though he did not consider the 
misery the Indians endured as of the slightest importance, still it was an 
excellent pretext for crushing the governor; and he forthwith sent an 
order to Agueros to restore the Indians their possessions, which he com- 
plied with in fear andtrembling. About a week afterwards, Quiroga 
appeared in the suburbs of the town, at the head of about 200 gauchos ; 
and, ordering}them to helt, he rode forward to the governor’s house 
alone, where he dismounted at the door, and entered in a gaucho-dress. 


' Agueros immediately received him with the greatest humility, and 
- desired him tobe seated. “No!” replied Quiroga ; “ it does not become 


a vulgar countryman, so clownishly dressed, to sit down in the presence 
of my lord governor.” Quiroga’s pretended humility satisfied the 
governor that it was all over with him, and he began to deprecate his 
anger in the most abject terms. Two gauchos entered at this moment 
with a pair of fetters (grillos ), which, by Quiroga’s orders, they instantly 
placed upon the quondam governor, who was declared to be deposed ; 
and Quiroga then seated himself in his chair, saying, he did not now, 
break through the rules of etiquette, in sitting down, as the governor 
was once more a private citizen. He then commenced a strain of 
coarse invective on the deposed puppet — telling him ! of his villany 
with regard to the coin, swearing that he should pay the poor Indians 
the damage he had done them, and that he would never leave him till he 
had stripped him of all his ill-gotten plunder. This, however, was not 


to be got at ; for Agueros, who had been in the constant expectation of 


such a mischance as now befel him, had taken care to remove his pelf 
out of reach. He wasnow carried across the Plaza, and thrown into the 
common prison (which, in Spanish towns, is almost always opposite to 
the governor's house), amidst the shouts of the common people, who 
rejoiced over the fall of the petty tyrant—forgetting that he, by whose 
means he had been deposed, was a greater tyrant still. The province, 
now remained for upwards of a month without a governor, Quiroga 
transacting all the public affairs, without holding any cognizable situa- 
tion, except that of commandvr-in-chief. - 


600- South American Sketches : [ Dec. 


Nearly two months after the deposition of Agueros, he was suffered 
to retire from the province; and the Cabildo met for the purpose 
of electing a new governor. Their choice, 2s might have been expected, 
devolved upon Quiroga; but he again declined the honour, as an 
office he was inadequate to discharge with credit to himself, or benefit 
to the community. They sent a deputation to him a second time, 
but he still refused; and a third deputation was sent in vain. Like 
Cesar on the Lupercal,— 


“ They thrice presented him a kingly crown, 
Which he did thrice refuse.” 


In fact, Quiroga was not disposed to give up the actual power he possessed 
for any such puppet-like office. The Cabildo, finding that he was not 
to be prevailed upon, then sent him another humble deputation, saying 
that they felt themselves perfectly incompetent to the office of electing a 
governor, if he would not accept the offer; and they begged that he 
would name one for them. This was precisely what he had been aiming 
at; and he accordingly appointed to the office one of his ignorant gaucho 
neighbours—a man who could neither read nor write. When some of 
his confidants inquired of him the reason for so extraordinary an appoint- 
ment, he replied with much sang froid, “ A governor is a kind of 
animal, who will never cease to rob as long.as he has an opportunity ; 
no threat of punishment will deter him from it, or keep him honest. 
Now my friend, Silvestre Garban, would be as great a rogue in the 
office of governor as any other, but that, fortunately, he has been brought 
up entirely in the Llanos; so that he does not know how to steal any 
thing but cattle. Now, as there are no cattle to steal in the town of La 
Rioja, the presumption is that he will be an honest man, from want of 
temptation.” And, as Quiroga had predicted, Silvestre Garban proved 
a very excellent King Log sort of a governor; making his mark occa- 
sionally, when a public document required it—like the lion’s paw dipped 
in ink, recorded in the Turkish tale. 

At the period of which we are now speaking, the brave and patriotic 
citizens of Mendoca had, with admirable good sense and resolution, freed 
their native province from the species of tyranny which had so long been 
exercised, and their writers had incited the neighbouring province of San 
Juan to follow the example, so that a free government was established 
therein. About this time the war with Brazil had caused a national 
congress to be assembled in Buenos Ayres, to which the provinces sent 
two members each. They had hardly been in session three months 
when they received the news that the priests and fanatical party im San 
Juan, having conspired with the troops, had seized the person of the 
liberal governor, and formed a new despotism, on the old model, against 
the will of the people ; and, at the same time, calling on the neighbour- 
ing provinces to assist them in purging the land from infidelity and 
atheism (liberalism !). The province of San Juan borders on that of La 
Rioja; and therefore Quiroga, now the virtual governor of the latter, 
secretly rejoiced at the change which had taken place, so congenial to his 
own views, but hesitated to make any open manifestations, wishing to see 
the farther result. Immediately upon the receipt of this intelligence, the 
congress sent orders to Mendoca to march a body of troops forthwith to 
San Juan, for the purpose of restoring the liberal government, and 
punishing the fanatical authors of the revolution. The orders of the 


1828.] Facundo Quiroga, Governor of La Riga. 601 


congress were obeyed by the Mendocinos ; and a desperate battle took 
place in the environs of the town of San Juan, in which the fanatics, 
headed by a furious priest named Astorga, after fighting with all the fury 
which bigotry could inspire, were defeated and taken prisoners ; after 
which they were banished across the Andes to Chile. 

Some time after this, Colonel Araoz de la Madrid, a gallant officer in 
the service of Buenos Ayres, was sent to recruit for the Brazilian war in 
his native province (Tucuman), which bordered on that of La Rioja. 
Having delivered to the governor (Lopez) a large sum in dollars for 
bounty-money, the latter misapplied it; and La Madrid, in revenge, 
fomented a revolution amongst the indignant soldiery ; and, after a 
pitched battle with Lopez—who, being defeated and severely wounded, 
took refuge in Salta—he was elected governor in his room. The con- 
gress would gladly have punished La Madrid for this act ; but, as it was 
a time of public difficulty, and he was moreover a zealous advocate for 
Buenos Ayres, his offence was overlooked, and his new dignity con- 
firmed. 

Soon after this, the provinces of San Luis, La Rioja, Catamarca, San- 
tiago del Estero, and Cordova, entered into a sort of treaty of alliance, 
professedly in defence of their religion ; but, in reality, it was an agree- 
ment between their despotic governors to assist each other in maintaining 
their authority, in case congress should shew any disposition to put them 
down. Of Buenos Ayres, they entertained little dread, on account 
of the distance between them ; but the provinces of Tucuman and Salta 
were as thorns in their sides, on account of their vicinity, and the known 
liberal principles of their respective governors. A very short time 
elapsed before a quarrel took place between La Madrid and Quiroga ; 

_and, with all the bravery and confidence of a veteran warrior, the former 
“entered the territories of his enemy at the head of 200 men, and ap- 
-proached the Llanos, or plains of La Rioja, without any opposition, when 
he was suddenly met by Quiroga, at the head of 400 of his well-armed 
gauchos. The conflict was long and bloody, and, notwithstanding the 
disparity of numbers, La Madrid made frequent charges with such suc- 
cess that victory had well nigh declared for him; when a chance carbine-~ 
shot struck him in the sword-arm, and thus rendered defenceless, he 
was instantly sabred by several of his surrounding opponents ; on which 
his followers, struck with a sudden panic at seeing their hitherto invin- 
cible chief fallen, turned their bridles and fled. Upwards of sixty of 
Quiroga’s men perished in the battle, and darkness put an end to the 
pursuit. Quiroga bivouacked for the night round a large fire, surrounded 
by his people on the open plain ; and, in the morning, news was brought 
him that La Madrid, though dreadfully mangled, still breathed. Several 
of the gauchos started from their recumbent postures, and their half- 
unsheathed sabres announced their savage resolves. “ Stay!” cried 
Quiroga ; “by the Virgin of the Holy Rosary, I will cleave to the girdle 
the first man who moves. Ja Madrid is a gallant foeman; and, by 
Heaven, I am prouder of having conquered him than if I had been 
elected president of the congress. Let none harm him, and let him be 
treated with every mark of respect. Call all the surgeons of the province 
to his assistance, and, if they save his life, I will not forget their 
reward.” 
Thus did this barbarous chief exhibit a trait of magnanimity which 
could not have been exceeded in civilized life, and that towards the foe 
M.M. New Series —Vou. VI. No. 36. 4H 


602 South American Sketches. [Dzc. 


he had most reason to dread, at a time when, to hold up his finger 
would have sealed his fate, without any odium attaching to Quiroga 
himself. As soon as La Madrid could be removed, Quiroga caused him 
to be carried to his own house, and carefully attended for several months ; 
when, being in a state of convalescence, he gave him his passport and 
an escort, with which he reached in safety the province of Salta. Since 
that period, Quiroga has remained in a state of quietude ; and it is pro- 
bable that his authority will endure to the end of his life, as he will 
most likely conciliate the congress, rather than set them openly at defi- 
ance; and surrounded as he is by men of great physical powers, and 
equally great mental ignorance, who possess rude feelings of attach- 
ment to him from having been long accustomed to regard him as their 
protector, it would be no easy matter to extinguish his authority with 
the strong arm of power alone. A. G. 


STANZAS, 


Containing an exact and Jiteral Account of the Behaviour and Pate of ABRAHAM 
Isaacs, of Ivy Lane, who died of excessive Brandy. 


“ True 'tis a PT—PT ‘tis, tis true.’—SuAKsPeare, 


In IV-lane, of CT fame, 
There lived aman, DC; 
And AB 16 was his name— 

Now mark his history. 


Long time his conduct, free from blame, 
Did merit LOG; 

Until an “ evil spirit” came 
In the shape of O D V. 


«“O! that a man into his mouth 
Should put an NME, 

To steal away his brains:’—no drouth 
Such course from sin may free. 


Well, AB drank, the oT loon! 
And learned to swear, sans ruth ; 

And then he gamed, and UZ soon 
To DV8 from truth. 


And when his better 3 would cry, 
©! leave the O D V:” 

He’d only growl, “ ’Tis all my I,” 
Or hiccup, “ U B D——!” 


An hourly glass with him was play; 
He'd swallow that with phlegm: 

Judge what he’d MT in a day— 
« X PD Herculem.” 


a 


ie =. 


1828.] 


Stunzas. 


Of virtue none to sots, I trow, 
With FEKC prate ; 

And 0 of NRG could now 
From AB MN8. 


Who on good liquor badly dote, 
Soon poverty must know— 
Thus AB ina CD coat 
Was shortly forced to go. 


From poverty DCT he caught, 
And cheated not FU, 

For what he purchased paying 0, 
Or but an “I O U.” 


Or else, when he had tried B4 
To shirk a debt, his wits ; 

He'd cry, “ You shan’t wait NE more: 
Ill W, or quits.” 


Thus lost did 16 now APR: 
“Then said his wife, says she, 

“If U act so, your fate quite clear 
Is for 1 2 4C.” 


His inside soon was, out and out, 
More fiery than KN; 

And, while his state was thereabout, 
A cough CVR came.—Then 


He IPKQNA tried, 
And linseed T, and rue: 

But 0 could save him—so he died, 
As every 1 must 2. 


Poor wight! till black i’ th’ face he raved— 
"Twas PTS 2 C:— 

His latest spirit “ spirits” craved— 
His last words, “OO D V!” 


Morat. 


I sha’n’t SA to preach and prate, 
But tell U, if U do 

Drink O D V at such R8, 
Death will 4stall U 2. 


O U then who A Y Z have, 
Shun O D V asa wraith ; 
For ’tis a bonus to the grave, 


A & unto death. G. 


AH 2 


603 


[ 604 J [Dec. 


METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS: N°. III. 


Britisu Sub-ways. 


“ Thus far into the bowels of the land.” 


Amone the many projects for digging and diving, for mining and 
under-mining, for watering and lighting, and paving and building, 
which characterized those eventful years of speculation, from 1822 to 
the end of 1825, when so many of these schemes vanished into air, “ into 
thin air,” but, alas ! unlike Shakspeare’s cloud-capped towers, left many 
a “wreck behind,” that of Mr. Williams, for the erection of suB- 
ways in the British Metropolis, had there been a possibility of its 
accomplishment, would have been one of the most useful to the city, and 
acceptable to its inhabitants. When they are told that one of his great 
objects was to get to the sewers, the water, and the gas pipes, without 
breaking up the paving, we are quite sure that there is not a hackney- 
coachman, or a cabriolet-driver in the metropolis, who would not have 
voted for, and subscribed, in assistance of the measure. We have, our- 
selves, in the course of the last summer, driven up the Strand, and been 
baulked at every turning, till we came to Temple Bar, and were actu- 
ally compelled to go from Charing Cross to Chancery Lane, before we 
could find a clear way into Holborn, at a period when every minute 
was worth an hour to us. How did we then wish the rammers, and 
paviors, and diggers, at the bottom of their own sewers, and the pipers 
blown up with their own gas, and how sincerely did we lament the 
failure of Mr. Williams’s scheme, the excellence of which presented 
itself to our mind at every disappointment we experienced, as our half- 
turned horse was obliged to resume the direction of the Strand, at the 
appearance of those ropes, boards, and workmen, in St. Martin’s Lane, 
Bedford, Southampton, and Newcastle Streets, which forbade our access 
up any of these outlets, from the great thoroughfare between the two 
ends of the town. Mr. Williams’s project had for one of its objects the 
prevention of this inconvenience, which, since the introduction of gas, 
in addition to the water service, and the necessary repairs to sewers, has 
become so great as to be a general, and almost perpetual nuisance. In 
addition to this, however, the proposed plan was intended to convey, 
with greater certainty and purity, both water and gas into the houses of 
the metropolis. 

Anxious to accomplish so desirable ant object, Mr. Williams spent 
much time in taking levels, forming plans, calling general meetings, 
making estimates, petitioning parliament, and procuring patrons, but all 
would not do. Our water still comes in the same muddy stream—our 
gas-pipes are still buried just under the kemnels ; and there is not a 
defect in a sewer, however trifling, that does not stop the passage of a 
whole, and perhaps an important street, for days together, before it is 
repaired. The fact is, we believe, that such a project should precede, 
rather than follow, the construction of a city. Our metropolis has grown, 
by degrees,-to what it is; and it has been impossible to connect its 
different parts, so as to form one general and efficient drainage, or sup- 
ply. Previous to the construction of a city, the plan might be easily 
executed ; but, in the present extent of our metropolis, there is so much 


1828.] British Sub-ways. 605 


private property to be interfered with—the foundations of so many 
buildings to be endangered, and such a general turning i our pave- 
ment, that the undertaking appeared too extensive, and the project fell 
to the ground. As a memento, however, of his plan, Mr. Williams has 
published an octavo history of his exertions, which do great credit to his 
industry, talent, and perseverance, and which may one day form(data 
for a more successful attempt. The object of this volume being to pro- 
vide a remedy for the inconvenience the public suffer from breaking up 
of streets, &c., and to suggest various plans for the improvement of 
public works connected with our sewage, and the service of water and 
gas. Mr. Williams says, “ That it is respectfully submitted, not as a 
work calculated for criticism—not as claiming any merit for classical 
composition, or literary research, but as a plain tale, by a plain man, 
amusing himself in a little leisure from his accustomed labours, in search 
of increased comforts.” 

It is rather remarkable that as the ancients scarcely ever erected a city 
without sub-ways, that the moderns, who have imitated them in so many 
things of lesser moment, should have neglected their example in such an 
important point. It is not a great many years ago that Holborn was 
nearly one general stream of water and mud, from the want of drainage ; 
while, at the same period, a journey from Charing Cross to Temple Bar, 
in wet weather, was a source of peril from the same deficiency. The 
ancients, in erecting their sub-ways, built them certainly upon a more 
magnificent scale than modern means might have permitted ; yet they 
might have been judiciously imitated upon a smaller scale. In many 
instances these sub-ways of the ancients, as at Rome, remain a model of 
their wisdom in their municipal regulations, and are still an object of 
curiosity and interest to the scientific traveller. Mr. Williams’s project 
was to remedy this grand defect in our metropolis, and to erect dry tun- 
nels, forming habitations for the water and gas-pipes, and having 
communications with the sewers beneath, so as to resemble the CLoaca 
Maxima, or great water-way of imperial Rome. 

Warm in his project, and sanguine in his hopes of its.success, Mr. 
Williams issued prospectus after prospectus—summoned a public meet- 
ing, and procured introductions to the members of his Majesty’s govern- 
ment. His plan met the approbation of the scientific ; architects landed 
the sub-ways to the skies; his majesty’s ministers acknowledged the 
public benefit of the scheme, and “ Recommended the formation of a pub- 
lic company to carry it into effect.””. This was, in our opinion, a genteel 
way of getting rid of the question; as a theatrical manager dismisses a 
candidate for histrionic fame; with high encomiums on his talent, and a 
recommendation to try it in the country. 

In consequence of this recommendation, another meeting was sum- 
moned, at the City of London Tavern, when the Lonpon Sus-way 
Company was resolved to be formed, under the auspices of Alderman 
Garratt, who presided as chairman—an odd name, by-the-by, to have 
been president on such an occasion ;—but this resolution, unfortunately 
for the project, was never subsequently acted upon, and the project fell 
to the ground. 

To account for this “ suspension,” as Mr. Williams terms it, of his pro- 
ject, he subsequently states that “ A remarkable period in British his- 
tory, commenced some time after the sub-ways came forward. In con- 
sequence of the abundance of capital in the kingdom, and the want of 


606 Metropolitan Improvements : ‘[Dec. 


adequate employment for it, projects were presented daily, if not hourly, 
in the city, for both of these purposes. Seme of these were highly 
laudable, and gave activity to thousands ; while many, on the contrary, 
were suggested in fraud, for foreign purposes, and produced great dis- 
tress and ruin.” 

Just at this period Mr. Williams, who had procured a patent for his 
sub-ways, proposed to sell the license for the use of this patent in 
the different districts of the metropolis, and accordingly advertised the 
particulars of the sale, which was intended to have taken place, by pub- 
lic auction, at Garraway’s, on February 10th, 1825. The scheme of this 
sale does certainly appear to us a little Utopian; for we here find a pri- 
vate projector dividing, allotting, and selling, the different districts, like 
a potential monarch. He does not, however, attribute the failure of the 
sale to any deficiency in the plan itself. «“ At the period of-the sale,” 
says he, “numerous endeavours were made among the brokers, and 
others, at the Stock Exchange, to bring forward sub-ways with the view 
of speculating in the shares; but the object having nothing speculative 
in it, they could not succeed.” A little farther he adds, “The immense 
quantity of these projects soon overwhelmed sub-ways. They were lost, 
and literally buried under a mass of evanescent matter, which, when 
cleared away at some future period, after the fever of speculative 
intoxication shall have subsided, will again appear like a mine of gold, 
for sober and enlightened construction.” Such was the end of the pro- 
ject as it was then brought forward ; and we feel very much inclined to 
agree with Mr. Williams, that the great cause of the failure of a plan, 
pregnant with such general utility, if properly and efficiently carried 
into effect, arose, perhaps, more from the circumstances of the times, 
than from any radical defect in the proposition. 

The nuisance, both private and public, of the present system must be 
too generally acknowledged, not to admit of the utility of some such 
project, and were its tendency to preserve the pavement of our streets, 
the only use to be derived from it, it would have our most hearty con- 
currence, and as large a subscription as our pockets could afford. That 
our pavement in itself is very frequently bad, there is no doubt; but a 
contractor has no chance, when his street is monthly, nay, weekly, liable 
to be disturbed by those autocrats of filth, the Commissioners of Sewers. 
The continual repairs that are necessary, and the frequent excavations that’ 
are made for this purpose, leaves the pavior nothing but hastily made 
ground, very frequently of soft materiel, to bed his granite upon ; and 
this is one main reason for a defective state of the pavement, which ren= 
ders it not only a nuisance, but, in many instances, absolutely dangerous. 
This subject has occupied the attention of many scientific men, while 
parochial and other authorities, constituted for the formation and repairs 
of streets, have made experiment after experiment, and have found the 
one only more successless than the last. Our streets are either clouded 
with dust, or inundated with mud, while, at every step our horses take, 
the unfortunate carriage perambulator runs the risk of dislocation, and’ 
the coach-makers are the only persons benefitted by the miscarriage of 
our road-makers. 

Upon this subject Mr. Bryan Donkin read a paper before the Society 
of Civil Engineers, in 1824, and Mr. William Deykes published some 
“ Considerations on the Defective State of the Pavement of the Metro- 
polis,” in the same year. 


Wites 


1828. ] British Sub-ways. 607 


The first of these gentlemen considers that the carting away the accus 
mulation of mud, occasions a very great portion of the defect in our 
pavement. <“ Few are aware,” says he, “ of the source whence, the vast 
quantities of mud are derived, which we see daily taken from the 
streets ; but the truth is, the foundations of our pavements are actually 
carried away as a nuisance ;” and this is, no doubt, in a great measure; 
the cause, but were the mud not carted away, it would be blown away 
on the first day dry enough to convert it into dust. The second gentle- 
man gives a most feeling description of the state of our streets, the truth 
of which must be acknowledged. “ The dust, in dry weather,” says 
Mr. Deykes, “is greatly annoying, and highly injurious to goods and 
furniture, to say nothing of personal feeling and annoyance, in having 
the eyes blinded, and the mouth choked therewith; and no sooner is 
there a wet day, than the streets become ponds of mud. By the time 
the accumulation is almost intolerable, the scavenger commences the an- 
noyance of sweeping, and scooping it into his carts, and splashing and 
bespattering every passer-by, not prudent enough to cross out of his 
way, and be content to be covered over the ankles with mud, rather 
than over neck and ears.” Now nobody can deny the nuisances com- 
plained of in this feeling description, by Mr. Deykes, but we must say a 
word or two in favour of our friends the “mud-larks,” as the scaven- 
gers are facetiously termed, and rescue them from the unmerited blame 
of unskilfulness, of which Mr. Deykes would accuse them ; for, we 
confess, we have often been led to admire the adroitness with which the 
slush and mud is thrown into the carts by these purveyors of cleanliness ; 
and many, as must of necessity, being Londoners, have been the times 


- that we have passed these mud carts, in the midst of the operation, 
although we may have trembled as we have seen the uplifted scoop 


brimful of M‘Adam’s mud, and heard it slush into the vehicle, yet we 


_ never remember to have received a spot of its contents to soil either our 


face or our clothes. No; the scavengers certainly perform this opera- 
tion scientifically, and it is our province to give men’ of science their 
due. That the cleverness with which this operation is performed is the 
effect of practice, and is considered as “ something’ in the science of 
scavenging, may be deduced from the fact of our having once over- 
heard two of these persons discussing the merits of a contemporary— 
when one of them exclaimed, “‘ Why, yes, he’s clever enough, as you 
say—he may do very well for the broom—but, bless ye, hell never do 
for the scoop.” This is a distinction in scientific operation, of which, 
perhaps, our readers in general are not aware. They are, however, per-= 
fectly sensible that scavenging is not the only instance in which men of 
science throw mud at each other, as witness the many learned and scien~ 
tific controversies, in all nations, and in all ages. 

In addition to the efforts of Mr. Telford, and M‘Adam, we have 
“MCarthy’s Patent Pavement”—iron pavement—“ Robertson’s Prac- 
tical Instructions ;” “ Maceroni’s Hints to Paviors ;” and a variety of 
other works and inventions, that prove how widely the nuisance has 
been felt, and how deeply it has been considered, by many who are well 
qualified to advise upon the subject. But we are ourselves convinced 
that the pavement of no metropolis can be certain of good preservation, 
while continually liable to disturbance, occasioned by the repairs of the 
works beneath it; and nothing would prevent this perpetual nuisance,’ 
but the adoption of sub-ways, similar to those proposed by the present’ 
plan. The disturbance of pavement for these purposes alone, annually 


. 


608 Metropolitan Improvements : [Drc. 


costs the enormous sum of 26,330/., taking an average of the last seven 
years, and this expense is incurred for removing pavement which does 
not require repair, but which is only rendered necessary to get at the 
pipes and sewers beneath it. 

It seems to have been the demolition of the London Bridge water- 
works, in 1822, and the works resulting therefrom, that first suggested 
the idea of the sub-ways. At this period the streets of the city were 
rapidly torn up, to remove the pipes of the old company, and lay down 
new ones for the New River water; so that the entire city appeared to 
be preparing for a siege, and nothing but submission to the evil was 
allowed to the universal lamentation of the people. 

« At this moment,” says Mr. Williams, “ when Cornhill was laid 
open, and the dirt piled six feet high on both sides of the streets, the 
subject revived in the mind of, and the remedy presented itself to, the 
author and compiler of this volume, who, in October 1822, took out a 
patent, “ For a Method to Prevent the Frequent Removal of the Pave- 
ment and Carriage Paths, for Laying Down and Taking Up Pipes, and 
for other Purposes, in Streets, Roads, and Public Ways.” 

What necessity, or, indeed, right, there could be for a patent for the 
mere construction of passages under ground we are at a loss to guess ; 
and, we think, there might have been found more effectual, as well as 
more proper means for remunerating Mr. Williams, had his plan been 
carried into execution, than those which the exclusive and generally 
monopolizing rights of a patent could bestow ; and the object proposed 
was, certainly, one of such general utility, that we can scarcely imagine 
there would have been an individual who would have excited John 
Bull’s proverbial privilege of “ grumbling,” at any Rate which its adop- 
tion might have imposed. 

In the construction of these sub-ways, Mr. Williams proposed to open 
the ground to the required depth, say of ten feet; to lay a course of 
bricks, stones, or iron, nearly level, or rather curved, on the ground, 
five feet wide, with drains to go into the sewers ; to raise a wall on each 
side, five feet high, and arch it over, so as to leave the heighth, in the 
centre of it, seven and a half feet clear ; openings of nine inches were to 
be left in each upright wall, at the distance of every twenty feet, three 
feet from the base ; from these openings, tunnels were to be carried to 
the sides of the streets, and at the ends of the tunnels, gratings, or doors, 
were to be placed, to be opened from the inside ; while similar openings 
in the top of the arch, at the distance of every hundred feet, were to 
serve for the admission of light and air. Doorways, five feet high, by 
three feet wide, were to be placed in each side wall, where these open- 
ings were made. 

The entrances to these sub-ways were proposed to be at the sides, by 
doors and passages, wherever required from the houses and buildings in 
the streets and roads, in the same manner as into cellars that are under 
the streets and the main pipes, for every purpose, might be placed 
therein, on iron cradles, or otherwise ; and the service pipes, for the 
supply of the public, through the tunnels, or openings, in the side walls. 
These passages might also be formed double, one for water, and one for 

as. 
« From these Sus-ways, and Passages,’ Mr. Williams observes, 
* access may be had into the sewers and drains, or springs, and wells of 
water ; and for almost every purpose for which the pavement, and car- 
riage paths in the streets, roads, and public ways, have hitherto been 


1828.] British Sub-ways. 609 


opened.” And this observation the author and patentee finishes with 
the following quotation :— 
** Thine was the work, Almighty Father, 
The thought, the gift, was thine.” 

This is almost equivalent to making the Supreme Being chief com- 
missioner of sewers. 

After this description, Mr. Williams has favoured us with plans and 
sections of his proposed constructions, all formed upon the most scien- 
tific principles, and all of which shew the minute attention he has given 
to his subject. 

By the variety of matter, and of evidence which he has collected 
together, the impurity of the present supply of water to the metropolis is 
fully proved ; and, as far as human conjecture can go, it certainly 
appears that the construction of these sub-ways, by affording passages 
for the pipes, without their being bedded in the earth, would greatly 
remedy this defect ; since, by the investigation of our supply of water 
in 1826, when it seemed satisfactorily proved (such are the words of the 
report), that we cooked our victuals, mixed our wine, and made our 
punch with water, that was little better than poison, it was stated in 
the Parliamentary Water Report, that the iron pipes separate themselves 
by contraction, in 300 yards, and a considerable leakage of water takes 
place during its passage under the streets, after it leaves the reservoirs, 
as appears from the evidence of Mr. Milne, and others, in that report. 
If, then, the pipes let the water out on an average at every 300 yards, 
this escape, being multiplied by the number of miles the pipes extend 
to in London, the purest water going into the pipes, at the fountain 
head, will become foul, from the entrance of the soil and mud in which 
the pipes lay, at the apertures where the water goes out. It, therefore, 
becomes necessary to place the whole of the pipes in clear, dry, sub- 
ways, to prevent the fine water being contaminated in its flow from the 
fountain to the table. 

All this appears reasonable, and that the plan would, likewise, tend 
to the preservation of pipes—the prevention of the escape of gas, and 
afford a hundred other advantages, which are denied by the present sys- 
tem, is certain. The arches might, likewise, be made to afford a more 
solid bed to the pavement, and much greater facilities might be given to 
the obtaining of water in cases of fire. 

Such are the manifold advantages which the plan for sub-ways pre- 
sent, and we regret that we think we see far more imposing obstacles 
to their construction than the mere failure of an attempt to form a com- 
pany. We allude to the interference with private property—to the vast 
number of vaults with which every street in London is intersected, in 
many instances, meeting each other ; and also, to the evident danger 
that must result to the foundations of a multitude of houses in the metro-~ 
polis—for the arguments of Mr. Williams, on this point, are unfortu- 
nately more than met by the fact, that even in the repairs, and construc- 
tions of the present sewers, buildings are very frequently endangered. 
As instances of this, look to the two houses lately shored up opposite 
the Green Park, and two or three in one of the streets leading out of 
Oxford Street, in each of which instances, the Commissioners had nearly 
to rebuild the premises which their excavations had injured. We are 

afraid, therefore, that, as far as the interior of the Cities of London and 
Westrainster are concerned, they must be left to the present authorities 
M.M. New Series —Vou. VI. No.36. 41 


610 Metropolitan Improvements. [ Dec. 


of the Commissioners of the Sewers, who, to give them credit, do. every 
thing their great powers will allow them to do, to remedy the defect of 
the present sewerage of the metropolis—and would be inclined to do a 
great deal more, but that their powers, despotic as they are, are limited to 
the repair and the rebuilding of old sewers. They are not only debarred 
from constructing new ones, however necessary they may be, but even 
from contributing to the expence, should any private individual be in- 
clined to undertake a work of the kind. A remarkable instance of this. 
occurred in the large sewer, which has lately been built in Catharine 
Street, in the Strand. There was a sewer, running from Russel Street, 
and Covent Garden, to the middle of Brydges Street, with no commu- 
nication into the Strand, and, consequently, with no sufficient drainage- 
The proprietors of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, were willing to re- 
build this sewer, and to make it effectual for the whole neighbourhood, 
if the commissioners would enable them to do it, by constructing a 
sewer to communicate with the Strand. This, however, their powers 
would not permit them to do, as there never had been a sewer there 
. before. Their surveyors acknowledged the necessity, and the Commis- 
sioners regretted their inability. At length, that an object’ so desirable 
to the whole neighbourhood should not be abandoned, it was agreed, on 
the part of the Commissioners, that they should take up, and re-build, 
that part of the sewer which the proprietors of the theatre proposed to 
construct, and which their powers enabled them to do, only because 
there had been a sewer there before ; and that the proprietors should 
build the connecting new sewer to the Strand, without which everything 
would have been ineffectual; and thus this very desirable object was 
attained. ; 

But whatever obstacles the present part of London may offer to the 
accomplishment of this plan of Mr. Williams, there can be none in the 
numerous and increasing neighbourhoods which are growing up around 
it, and increasing its boundaries. When we see squares and streets, 
rising simultaneously in all our out-skirts, we regret that the Legislature 
has not compelled the adoption of some such plan; and, we most ear- 
nestly recommend to the agents of Lord Grosvenor, and of the Bishoprick 
of London, to see that some effectual method is adopted, to ensure the 
health, convenience, and comfort, of the future tenants of the magnificent 
places which are building in the neighbourhoods of Pimlico and Bays- 
water. 

To these rising and increasing neighbourhoods we would recommend 
Mr. Williams to direct his attention. There his plan is feasible, and its 
adoption so much to the advantage of the estate, that every landlord 
ought to give it his serious attention ; and we are assured ‘no tenant 
would begrudge the payment of a rate, which was to ensure him so 
much convenience. 

At all events, the public ought to be obliged to Mr. Williams, for the 
industry with which, in his volume, he has collected everything that has 
been said and done in the metropolis of late years, with regard to 
sewage, gas, water, and pavement, perfection in all of which is so 
essential to a great city. Though upon water, it is but a dry subject to 
have spent so much time upon ; and we heartily hope that some future 
period will, at least, see a partial adoption of his plans, and that the 
supply of pure water will enable him to mix the “dulce” with the “ utile” 


of a scheme, which might be rendered so beneficial to the inhabitants of 
London. Ss. S. 


Oe Ss ee 


1828.] ( 611 ) 
ROUSSZAU: HIS ELOISE, AND CONFESSIONS. 


THERE never yet existed an author who so completely divided the suf- 
frages of the literary world as Rousseau. By one party, he has been cried 
up as an angel ; by another, he has been written down a demon. One 
class says he is above all praise ; another, beneath all contempt. This 
reader finds in his ethics the very perfection of nature ; that, the utmost 
plausibility of art. Meanwhile, all agree in this one point—namely, that, 
whether justly or unjustly, he has exercised a despotic influence over his 
age; taught the most indifferent to feel, the shallowest to think, the 
most abject to stickle for freedom of thought and action. Unlike Vol- 
taire—who disseminated his most pestilent doctrines, and broke down 
the barriers of truth, reason, and moral and religious rectitude, by dint 
of searching irony—Rousseau enforces his opinions by the most winning 
and specious sensibility. He reaches the reason through the heart, or 
as he himself says, in his mistaken character of Lord Edouard, “ C’est 
le chemin des passions qui m’a conduit a la philosophie.” We do not, in 
the following cursory sketch, intend to be the apologists of this extraor- 
dinary writer—to palliate his glaring obliquities of thought, his insidious 
sentiments, or distorted truisms: these sufficiently condemn themselves 
without our aid; all that we here profess to do is to account for their 
origin, to trace their progress, and to shew how, notwithstanding their 
apparent moral beauty, they led, as they must always lead, from sophis- 
try to doubt, from doubt to despair, from despair to utter, irretrievable 


desolation. 


From his earliest infancy, Rousseau, who inherited from nature the 
utmost fragility of constitution—which, by the way, is one of the strong- 
est fosterers of intellect—was, by the force of circumstances, thrown 
upon himself for his amusements. At an early age, he was apprenticed 
toa clock-maker at Geneva, whom he describes, in his Confessions, as a 
man just sufficiently intellectual for his occupation, but nothing more. 
With this person he could of course hold no communion—no interchange 
of thought or sentiment ; his extreme delicacy of frame, nervous to a 
degree bordering at times upon madness, equally forbade his engaging in 
the usual sports of childhood, and he was consequently thrown upon 
books for his recreation ; which books, had they been supplied to him 
by some sound, well-ordered, and enlightened individual, might, in due 
course of time, have given a philosopher instead of a sophist to the 
world. Unluckily, they were all, with one or two exceptions, of a chival- 
rous and romantic cast—there was little or no equipoise to counteract 
their effect; and it may readily be conceived what impression such 
works, fascinating at any period of life, must have made upon the 
unformed mind of a youth, who had never known the salutary restraints 
of scholastic discipline, had never been taught to bridle his passion, to 
tame his enthusiasm, or square his imagination agreeably to the dictates 
of a healthy judgment. Of course, the first effect produced by such 
books was a disgust for his mechanical occupation. We do not remember 
the precise way in which this aversion shewed itself, or whether Rous- 
seau’s father were living at the time ; but we distinctly recollect that the 
embryo sophist ran away from his employer, and pursued his course, 
unaccompanied, except by a bounding heart, and a slight—a very slight 
—stock of money, over the heaths and mountains of his native land. 
In one of these excursions, he chanced to light upon two young ladies, 

412 


612 Rousseau : [ Dec. 


whom he assisted over a running stream, and at whose house—“ si rité 
audita recordamur’—he spent one or two delightful days. This incident, 
though trifling and scarcely worth mention in itself, is important as it 
regards Rousseau. His ever-creative mind, fascinated by the courtesy 
of these fair Unknowns, at once robed them in drapery selected from the 
wardrobe of a well-filled fancy ; and, as the reality of their appearance 
wore off, it laid the foundation of that beautiful idealism, which Madame 
de Warrens strengthened, Madame de Houdetot confirmed, and which 
afterwards shone forth, to the admiration and regret of thousands, in the 
unequalled character of Eloise. 

It was some time after this rencontre, that, fatigued with walking, 
hungry, penniless, and dispirited—the past wretched, the future a blank 
—the young Rousseau knocked for charity at the gate of a good-natured 
widow lady, named De Warrens, who at once, with all the generous 
inconsiderateness of a woman, listened to his petition, gave him good 
advice, supplied him with food and money, and sent him home. To this 
acquaintance—thus strangely commenced—must be traced much, indeed 
the greater part, of those singular obliquities in judgment and feeling 
which deformed the otherwise acute mind of Rousseau. Circumstances, 
or as he himself would call it, destiny, threw him, some years after- 
wards, when a youth of one or two and twenty, for the second time into 
the hands of this lady. But, alas! at this period his acquaintance was not 
without dishonour. By degrees he secured for himself an interest in 
her heart, which, however, in the headlong infatuation of the moment, 
he was content to share with another. From this hour, his mind received 
a warp ; from this hour, he learned to become sophistical, in order to justify 
his own excesses, and opinions insincere at first, acquired by long habit, 
and by being perpetually brooded over, an air of decided truth 
The daily romance of his life—for Rousseau now lived wholly with 
Madame de Warrens, unoccupied, except in rambling about his sublime 
neighbourhood, where he familiarized himself with the loftiest forms of 
natural beauty, and fed and strengthened a strong but diseased mind— 
confirmed these opinions ; until, at length, all that was sound and ster- 
ling in thought gave place to art and sophistry. This meditative and 
impassioned mode of life, which, while it strengthens the sensibility, 
wholly unfits it for society, was pursued by Rousseau for many years. 
Occasionally, indeed, he visited Paris, where his exquisite relish for 
music, and the circumstance of his having composed a successful opera; 
procured him admittance into the highest circles; but his mind could 
not adapt itself to the etiquette of a court, his pride, too, forbade all 
approach to friendship, and. he lived a hermit even within the atmos- 
phere of Versailles. Before this, we should observe, he had, from some 
cause or other, separated himself from Madame de Warrens, and now 
lodged in the house of a Swiss family, with one member of which, a 
girl named Theresa, about nineteen years of age, he carried on a dis- 
honourable intercourse. As if this in itself were not sufficiently degrad- 
ing, he rendered it still more so, by sending the poor offsprings of his 
guilt to the Foundling Hospital at Paris; upon some plausible plea, 
which he had the insufferable audacity to defend in conversation, and 
also at considerable length in his “Confessions.” Meanwhile, to satisfy 
his notions of independence, and secure what'he called “ freedom of 
thought and action,” he employed himself in copying music, by which 
drudgery he contrived to earn a decent subsistence up to the moment 


“s 
; 
‘ 
, 


1828. ] his Eloise, and €cnfessions. 613 


when he was taken under the especial protection of the august family of 
Montmorenci. Shortly after his introduction to this family, at their 
express desire, conveyed to him in the most flattering terms, Rousseau 
quitted Paris, and went to reside with them at a small cottage, built for 
him near their own mansion ; where, partly to beguile leisure, partly to 
put forth his peculiar notions on all subjects where the heart is concerned, 
he engaged in the composition of Eloise, which, when published one or 
two years afterwards, turned the hearts and heads of France, and ren- 
dered its author an object of universal attraction. 

It was about this period that the fatal warp in judgment, of which we 
have before spoken, put forth in Rousseau’s mind all its most diseased 
and humiliating eccentricities. Nursed in solitude, he had formed notions 
of friendship which reality was sure to disappoint. He had expected to 
meet in life with the “ faultless monsters’ of fancy. Every fresh 
acquaintance was accordingly hailed at first with the utmost enthusiasm, 
which, however, soon subsided ; disgust ensued, then suspicion, then 
alienation, and, finally, invincible aversion. It was in this way that his 
connexion with Diderot, D’Alembert, Voltaire, Saint Lambert, Grimm 
(to whose gossiping memoirs we owe so much delightful scandal), and 
a hundred others, began: in this way, too, it terminated. Even the 
noble family of the High Constable—to whom Rousseau was indebted 
for almost every comfort his hypochondriacal temperament would permit 
him to enjoy—were not secure in his mind from reproach. This evinced 
itself in the most petty and humiliating manner. If they ever invited 
him to the chateau, it was, he said, to make a butt of him; if they 
respected his infirmities and his solitude, they treated him, he would add, 
with contempt: either way, they were sure to be wrong, and himself 
the injured party. Such feelings—which, though carried to the extreme 
in Rousseau, are by no means restricted to him—are the necessary results 
of an ill-balanced temperament. While youth lasts, they are in some 
degree kept under by the generous buoyancy, and freedom from distrust, 
of that age ; but as years roll on, and the simplicity of life becomes dis- 
coloured with the taint of the world, the counteracting power is lost, and 
the mind compelled to drift headlong at the mercy of a wild, capricious, 
and jaundiced disposition. Rousseau’s invariable defect was the substi- 
tution of feeling for principle. He had few speculative opinions inde- 
pendently of sentiment: this with him was every thing ; it made him the 
leading writer of his age, and it made him a wretch. He seemed altogether 
to throw overboard the notion that man is as much a creature of reason 
as of sensibility ; he objected to Hume that he was dispassionate, and to 
Voltaire that he was a wit—as if such peculiarities were not strictly 
within the province of nature, as much, and even more so, than his own 


forced and heated fancy. But he paid the penalty—and a dreadful 


- penalty it was—of this infirm quality of mind. After hurrying from 


place to place—from Geneva to the Hermitage, from the Hermitage to 
the Boromean islands ; after being driven from one country with con- 


‘tempt, and received in another with enthusiasm ; after wandering for 


years over Europe, and even venturing into the extreme recesses of 
Wales—this poor, wretched misanthrope—alone, forlorn, deserted in his 
age, owning kindred with none, rejecting pity with scorn, and repaying 
kindness with distrust; a pensioner, yet professing independence ; a 
slave, yet a braggart of his freedom—returned once again to Paris, from 
which, after a brief, restless stay, he finally set out for one of the adjacent 
provinces, there to close his eyes and die. 


614 Rousseau : [ Dec. 


The manner of his death has been variously related. Some say that 
he committed suicide ; others, that he was attacked with a fit of ve, thurs 5 
others, that he fell a victim to that unconquerable dejection which for 
years had been preying on and withering the energies of his mind and 
body. In this state of doubt we shall, as a matter of course, incline to 
the charitable side, and take as our guide a slight memoir pen- 
ned a few days after his decease, and widely circulated throughout 
Paris. According to this narrative, Rousseau had been ailing for some 
weeks ; but it was not until within.a day or two of his death that he 
anticipated the slightest danger. His love of nature—and this, be it 
said to his honour, was an enthusiastic passion that neither age nor 
infirmity could quench—remained with him to the last. He rambled 
daily to a summer-house situated at the bottom of his garden, and there, 
seated with some favourite book in his hand, would send his thoughts 
abroad into eternity, on whose threshold he was even then unconsciously 
standing. A few friends who lived near him, and who, by respecting 
his infirmities, had, somehow or other, contrived to preserve his good 
opinion, occasionally called in to see him; and to them only was his 
approaching change apparent: he himself was alternately sanguine and 
desponding to the last. On the morning of his dissolution, he had risen 
sooner than usual, and after passing the earlier parts of the day in pain, 
grew considerably better towards evening, and requested to be wheeled 
out in a low garden-chair towards his favourite summer-house. The day 
until twelve o'clock had been clouded, but it cleared up at noon, and 
the freshness of the air, the hum of the insects, and the fragrant perfume 
of the flowers as they lifted up their heads after the rain, revived the 
languid spirits of the invalid. For a few minutes he remained absorbed 
in thought, in which state he was found by a neighbour who had acci- 
dentally called in to pay him a visit. “ See,” said Rousseau, as he 
approached, “ how beautifully the sun is setting! I know not why it 
is, but a presentiment has just come over me, that I am not doomed to 
survive it. Yet I should scarcely like to go before it has set, for it will 
be a satisfaction to me—strange, perhaps, as it may seem to you—that 
we should both leave the world together.” His friend (it is he himself 
that relates the story) was struck by the singular melancholy of this 
remark, more especially as the philosopher’s countenance bore but too 
evident an impress of its probable truth. Accordingly, he strove with 
officicus kindness to divert the stream of Rousseau’s thoughts: he talked 
to him of indifferent matters, hoping thereby that he would regain his 
cheerfulness, but was concerned to find that every attempt was vain. 
Rousseau, at all times an egotist, was now solely occupied in the con- 
templation of himself and his approaching change. His thoughts were 
immoveably fixed on death: he felt, he repeatedly exclaimed, that he 
was fast declining ; and, every now and then, after closing his eyes for 
a minute or so, would languidly open them again, as if for the purpose 
of remarking what progress the sun had made towards the west. 
He remained in this state of stupor for a considerable time, when 
suddenly he shook it off, gazed about him with nearly all his wonted 
animation, and after bursting into a feeble rhapsody about his unweéaried 
love for nature, turned full towards the sun, with the devotional 
aspect of a Parsee. By this time, the evening had far advanced, and 
his friend endeavoured to persuade him to return into the house. But 
no; his last moments, he was resolved, should be spent in the open air. 
And they were so. Scarcely had the sun set, when the eyes of Rousseau 


‘< 
e 


1828.] his Eloise, and Confessions. 615 


began also to close; his breath grew thicker, and was drawn at longer 
intervals ; he strove to speak, but finding the effort vain, turned towards 
the friend at his elbow, and pointed with his hand in the direction of the 
red orb, which just at that moment dropped behind the horizon. This 
was his last feeble movement: an instant longer, and Rousseau had 
ceased to live. 

We stop not to detail the particulars of the sensation that his death 
occasioned throughout France; but, contenting ourselves with this 
brief and meagre, but impartial memoir, come at once to the 
Gonsideration of his character as an author. And here, if we could 
forget the insidious principles that every where pervade his works, and 
lurk like thorns beneath the flowers of his intellect, our task would be 
one of unmixed praise. But we cannot do so; a regard to the decencies 
of life compels us to remember that the writings of Rousseau teem with 
the most pestilential doctrines, couched in language so beautiful, so elo- 
quent, that the fancy is flattered, while the judgment is wheedled on to 
its destruction. The Eloise—that unequalled model of style and grace 
—is full of a certain captivating simplicity that seems the inspiration of. 
an unsophisticated nature. But it sets out on wrong principles ; it 
requires the reader to grant that female modesty and virtue are consistent 
with immoral indulgencies, that vice is only vice when detected, and 
that the heart is the best and most correct moral guide through life. 
This last is an extravagant Utopian doctrine, at variance with principle, 
at variance with all that has made society what it is, and still contributes 
to preserve its decorum. Yet it is the key to unlock the mysteries of 
Eloise. The heroine is there represented as a young lady full of super- 
lative sensibility, without judgment, without principle, though eternally 
boasting of both. Attached enthusiastically to Saint Preux, the friend: 


_ and instructor of her youth, she is yet compelled, by the force of circum- 


stances, to link herself and fortunes to an atheist. By this person she has 
a large family ; but, though guiltless of infidelity towards him, her mind 
has received a taint: she is, in fact, a speculative adultress, from whose 
impassioned soul the wife is unable to root out the mistress. Her very 
last letter—that affecting composition which it is scarcely possible to 
read without tears—though dated from a death-bed, breathes the spirit 
of guilty and incurable infatuation. To make matters worse, the 
object of this infatuation returns, after a long absence, from abroad ; 
and, notwithstanding that his presence must be a perpetual memento of 


_the past, replete with danger, Madame de Wolmar (the married name 


of Eloise) receives him with unfeigned ecstasy, and not only insists on 
his taking up his abode exclusively with her, but (grateful, no doubt, 
for the valuable moral principles which he had instilled into her own 
mind) is indiscreet—not to say mad —enough to propose him as a tutor 
to her children. As if her own invitation were not suflicient, 
her husband is persuaded to add his intreaties, even though that 
husband has been previously made acquainted with the circum- 
stance of Saint Preux’s former intimacy with his wife. Now all this, 
We roundly assert, is monstrous, and has no prototype in nature. When 
we say no prototype, we would be understood to mean that it has never 
been, and never will be, found connected with that refined sensibility 
and exquisite sense of decorum with which Rousseau has invested these 
inconsistent creations of his fancy. A wife anxious for her children’s 
morals, proud of her husband, and passionately devoted to the pure and 


616 | Rousseau : [ Dec. 


simple enjoyments of home, would never peril her own reputation, or 
that of her family, by encouraging an attachment framed in guilt, and at 
variance with the most obvious duties. If, however, she did encourage 
such attachment, she would not rest satisfied, as Eloise—and herein 
lies an additional violation of nature—is represented to have been, with 
the mere theoretical enjoyments of guilt: she would at once reduce 
speculation to practice. In like manner, a husband described as being 
endowed with an-almost romantic sense of honour, and even with a scep- 
tical turn of mind that had its origin in principle, would never, consist- 
ently with these qualities, look with indifference on the hazardous con- 
dition of a wife who trod daily on a precipice enwreathed with flowers : 
he would either snatch her from the brink, or perish with her. But, 
supposing he relied on her virtuous self-possession for her safety, he 
would then shew himself utterly unacquainted with the human heart ; 
so that, in either sense, whether viewed as a man of the world, or a man 
of honour, (and Rousseau invests him with both qualities in the 
extreme), Monsieur de Wolmar must be set down as a picturesque but 
ludicrous anomaly. 

As the characters of the Eloise are unnatural, so also are the senti- 
ments—those, at least, which profess to adapt themselves to reality. 
They are couched, as we before observed, in sweet and honied language, 
yet inculcate the most pernicious morals. They bubble up with apparent - 
artlessness from a good and benevolent heart, yet are tainted all over 
with miasma. Vice is taught to lisp the sentiments of a generous wis- 
dom: the language of the Cecropian Pallas is mouthed by the Cyprian 
Venus ; Eloise prates of chastity, Saint Preux of reason, and both, of 
the charms of patriarchal innocence and simplicity. It was upon a 
principle pretty similar to this, and at least with equal sincerity, that 
the Gracchi complained of sedition. It has been the object with many 
undoubted moral authors, to paint the fascinations of vice in the most 
alluring colours, in order to contrast it afterwards with the penalties it 
must pay perforce to virtue, and thus to work out a more obvious 
and impressive homily. This is not the case with Rousseau. Vice, 
throughout his Eloise, robed in the garb of modesty, is triumphant ; 
she is even pitied, and monopolizes the tears due to her celestial 
adversary. Who, except by the determined efforts of a strong mind, 
ean bear for an instant to condemn Madame de Wolmar—the beautiful 
—the sensitive—the confiding? Who can forget her high-wrought, 
impassioned youth, her exceeding love of nature, of art, of all, in short, 
that contributes to the grace, the ornament, and the simplicity of exist- 
ence? Even up to the present moment, though years have elapsed, 
fashions have changed, and literature has diverged into new channels, 
she is ever visibly before us. The rocks of Meillerie breathe of her— 
Clarens is eloquent of her name—Vevay whispers it through all her 
woods—and the evening breeze, as it sighs over the blue waters of 
Geneva, repeats the last parting that rent the. souls of herself and her 
unforgotten lover. She has a distinct—a separate—an undivided exist- 
ence in our memories: for the Eloise, be it observed, is not a book to be’ 
laid aside with childhood ; it grows with our growth, and strengthens 
with our strength ; we abjure its principles, but, despite ourselves, we 
hug its sensibility to our hearts ; and even when we repudiate it as the 
true Liber Amoris, or Book of Love, it puts forth new claims to our 
admiration by its exuberant fulness of ideas, its ingenious sophistry, and 


1828.] his Eloise, and Confessions. 617 


faultless style. We own throughout its pages the presence of a powerful 
and analytical mind, that has studied—deeply studied—the origin and 
progress of even its slightest emotions, and noted them down, fresh as 
they rose, one after the other, from patient and acute investigation, with 
all the overwhelming earnestness of sincerity. . 

The “ Confessions,” like the “ Eloise,” abounds in impassioned sen- 
timent, but possesses in parts a vein of indignant sareasm, of which the 
other is devoid. It is the history—and a mournful one it is—of Rous- 
seau’s own mind; of his progress from childhood to age, from first 
enthusiasm to final despair. It is full of detailed accounts of his con- 
nexion with Madame de Warrens, Therese, and his unrequited fondness 
for Madame de Houdetot, the plain but faithful mistress of Samt Lam- 
bert. It is, in fact, the autobiography of an ardent, self-willed mind, 
at one time capable of the loftiest flights of virtue ; at another, equal to the 
most contemptible misdeeds. What can be more inconsistent than the 
candour that could afford to acknowledge that, in order to avoid punish- 
ment, it falsely accused a poor, unfriended maiden of theft, and the 
meanness that could stoop to act so? But, from first to last, Rousseau 
was the child of caprice: his actions were all impulses—they could 
never be relied on. 

With regard to the literary excellence of his Confessions, it 
is lavish and splendid in the extreme. Each chapter abounds 
{as suits occasion) in passages of unaffected simplicity, of glowing 
declamation, of energetic scorn, and sweet descriptive beauty. In proof 
of this, we may adduce Rousseau’s account of his first introduction to 
Madame de Houdetot—of his solitary walk every morning, to steal one 
kiss from this idol of his enthusiasm—of his proud expectations—un- 
wearied attachment, which neither absence on his own part, nor indif- 
ference on that of his mistress, could extinguish—and of his subsequently 
blighted hopes. Nor is that passage to be forgotten wherein he describes 
his ecstatic feeling of enjoyment, while sailing about at evening in his 
boat, far away from the sight of the hnman countenance, and surrounded, 
only by the grandest forms of nature—the towering mountain, the 
shrubless crag, the soft, luxuriant meadow, through whose daisied herb- 

“age wound a hundred silver rivulets, sparkling in the red sunset, and 
lapsing on their course in music and in happiness. Yet the whole pas- 
sage—beautiful as it undoubtedly is, and conceived in the rapt fervour 
of poetic inspiration—is false to nature, and equivocal in sentiment. It 
is in direct contradiction to the experience of ages—surely entitled to 
some little deference even from so headlong a reformer as Rousseau— 
which has left it on the records of a thousand volumes that the unrea- 
sonable indulgence of solitude is a factitious feeling, engendered by a 
diseased, and confirmed by an unsocial intellect. Amid passages, how- 
ever, of such doubtful (to say the least of them) sensibility, it is delight- 
ful to catch now and then glimpses of another and a nobler nature. It 
is like the bursting in of sudden sunshine upon November's gloom. Of 
such a redeeming character is Rousseau’s account of the periwinkle, 
which by accident he picked up in one of his Alpine botanical excursions, 
His simple exclamation of delight at the recognition, “ Ah, voila la 
spervenche !” goes deeper to the heart than a thousand elaborate homilies. 
It was not the mere flower itself, but the associations thereby engendered, 
that filled the philosopher’s eyes with tears, as he pressed it with fervour 
to his lips. Eight and thirty years before, while rambling with Madame 

M.M.. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 36. ise 


q 


618 Rousseau : (Dec. 


de Warrens through the same neighbourhood, he had gathered that 
very flower. Time had nearly effaced the circumstance from his mind ~ 
—age had crept over him—the object of his unceasing attachment had 
been long since consigned to earth ; but here was a talisman to recal the 
past ; this little simple mountain-plant bore about with it a magic power 
that could roll back the wheels of time, and array a haggard soul in the 
same sweet freshness which it wore in the morning of existence. As 
regards the pervading spirit of the Confessions, it is a work which sets 
‘out in a pensive vein of reflection, and terminates in the darkest, the 
fiercest misanthropy. Yet, whether for good or evil—whether to sear with 
scorn, or melt with tenderness—the spirit of a mighty genius moves along 
each page, free, undisguised, and unchartered as the wind. Indeed, had 
Rousseau shewn but half as much talent in palliating misery as he has 
shewn in forestalling and aggravating it, he would have been the greatest 
man that ever existed. But baneful as is the character of his produc- 
tions, they inculcate—the Confessions more especially—an impressive, but 
unconscious moral. They convince the unformed, wavering mind, that 
true happiness is only to be found where it holds in respect the social 
and the moral duties ; that sensibility, without principle, is like the tower 
built by the fool upon the sands, which the very first wave swept into 
annihilation ; and that every departure from reason is a departure from 
enjoyment, even though companioned by supreme abilities. 

Having thus discussed impartially the character of Rousseau’s chief 
works, it remains, as some slight apology for their obliquities, to say a 
few words respecting the age in which he flourished. He wrote at a 
period when the French mind, drugged with a long course of anodyne 
literature, made up from prescriptions unchanged through a tedious 
succession of ages, was eagerly prepared to receive any alterative that 
might exhilarate its intellectual constitution. Previous to his time, France 
was trammelled by Aristotelian regulations, which, whether for the 
drama, the closet, or the senate, prescribed one uniform style of compo- 
sition—correct, but cold—polished, but insipid; founded essentially on 
the imitative, and deprecating—as was the case with the Augustan age 
in England, which derived its mental character from the French court— 
any departure from the old established classics of Greece and Rome as 
downright unadulterated heresy. Voltaire was the first to break through 
the ice of this formality: he threw a vivifying power into literature, 
which sparkled with a thousand coruscations, and drew forth the dormant 
energies of others. Rousseau was one of the master-spirits thus warmed 
into life: his predecessor, by his novel and brilliant paradoxes, had 
triumphantly led the way ; France was henceforth prepared to be asto- 
nished—overwhelmed—electrified ; and Rousseau answered every expec- 
tation. This, perhaps, is but a poor apology for vice, that it adapts 
itself to the taste of the day ; nevertheless, every man is more or less 
fashioned by the age in which he lives—few having, like our divine, 
unsullied Milton, the fortitude to precede it ;—and if the gross immorali- 
ties of Beaumont and Fletcher, and still worse, of Congreve, Vanburgh, 
and Farquhar, are excused from consideration of the period in which they 
flourished, surely the same extenuating principle may with justice be 
applied to Rousseau? In addition to this, it must not be forgotten that 
his sentiments, however revolting they may appear to Englishmen, were, 
literally speaking, the received opinions of his country. They grew out 
of a courtly system of fashion which winked at adultery, discovered the 


1828. ] his Eloise, and Confessions. : 619 


refinements of morality in the grossness of an ad libitum intercourse 
with the fairer sex, and visited only with condemnation an uncouth per- 
son, bad address, churlish temper, or clownish dialect. At such a demo- 
ralized period—the necessary precursor of a revolution which should 
clear the polluted atmosphere—a man of first rate ability, a pander to the 
elegant sensuality of the age (which, according to Burke, lost “ half its 
danger in losing all its grossness”), and an unflinching philosopher of the 
hew school, was not likely to pass unnoticed. Rousseau felt this, wrote 
accordingly, and rendered himself immortal and a wretch. The secret of 
his success he has himself explained in a published conversation with 
Burke, wherein he observes, that finding that the old vehicle of literature 
was crazy and worn out, he took upon himself the task of renewing the 
springs, repainting the panels, and gilding the whole machine afresh. 
In other words, he resolved to extend the pathetic, deepen the unsocial, 
and pervert what little was left, of moral and religious sensibility among 
his countrymen. In this he too happily succeeded ; but what were the 
penalties he paid for such success? The answer is tremendous! A 
shipwrecked character—a broken heart—a brilliant but unenviable 
immortality. 
One word more. Rousseau has been frequently styled the champion, 
the apostle of freedom. Mr. Hazlitt, in particular, who in his clouded 
moments has much of his manner, has thus loved to designate him. 
This is certainly a saving clause, with nothing to disturb its effect but 
the circumstance of its utter falsity. The philosopher’s independence, 
like his sentiment, was purely a factitious feeling. It was not the healthy, 
progressive growth of reason, but the forced production of sophistry, 
It could stoop to be the slave of the most effeminate, demoralizing vices, 
-and—to adopt a sportsman’s phrase—was begot by Irritability out of 
Selfishness and Egotism. Far different is the nature of the true apostle 
of liberty. The materials of his magnanimity originate with himself, 
they are beams reflected from the sunny purity of his own heart, and are 
mixed up with, and give a tone and colouring to, his most trifling actions. 
To be the true asserter of public freedom, the man himself must be 
free. No unworthy suspicions, no rash misanthropy, no prurient fancies, 
no truckling to sensuality, simply because it is clothed in the borrowed 
robes of sentiment, must be permitted to interfere with, or influence his 
opinions. His mind must tower above the ordinary level of mankind, 
as much in conduct as in intellect. It is not enough that he possess the 
ability to discuss ; he must add the heart to feel and the disposition to 
practise, the mighty principle in its minutest as well as in its most com- 
prehensive sense, for by the union of worth and genius alone—either of 
which, when disjoined, is useless—is the world’s conviction ensured. 
Milton, whose ethics were so sublime, whose daily habits were so stain- 
less, spoke from the heart when he declared himself the sworn foe to 
despotism ; the Tell of private life gave abundant evidence of the public 
patriot ; the moral influence of Washington as a dictator, was the neces- 
sary consequence of his worth as a man ; but Rousseau, though he fled 
from clime to clime the fancied martyr to his virtue and his indepen- 
denée, wrote only from the promptings of an excited, a distrustful, and 
a dissatisfied mind. D. 


° 4K 2 


[ 620 jj [Dec: 


AFFAIRS IN GENERAL- 


CoMMENTING upon matters which are yet in operation, every body, 
knows, is a hazardous undertaking: not so much, however, front the 
uncertainty. of human affairs—for we take them to have very little of the 
quality of uncertainty about them—but from defect of intelligence. A 
want of accuracy marks the communications of most men, and especially. 
their written communications on passing topics, even where there is no 
design in them to deceive, nor bias to mislead ;—but where the very 
object of the communicator is deception, the sources of uncertainty are 
of course multiplied, and no absolute trust can be placed in any thing 
but accomplished events. Yet people cannot always suspend their specu 
Jations and thoughts till the arrival of facts; nor need they. The more 
acute and sharp-sighted—the more vigilant at least—will sometimes 
pierce through the obstructing clouds, and let in rays of light, where 
others find nothing but fog and obscurity. The bulletins of the Russians 
are become as notorious as the far-famed Brussels Gazette of old; and 
the Turkish bulletins—a new feature, by the way, in Turkish affairs— 
on one occasion lately observed, “ The grand vizier is advancing towards 
Varna, and, in the mean while, the capidan pasha is amusing the Rus- 
sians with negotiations.” This was not simplicity, but rather deep duplt 
city. The Turks are supposed, like children and fools, to tell truth ; 
and, being aware of the general impression, take advantage of the preju- 
dice to amuse the world. One half of the statements and reports, again, 
which we find in the continental papers from Vienna, Berlin, and Hol- 
land, are the wily productions of interested persons—stock-jobbers and 
loan-mongers ;—or, if they be the collectings of news-purveyors, the 
managers of public prints must trust, for the most part, to they know 
not whom or what-—to vague rumours and flying reports; and, from 
their known cravings, are a thousand times more liable to be duped than 
any other class of men in the world. 

Though not essentially mistaken, last month, as to the check and 
retreat of the Russians, the fact is not yet true that they withdrew to 
the Danube, or but very partially true. Luckily for them—for the pre- 
servation of a remnant of credit—Varna has fallen into their hands, and 
enabled them to close a mortifying campaign with the capture of a 
fortress, never captured before, instead of an actual flight. Though 
checked and cut up, beyond all former experience in Turkish warfare, 
they have announced a succession of victories from beginning to end— 
have made a steady, though slow advance—and if not actually arrived at 
Constantinople, they are far on the road to it ; they can talk of modera- 
tion and love of peace—of their wish to bring the Turks. to reason, and 
the observance of treaties, being far stronger with them than the desire 
of conquests ; and, if the Turks are still obstinate, of inevitably reaching 
the capital in another campaign. This is all very well for bulletins and 
bravados ; but the conquest of Varna contributes nothing to their glory, 
and, we add, little to the accomplishment of their ultimate aims. Pos- 
session was gained by treachery, not by fighting ; and they have been 
unwise enough to blazon the means, and receive the traitor with honours. 
and distinctions at Odessa. The true course would have been to dismiss 
him quietly, and not lay bare what exposes their own nakedness: if 
they had not made a bridge to it with their gold, it is pretty obvious 
their iron shot would have made none. The emperor has returned te 


—  —— — 


1828.] Affairs in General. 621 


his capital, and the season for action is over ; no reinforcenients are heard 
of, and a winter campaign must be an idle thought. The result, then, 
only strengthens our anticipations; and we do not believe the Russians 
will again renew their attempt. The possession of Varna will enable 
them to treat on better conditions—by the exertions of the commission- 
ers of England and France, a bargain will be eventually struck—the 
provinces north of the Danube (which had, in fact, before ceased to 
belong to the Turks) will be yielded up to them in full sovereignty—and 
the troops south of the Danube will be withdrawn, and Varna restored. 
Russia will thus, by this attempt of hers, have withdrawn the veil— 
made manifest her ambitious projects—shewn her real feebleness—and 
proved her former formidableness to have rested in the union and second- 
ing of others ;—she will have betrayed her state-secret, and the fears of 
Europe be quenched, as we said before, for half a century. 

_ Of the blockade of the Dardanelles we hear no more, nor are we 
likely now. We question if even it ever was seriously thought upon, or, 
at all events, only in prospective—should they reach, that is, the neigh- 
bourhood of the capital. The Morea is now at length completely cleared 
of the Egyptians—intelligence has just arrived of the surrender up of 
Patras. Will the activity of the allies stop at this point? There is no 
calculating. The confederacy formed by the treaty of the 6th of July 
is one of the most anomalous things that ever was heard of in the 
records of diplomacy. It neither makes war, nor keeps peace. It is 
alliance, and no alliance. With the exception of the affair ef Navarino,. 
the parties have never acted fairly together; and then it was the com- 
manders who united, and not the governments. One of the parties makes 
open war on its own private account, and still professes itself a member 
of the peace-compelling confederacy. This, no doubt, the Russians had 
a right to do, if the others chose to consent; but why should England 
and France keep up the ambigucus and discreditable connexion ?- When 
a partner in a mercantile house enters upon private speculations, or con- 
nects himself with another house, he is usually got rid of; and the 
moment Russia opened her private scheme, independently of the general 
purposes of the confederacy, she should have been dismissed, and not 
suffered to undertake an adventure, the results of which were likely to 
be at variance with the object of the union, and certain of producing no 
advantage to the firm. Since Navarino, indeed, Russia has scarcely 
taken any share in the old concern; and. England and France have 
plainly bad great difficulty in understanding one another. First, the 
English commander concludes a treaty with the Pacha of Egypt, by the 
terms of which the Egyptians were forthwith to evacuate the Morea, 
leaving—for what final purpose is incomprehensible—1,200 troops to 
occupy the fortresses. Then come the French, with a force of ten or 
fifteen thousand men, the commander of which superintends the evacua- 
tion ; and, moreover, compels the fortresses to surrender, and the 1,200 
to take wing after their brethren. The French commander then prepares 
to advance to Athens, to expel thence, in like manner, the Turkish gar- 
rison ; when the English step in, and forbid the execution of his design. 
The French long to be a-doing, because they have with them where- 
withal to sweep the north of Greece of the Turks; but the English, 
nobody knows why, oppose any farther movement. The object of the 
original confederacy was confessedly to force a peace, or at least a cessa-~ 
tion of hostilities ; and how was this to be accomplished, but either by 


622 Affairs in General. [ Dec. 


holding a rod in terrorem, and pouncing upon the offending party, to 
flog him for fighting, or—what was surely more rational, because more 
effective—by separating the combatants at once, and compelling them to 
an understanding and terms? The French are obviously inclined to the 
latter course, and we to the former ; but we—we, the individual—go 
entirely with the French, for there is decision with them, and something 
like a tending to conclusion. On our scheme, we might go on on for 
twenty years, and be just where we were at the beginning ; but then we 
shoul be able to employ those who are importunate for employment— 
and that is all consistent enough with our policy, domestic and foreign. 
The French, we are persuaded, will not long consent to keep in this 
lingering, vacillating course. War must soon burst forth between France 
and Turkey, or a compromise between Turkey and her old subjects 
be brought about. 

Of our other foreign relations, Portugal still presents nothing decisive. 
Miguel is apparently consolidating his power and party ; and we have 
no doubt at all, he has not only the numerical majority of the country, 
but of the influential part of it, with him. Not only the nobles, the 
clergy, the military, but all, save and except what may be termed the 
English interest, and a few political philosophers, who hope to profit by 
the change, and are restless and fretful, because they cannot carry all 
their own way. Pedro is manifestly unpopular with his countrymen— 
he is, first, identified with the constitution which they abominate ; he 
has, next, done his best to degrade Portugal into a province ; and, finally, 
attempted to impose a sovereign whom they do not want—three very 
unwelcome facts to the sober and substantial part of the Portuguese. 
Miguel is avowedly the patron of old times and old ways, and is warmly 
seconded by all who have any thing to lose—certainly by all the wealth- 
iest and most powerful, who cannot, with any toleration, look upon the 
Brazils as their superiors, or even their equals. Pedro has got into a 
puzzle; he has been duped by his Brazilian courtiers into the belief 
that he could dispose of Portugal as he pleased ; they have taught him 
to suppose the constitution was desired by a very strong party, which, if 
they were indulged in their wishes, would, in common gratitude, be 
bound by such an act to the maintenance of his daughter’s rights; and 
he was not insensible, it may be inferred, to the glory of conferring upon 
his daughter a crown which he could not himself retain. 

He has himself no forces at his disposal, or at least no resources to 
maintain them; and cannot, therefore, dream of a distant expedition to 
enforce what he chooses to call his daughter’s rights. He has done 
infinite mischief, it must be confessed, by this foolish act of consigning 
to her the queenship ; the poor young lady will always be a rallying- 
point for the disaffected and ambitious, and the evils of a disputed suc- 
cession be thus entailed upon the nation for her life, and perhaps longer. 
If Pedro was really disposed to resign the crown of Portugal, or found 
he could no longer retain it unless he returned—which we conclude was 
the case ;—if he could not retain both crowns, it was wise to resign one— 
the choice was with him; but then he should have left the other to the 
disposal of the Cortes, and not have intrigued with other nations, and 
tempted an English orator with the bait of a constitution, to get him to 
enforce it with English bayonets. Left to their own inclinations, the 
Portuguese would certainly have taken Miguel at once, and legitimated 
his right by the best of all sanctions. For our own parts, Miguel appears 


1828.) Affairs in General. 623 


to us to be one of the most legitimate sovereigns in Europe. We are 
perfectly weary of the foolish ravings of the Times, and cannot believe 
one fact out of ten announced by its correspondents. If Englishmen will 
be busy in foreign countries, they must take the consequence of inter- 
fering, and giving licence to their tongues. The wisest thing this country 
could do would be to seize the first fair opportunity to resume the usual 
relations kept up with a friendly state. Nor can we even see any signi- 
ficant objection to the proffering of such resumption ; we stand too 
high, and are really too powerful, to have such an act imputed to sinister 
motives ; nobody could suppose it prompted by fear—nor could it be so 
construed by Miguel himself. There could, therefore, be no degradation ; 
and as to Pedro—what could he do but fume a little ? 

When will the intercourse of governments come to be conducted on 
the principles of common sense, and the file and the portfolio be treated 
with the contempt they deserve? If we are for ever to act according 
to precedent, the hope of amendment must be abandoned ; and none 
are fools enough to suppose the established system of intercourse is 
unsusceptible of improvement. We would have matters, even of inter- 
national concern, be determined by circumstances, and take at once the 
best result they will admit of; and not wait till they fall into some 
form into which they have fallen before. Jealousies, and misunder- 
standings, nine times out of ten, might thus be removed; and wars 
would at least less frequently rise from the infractions of the rules and 
precedents of office. The little queen is, we suppose, at Laleham ; or, 
for any thing now heard of her, at St. Helena—it is quite immaterial ; 
only the sooner she returns to her father’s court the better, to waive the 
crown, and wait till some continental prince wants a wife, and demands 
her. 

Of Spain it is surprising how very little of late we hear. The cause 
of constitutionalism we may conclude does not visibly progress; but a 
few months may bring about some sudden change. Nothing but the 
destruction of more armies apparently will convince Ferdinand of the 
impossibility of recovering the colonies, for large preparations are 


_ making for another attempt. Two-and-twenty thousand men are now, it is 


said, on good authority, assembled at Cuba, of which ten thousand at least 
are Europeans; and their destination Columbia. Columbia has been 
distracted a good deal of late by divisions, which has probably given 
rise to these preparations; but her chief is plainly on his guard. On 
the 10th of August, Bolivar, who is now dictator again, issued an order 
for the immediate assembling of forty thousand men, to be distributed into 
four divisions ; and will, no doubt, with the energies and indignations 
of the nation to back him, readily repel the enemy, land where they will. 


‘Cut up more European troops; in this way, by some signal defeat, and 


it will present, by the new ground of dissatisfaction it will give, espe- 
cially among the military, a grand opportunity for the constitutionalists: 
to better themselves, and they are, no doubt, far more numerous, pro- 
portionally, than among the Portuguese. This would be a lucky event 
for the Spanish exiles, who are again—or rather stil, for we do not 
know that they have at any time been otherwise—in a miserable state of 
destitution, and, unhappily for them, are fast wearing out the com- 
passion and sympathy of the country. 

It is always an invidious thing to seem to repress any thing like kind 


feelings towards the necessitous ; but these persons, be it remembered, 


624 Affairs in General. [Dec. 


are the victims of imprudence, though they cover it with the glory of 
patriotism ; and charity begins at home. This, though apparently a 
cold and churlish maxim, is a very wise one, and the wisdom of it is the 
more irrefragable and imperative in a country, where misery spreads 
among the natives to the sad and deplorable extent it does in ours— 
blurring and blotting the splendors which exorbitant and ostentatious 
wealth gathers round it, and flinging disgrace upon its rulers. We have 
no desire to check in any degree—just the contrary—the disposition to 
distribute ;> but we would remind the distributor, that mative misery has. 
the prior claim. 
_ The twenty, or fifty pounds given, to be blazoned: in advertisements, 
to foreigners, is, in numerous cases, just so much withheld from home 
distribution. It is a stain and a stigma upon a man to give, where 
poverty and want exist, for instance, on his own estates. The vehe- 
mence of the old Times, the great patron of the Spanish and Italian 
refugees, is quite importunate, and almost offensive, and especially by 
the grounds on which he frequently presses their claims of relief: 
They are gentlefolks—high-minded and high-spirited, many of them 
ennobled by a long line of illustrious ancestors—brought up to nothing 
—lapped in luxury, and cradled in indulgence—delicate in frame, and 
refined in sentiment—who cannot work, and ought not to work—who 
would sooner starve than beg, and die than dig—with abundance of 
similar nonsense. A most felicitous and novel mode of pleading a case 
of suffering, it must be allowed! We wish them a better advocate. 
The subscriptions come in but slowly, though the Z%mes prints all the. 
morcels of eloquence that usually accompany them. Here is a choice. 
specimen :— 
“* Respected Sir :—When the better feelings of our nature sanction the calf 
of the necessitated, and prompt the affluent to acts of humanity, how trans~ 
cendent is the conclusion !—it is nature that is acting upon the mind with alb 
the beauties of her inexpressible excellence. Under these considerations, L 
beg that your commendable spirit will appropriate this half-sovereign, though 


e 


trifling, to the alleviation of the distressed Spaniards.—Your’s, &c. 
«An AMERICAN.” 


But subscriptions of all kinds go on heavily, we perceive. The 
Tunnel, which required 100,000/. to enable it to proceed, stopped short at 
15,000/., and the Committee, in despair, have actually passed a vote to 
return the donations, and cancel the debentures. King’s College, which 
asked 100,000/, and actually got names for the full amount, and was 
tempted, by the extraordinary facility with which they were given, to 
beg another, has not been able to add 5,000/. to the sum during the 
whole of this month, with all the wealth, rank, and station of the country 
to back them ; and we now begin to augur ill of the result, and suspect 
they will soon be obliged to follow the example of the Tunnel-folks. 
The Church-building society, too, we observe, has met with frequent 
rebuffs—in one parish, not far from Cambridge, three farthings were col- 
lected. 

And as we have thus incidentally been led to mention this society, we 
cannot forbear a word or two on the spirit in which its recent collections 
have been pursued. Not content .with enforcing the necessity and the’ 
virtue of contributing to the building of churches, and collecting the 
fruits of pulpit eloquence at the church doors, the clergy, accompanied 
by the parochial officers, in many parishes have gone from house to house, 


1828:] Affairs in General. 625 


and that too in parishes where already were exacted an old church-rate, and 
a new church rate ;—and not content, again, even with this importunity, 
they have marked those houses where they did not find the occupier at 
home, and actually sent a printed circular, announcing that they had. 
ealled for ‘ your subscription,’ directing it to be paid according to a given 
address. Now, this we consider as perfectly inquisitorial and abomin- 
able—it is depriving the individual of his option. Had these persons 
any sense of delicacy, they might conclude, in many cases, it was not 
convenient to contribute—or the party might not approve of the object, 
and yet not desire to be conspicuous in refusing, nor wish at all to give 
expression to his disapproval ; and, at all events, would not wish to have 
a mark set upon him. The virtue and beauty of contribution is the 
voluntariness of it. When a plate is held at the church door, the passer- 
by may give or not give, without being very remarkable, though even 
there he is often noted ; or he may absent himself, and leave the field 
fairly open for the willing and the ostentatious. 

But this collection, moreover, was under the sanction of what is called 

‘the King’s Letter, which was represented as carrying with it authority ; 
though unquestionably it is no legal instrument, and any attempt to give 
it that character is wholly unjustifiable. It is placing the King’s name 
in a very invidious light ;—if money be wanted for public purposes, the 
Commons, in Parliament assembled, have alone the power of granting. 
With very many persons, a demand made in the King’s name, unsanc- 
tioned by an act of Parliament, would be a reason for rejection—and 
justly, for it is to raise money on false pretences. As head of the Church, 
the King’s rights and privileges are strictly defined, and confer no power 
to raise a penny arbitrarily. In matters of this kind, the King’s authority 
is absolutely nothing, and his example entitled to no weight whatever. 
The truth is this: —the King’s Letter was one of the ways and means of 
the Church Committee, and granted at their solicitation. More churches 
are petitioned for than they can build; but they are eager—the reason is 
obvious—to build all, and therefore ingenuity is racked to suggest new 
expedients for raising funds. ' Parliamentary grants, and private sub- 
scriptions, renewed, and renewed, are all insufficient, till one, more cun- 
ning than the rest, starts a King’s Letter ;—the Archbishop is applied 
to—the application is of course, without difficulty, complied with, for 
fees spring out of it. The letter, accompanied with the Bishop’s man- 
date, circulates among the clergy, who enforce it publicly and privately 
—some pique themselves on the amounts collected—some are eager to 
exhibit their zeal, or to shew their influence—and importunity follows, in 
season and out of season—careless of the offence they give, and the odium 
they incur, so that they make themselves conspicuous at head-quarters. 

Is there to be no end to this rage for building new churches? None— 

so long as money, by any means, can be screwed to build them. Every 
incumbent in the kingdom, if a decent pretence can be found, will desire 
to have a second church, for it gives him patronage—it enables him to 
provide for a son, or a nephew, or a cousin. The church is now inun- 
dated with candidates for preferment—for every new church there are 
forty new clergymen. 

An attempt, we observe, has been made, to represent this King’s 
Letter, of which we have been talking too long, as a substitute for the 
Church briefs lately abolished. These briefs were abolished very pro- 

M.M. New Series.—Vour. VI. No. 36. 41 


626 Affairs in General. [Dec. 


perly ; because, from their numbers and periodical recurrence, they had 
come to be regarded with contempt, and had in fact often scarcely pro- 
duced enough to pay the expence of printing, and machinery of clerks 
and commissioners. But why should there be a substitute? For a national 
purpose, let, we repeat, the national purse be opened. Keen-sighted, as 
some love to represent the clergy, we verily believe them the blindest of 
the blind;—they always pursue a favourite object through thick 
and thin—they never look beyond their noses—and never see how offen- 
sive is their interference in political matters, and especially, how invidious 
is any fresh attempt to raise money, be the object what it will, in which 
they are the agents. The means by which they are, for the most part, 
supported, is odious, however groundless the odium ; and they should, 
above all men, be cautious of stirring up unfavourable feelings ;—their 
usefulness depends entirely upon the respect in which they are held by 
those about them. Otherwise, as one of themselves once well said—they 
are doing and undoing—killing and curing—doing good with one hand, 
and mischief with the other. 

Turning from the Churches to the Courts, we were at once amused 
and annoyed, by a case, Daniel against Robinson, the other day, in the 
Exchequer Court. The defendant had married the plaintiff’s daughter 
without his consent, and, as the plaintiff alleged, illegally. The young 
lady died soon after the marriage, and the father sued for her trinkets, on 
the plea, that the marriage being illegal, the property could not vest in 
the husband. The plaintiff’s ultimate object was to establish the illega- 
lity of the marriage ; and at the last Gloucester assizes he obtained a 
verdict. In the Exchequer, the defendant has moved for a new trial, on 
three several grounds, all of them of considerable weight, which shews 
how carefully matters are settled at Nisi Prius—first, that the marriage 
was valid, for the main objection to its validity was the mis-spelling of the 
lady’s name, Daniels instead of Daniel; and it was proved on the trial, 
that the members of his own family could not agree on this point ; and even 
the brother of the lady, who was present at the marriage, and witnessed in 
the register, added the s, as well as herself. The second ground was the 
misdirection of the judge, for he had begged the jury to observe the 
parties were not residing in the parish where the banns were published— 
whereas, it is expressly provided by the last marriage act, that such non- 
residence shall not impeach the marriage. But the third ground is, :if 
not the strongest, at least the most whimsical, and, in a graver view, the 
most abominable. The jury could not agree on their verdict, when one of 
them recollecting a case where the jury was said to have tossed for a 
verdict, proposed to do the same ; but the rest, more squeamish, rejected 
the proposal with some indignation—till at last, another of them, more 
ingenious than his brethren, and sharpened by the prospect of eight and 
forty hours confinement—for the next day was Sunday—suggested drawing 
lots, by two slips of paper, a long one and a short one. This being a 
mode of solution which none of them had heard censured, like tossing, 
was gladly embraced, and a verdict was returned accordingly. A new 
trial was granted, and the verdict will of course be set aside. 

But that is all that will be done—no attempt will be made to guard 
against such abuses. We record this case to be remembered hereafter ; 
for the day of reformation must come. Generally gross cases of this 
kind are. quoted as old stories, as if they were good things to tell, and 
people of course question the truth of them; but here is one which 


1828.] Affairs in General. 627 


occurs within our own experience, and cannot be contested, and cannot 
be exceeded in absurdity. If all the tales and manceuvres of juries were 
told, that might be told, we must laugh the institution to scorn. It is, 
indeed, fitted for nothing but facts, on the face of “it, and not always we 
see for that. It is just possible, and no more, that twelve men shall be 
uniformly impressed by the same evidence—in cases, that is, where the 
evidence is as striking as if the fact were committed in the court, and 
before the eyes of the jury ; but, suppose a man from perversity, from 
prejudice, from favour, or any other unequitable feeling, determined to 
carry the verdict his way, the chances are a thousand to one against his 
encountering another as pertinacious as himself, and then he gains his 
point. We have heard, more than once, of persons fortifying themselves 
with a good store of sandwiches, to enable them to persevere, and starve 
down more improvident opposition; and the fact is notorious, that 
wrong-headed people, with prejudices against particular offences, go 
into jury boxes with a determination to convict. To oppose, then, the 
obvious modification which the existing system calls for, is sheer pig- 
headedness—nothing more is required than a majority instead of unani- - 
mity—two-thirds, or three-fourths, with a limitation as to time ; for, if 
the jury, after hearing evidence, and the law, are not in a state to return 
their verdict within half an hour, they will not be at all. The longer 
they deliberate, the more likely they are to get into jangling, into angry 
feelings—to lose sight of facts, and indulge in conjecture, and interpreta- 
tion, and subtlety—and then they blunder. Under such an arrangement, 
tossing, and drawing will, at all events, be superfluous ; and no man, 
again, will have it in his power to force another into a change of opinion 
by dint of working on the imbecility or the cravings of his stomach. 
‘We should not hesitate to say, indeed, that if the opinion a man forms 


at the conclusion of the trial, be changed after withdrawing, it will be 


changed upon wrong grounds, and then, so far as he is concerned, injus- 
tice is done ; and we are, for our parts, thoroughly satisfied there could 
be no better way, than taking the aye, or no, of each juryman, on the 
spot, and determining the verdict by a majority of two-thirds. 

~ But we have a word or two with the practice of the courts, for de- 
manding a peremptory verdict—guilty, or not guilty—which involves, 
at once, law, fact, and inference, and carries absurdity, often, on the face 
of it. A man commits an act—the evidence that he commits it is good, 
but the design with which he commits it may not be clear—nor, again, 
that he commits it in the teeth of any law; yet the jury are required to 
pronounce, by one word, upon the whole. The judge says he cannot 
admit special verdicts. We refer to a recent case to illustrate our mean- 
ing—Hunton’s. He is charged with an act of forgery—with performing 
an illegal act, and, moreover, with doing it with a fraudulent intent. 
The act of forgery was manifest—that is, he had made use of other per- 
sons names, or fictitious ones—and presented bills with these names, 
purporting to be real ones, to his bankers to be discounted—intending, 
apparently, to take them up when they became due. But the mere act 
of employing fictitious names is not enough to complete the act of for- 
gery, in the legal sense—the fraudulent intention must be fairly and dis- 
tinctly inferrible. In the case to which we are alluding, such intention 
was absolutely negatived, for the prosecutors were actually in possession 
of a counter security ; and it would have been their own faults if they 
had ventured to. discount beyond the value of the security, and they 

4L2 


628 Affairs in General. [ Dee. 


could have had no claim of satisfaction for the effect of their own care- 
lessness. The judge, indeed, in directing the jury, only noticed the 
security, to annihilate, if possible, the effect of it. There was no evi- 
dence, he said, to shew it was worth a farthing ; by which was mani- 
festly implied his conviction, that if it were of value it would go to 
negative the fraudulent intent, and, of course, the guilt of forgery ; and 
surely it was for him, with this feeling working in hin, if not from com- 
mon equity, yet as counsel for the prisoner (of which we hear so much, 
and see so little) to call for evidence to shew the value. Instead of 
which, when the fact of security was drawn out by the cross-examina- 
tion of the banker, the judge was perfectly silent, though then was the 
time for him, seeing the prisoner omitting it (he had no counsel to 
suggest to him), to ask the value, or nature, of this security. Had it 
been shewn to be probably sufficient to cover the amount of the forged 
bills, the jury would not even have gone out of court. In delivering 
their verdict, they gave it spectal—guilty, but without a fraudulent in- 
tent. “ No,” replies the judge, “ I must have a peremptory verdict— 
. guilty, or not guilty.’—«<Not guilty,” they were unwilling to pronounce, 
because the man, to their feelings, had evidently done wrong—morally ; 
and, therefore, and under the frown of the court, they consented to say 
guilty, coupling it with a recommendation for mercy. The under- 
standing of jurymen is perpetually bothered by the term guwilty, 
which is a technical word, and means an act done—done against 
law—done by design—and done with a fraudulent view. The popular 
notion—and no other is usually thought of—of guilt, isa wrong act, with 
very little definite, and scarcely any legal meaning connected with it. 

To hang this Hunton—especially after Savary’s commutation, seems 
to us impossible. Though condemning the man for a fool—for a man 
even who no longer deserves to be trusted—we can scarcely bring our- 
selves to contemplate him as committing an act which ought to have 
been brought into court at all. To hang him is horrible—to hang any 
man for forgery is offensive to the common feelings of justice and 
humanity. Murder—violence—these are the sole justifiable grounds for 
legal ‘executions ; anything short of these offences should have other 
punishments assigned them, and there are other punishments as likely 
to deter from forgery, as death. Deterring is the only justifiable ground 
of human infliction; and yet almost every body, and especially the 
wronged person, is always talking about satisfaction—about desert— 
about offended justice, and similar stuff—though thinking all the while, 
perhaps, upon revenge. These are principles with which courts of jus- 
tice have nothing to do; and we doubt not, if it were distinctly and 
habitually inculcated, that deterring is the only proper object of punish- 
ment, we should soon come to abandon “ death.” Many of our cotem- 
poraries, we observe, confine their vituperations against the law of for- 
gery, because the severity of it defeats its object, by preventing pro- 
secutions. We doubt, exceedingly, whether people are so prevented to 
any considerable extent ; we observe those who are exposed to losses by 
acts of forgery, pretty active in bringing the offenders to justice, as they 
phrase it ; but be the fact so or not, we prefer enforcing the common 
sense of the thing—the only justifiable ground of punishment; and, we. 
add, forgery is repressible by other means, and among them, by restilu- 
tion to the utmost extent, on conviction, and by liability to restitution to 
double the amount, to the end of life. 


1828. ] Affairs in General. 629 


& 


Hunton is.a Quaker ; and recently another Quaker is reported to have 


forged to a large amount, upon some of his own fraternity—a house of 


bill-brokers. The religious principles of the parties, in this case, checked 


the prosecution, and not the severity of the law; the act, we confess, 


drew our admiration; and we could not but think it a ridiculous 
piece of refinement, to be censuring them for disregarding the security 
of society. They were the real losers ; and the act is little likely to find 
many imitators ; nor will it encourage any one soul breathing to practice 
a similar fraud upon any body else. If the act be of evil tendency, and 
exposes Quaker property to extraordinary hazard, that is their con- 


cern; and we feel confident they are as likely, as any persons in 
the world, to find a remedy as effective as the sanguinary punish- 


ment of the law of forgery. The bankers’ society, say the papers, 
have determined upon prosecuting these bill-brokers, for compound- 
ing felony. This, we may presume, is said without knowledge— 
compounding felony is, where a party receiving back his property, 
or having some amends made him, engages not to prosecute. It is 
not, we conclude, known, on what conditions this man was allowed 
to go scot-free ; and for the concealment of the offence—for forbearing 


from prosecution, we know of no law. The recent cases of the country 


bankers, and the jeweller in the Strand, were acts of direct and open 


compounding, but no prosecution ensued ; and, indeed, it is much too in- 


vidious a thing for anybody to do, except a society, which is a modern 


contrivance for subduing all sense of proper feeling and proper conduct. 


It is too much to expect individuals shall make sacrifices for a visionary 
object, under the imposing name of public good; let every body look 
first to his own advantage, and it follows, the general advantage will be 
well and best promoted—unless the general advantage is something 


quite distinct from individual. A man loses 10,000/.—the alternative, 


perhaps, is, recovering with the loss of 2,000/., for instance ; or pro- 


secuting, and losing the whole—with more for the expences of justice. 
Who hesitates ?—nobody ; and so the offence of compounding felony, 
though still sticking in our statute books, is fast falling, by the con- 
' victions of men, into discredit and oblivion ; and no harm, we venture - 


to add, will follow. 
We are dwelling too long upon matters of law and justice ; but a case 
of adultery drew our attention lately, and we must add a word or two. 


_ The offending party was a clergyman, which, of course, excited a super- 


abundance of zeal and vituperation among the laity, and, especially, the 
radical laity ; who, as usual, shewed a raging desire to fling the stigma 
upon the ‘cloth’—as if there were either sense or justice in such an 
attempt. The clergy, now-a-days, abound more aud more ; and, though 
we may occasionally conflict with them, chiefly on political grounds, yet 
we think it but fair to express our conviction, that, taking numbers for 
numbers, in any class, or any profession, the clergy come less frequently 
before the public, ten-fold, for acts of criminality and shame, than any 
other body of men whatever. It should, moreover, be recollected that, 
though the clergy have, of late years, augmented by some thousands, the 
means of provision and preferment have not grown in equal proportion ; 
and that, consequently, great numbers are thrown upon the world, and 
take to a variety of means for a livelihood, which clergymen did not use 
to do, and are thus more exposed—surrounded by fewer checks—are less 
teachers and examples by station—less clergymen, in short. Great num- 


630 Affairs in General. [Dzc. 


‘ 

bers have no professional engagements, and, unable to turn, perhaps, to 
other occupations, are poor, get into debt, or are estranged from their 
profession, and fall into coarse and corrupt habits ; and are, nevertheless, 
when brought before the courts, treated as clergymen, and their par- 
ticular offences eagerly seized upon by the prejudiced, who blazon forth 
the baseness and profligacy of individuals, and are pleased to consider 
them as general, and almost peculiar to the profession. This last’case 
has‘called forth a number of “leaders,” which are calling aloud for making 
adultery a criminal offence. Now this we think absurd ; for we have no 
doubt the existing law and practice is as well calculated to perER—the 
proper principle of punishment—as anything that can well be imagined. 
The injured husband gets rid of a worthless woman—the seducer (who 
is often the seduced) is mulcted of a sum he can seldom spare, and if he 
can spare, is, in most cases, linked with a woman of whom he is, for the 
rest of his days, ashamed—who can no longer be restored to society, and 
who proves to him, most likely, a curse, and a clog for life. If this is 
not a more effectual deterring than a twelvemonth’s imprisonment—or 
loss of money, in the shape of a fine to the king—or loss even of honours 
—and we can imagine nothing else, except such as the state of society 
will not tolerate—we will give up speculating upon such matters for 
ever. 

The London University goes on swimmingly. The whole set of pro- 
fessors are reported to have 394 pupils distributed among them ; we 
are not sure that the same individual, by attending three or four lectures, 
does not count for three or four. The spirit of puffery, so visible in the 
whole concern, ever since it began to get into activity—by the endless 
advertisements and paragraphings—will excuse us, with sober people, 
for occasionally withholding our credit from their statements. To the 
medical school are assigned 120 ; and to the natural philosophy, chemis- 
try, Latin, Greek, and law chairs, each from 60 to 70; many of them, 
it appears, are elderly gentlemen. One professor, we know, has two 
pupils ; and another, we hear, is likely, very shortly, to make a begin- 
ning with one. Of the medical professors, we have before expressed our 
conviction, that nothing could be less called for. We are disposed to 
think the same of others, especially those of the modern languages, and 
natural philosophy, and chemistry—for lecturers on these matters abound. 


We do not think so of the law-lectures.. The means of obtaining legal 


knowledge, or at least beyond the mere technicalities of practice, are 
inaccessible to young men, in attorneys’ offices. This very illiterate 
class, by an enlightened and fearless individual, may be essentially 
improved and civilized—there is an opening. An account of Mr. Amos’s 
introductory, given in the 7'%mes, amused us. Mr. Brougham sat on the 
right of the chair, representing, it was stated, the bar ; and Mr. W. Tcoke, 
on the left, representing, in like manner, all the attorneys and solicitors— 
whilst Lord Auckland was in the chair, representing, we suppose, the 
aristocracy, who, of course, will feel themselves greatly honoured and 
obliged. But the idea of hearing lectures by ‘ representatives,’ is quite 
a novel invention, and worthy of a university, which is to be the focus 
from which are to spread and radiate, superior knowledge and prac- 
tical usefulness. The mathematical introductory, we hear, was distin- 
guished for < brilliancy of imagination,’ whilst one of the classical, we 
forget which, was as conspicuous for a skeleton dryness, that must have 
been meant for the diagrams. These mistakes will happen. Mr. Dale 


1828.) Affairs in General. 631 


> 
poured forth a great dale too many flowers, and Dr. Dionysius Lardner 
caught, we know not precisely how many rays of illumination, from the 
bright luminary, then in his eye (Mr. B.)—dazzling him with excess of 
light—which any one might swear could come only from the ‘ gem.’ 

The Zoological Society have had their nerves horribly shaken—not 
by any outbreak of the tigers, but the presumption of a <‘ fellow,’ who 
keeps a tea-garden in the New-road, or somewhere within a reachable 
distance of the Menagerie-grounds. This < fellow,’ it seems, being of 
a speculative turn, as well as the managers, paid his guinea to the 
society, and by virtue of the said payment, affixing to his name of John 
Johnson, or something of the sort, F.Z.S., or some other equally good- 
looking initials, announced, on his cards, by way of proving some supe- 
rior accommodation at his house of entertainment, that tickets for the 
Zoological might be had on application ; and, accordingly, he issued his 
‘ orders’ to all comers and bibbers, and contributed largely to the daily 
forty-pound receipts of the society. But, instead of being grateful for 
this interchange of benefit, the aristocracy of the institution, in alarm, 
summoned a special meeting—Hannibal ad portas—and at a very full 
assembly, agreed nem con. to return to Mr. John Johnson, or whatever 
his name may be, his subscription-money, and inform him, they had for 
ever erased his ignoble name from the honourable and right honourable 
lists. But, seriously, though the fact is correctly true—can any thing 
be so absurd as the scheme of the Zoological, to require an introduc- 
tion, and then demand a shilling? It is, however, completely English, 
of the modern school, combining foppery and meanness—money-making, 
never out of thought, whether east or west of Temple-bar. If any 
desirable object could be gained by excluding the vulgar, then let the 
managers be content with the introduction—let them be satisfied with 
the honour of conferring a favour, and take a leaf out of our neighbours’ 
book—the Menagerie of Paris is open to all the world, without any 
paying atall. Committees are now appointed—-such has been the abun- 
dance of their receipts—to consider upon the means of disposing of the 
money, and, of course, they will very soon have monthly or weekly 
dinners, and get rid of some of the superfluity that way. This, of 
course, they have a right to do—only, say we, if they take money, let 
them throw the gates open to all, like any other shilling show. Thanks 
to Mr. John Johnson—‘ this will end it.’ 

Justice again—we do not learn that the little German literato has yet 
been discharged. The reader would observe in the police reports, an 
account of a man who walked into a bookseller’s shop of the name of 
Wilks, and asked for employment—any thing of any kind—he was in 
distress. The bookseller, it so happened, was also a book-maker, and 
had just written a hundred folios (sheets) to establish a claim to the late 
Baron Maseres’ enormous property, of which he contended Mr. Fellowes 
had got unjust possession. JDistrusting his own talents, and delighted 
at the opportunity of catching a poor devil of an author, evidently in 
want of a shilling, he put the said MS. into his hand, desiring him to 
look it over—and, expressly or by implication, nobody can doubt, 
engaging to make some compensation. Precise particulars are of course 
not to be got at from police reports, but the result was, the little man 
refused to give up the important MS., unless he was on the spot indem- 
nified for his labour. Mr. W. does not pretend he had given him any 
thing, and it may be concluded he had refused to pay what the other 


632 Affairs in General. [Dre- 


demanded. The little gentleman was tenacious of what he deemed his 
rights, and distrusting Mr. W.’s generosity or justice, he refused to 
re-deliver but upon payment. After a good deal of wrangling and con- 
tradiction, an act of robbery was sworn to, and the article being valued at 
three-pence, the poor fellow was actually committed to prison. Yet 
theft there could be none—at the utmost, the man detained what had’ 
been voluntarily put into his hands; and the remedy was by action. 
Criminal the act could not be ; and we trust he will be able, by himself, 
or by some friend of justice, to take up his cause, and demand and 
obtain reparation from all concerned. The magistrate—the one to 
whom we allude is full of indiscretion—ventured in the course of the 
examination to speak of the little man as a miscreant, at which he 
naturally fired, and read the magistrate a lecture. In another paper, 
the little man is represented as calling the complainant a rascal, and 
when the magistrate haughtily checked him for his want of respect to 
the court, he replied, rascal was not so bad as miscreant. It is asto- 
nishing, after all the talk we have of the correctness of reports, and 
rather discreditable, to observe how unfairly they are often given. 
They depend, manifestly, on the temper or views of the reporter. 
The Times makes the story tell against the magistrate ; and the Morning 
Herald against the little German; though the main facts are still 
essentially the same, and nobody can doubt but the poor man has had 
hard measure—the case cries aloud for satisfaction. 

The rectorship of Glasgow has of late years become an object of 
ambition among literary men. Poet Campbell, every body knows, was 
chosen rector two years ago; and he is again a candidate, and with him 
Lord John Campbell, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord John Russel. Even- 
tually Lord John Campbell gave way to Scott, and the other Lord John 
to Campbell. The election, the reader will remember, is in the hands 
of what is, ridiculously enough, called the four ‘ nations’—constituting 
the body of the students. Scott and Campbell had each two, though, 
in point of individual votes, Campbell had 263, and Scott 200 ; but 
the votes go by ‘ nations,’ and each, as we said, had two. The casting 
vote lies with the last rector, that is, in this case, with Campbell him- 
self ; but custom has so settled it, that he shall not exercise his privilege 
to his own advantage, and the right was then supposed to devolve on 
the Vice—who has decided for Scott. But according to an act of 
royal visitation in 1727, it is expressly stated, that if the last rector be 
absent, or, we suppose, disqualified by custom, the penullimate rector 
shall have the casting vote; and that is Brougham, who will probably, 
replace his friend, and Scott must retire—which we are not sorry for ; 
for why should he, or any one else, oppose Campbell, when it was 
manifestly the wish of the majority to keep him another biennium? 


c 


1828.] 


[ 633 J 


MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 


Tales of the Great St. Bernard, 3 vols, 
12mo ; 1828.—This series of tales is the 
production of Mr. Croly, a gentleman, we 
need not add, after his brilliant and suc- 
cessful tale of Jewish story, of great and 
admitted talents. The volumes before us 
present the same energy and distinctness of 
conception which distinguished the Sala- 
thiel_the same copiousness and truth of 
description—the same fertility and splen- 
dour of language—the same facility of illus- 
tration—the same happy knack of throwing 
in a quaintness of phrase that surprises and 
delights—the same vigour and vivacity that 
bounds along with a subject with the con- 
sciousness of inexhaustible power, but at 
the same time with a fulness that some- 
times overpowers, and a breadth of colour- 
ing that occasionally approaches to cari- 
cature. 

The machinery of the series is this—a 
number of travellers, of different nations, 
are surprised and detained by snow-storms 
on Great St. Bernard, and while sharing the 
hospitality of the monks, relieve the ennui 
of their position by a succession of narratives, 
relative to the characters and manners of 
their several countries. The first is told by 
an Englishman, who has piqued curiosity by 
declaring himself an absentee, not from 
taste, but absolute compulsion—too lucky, 
too important, and too rich to be able to 
live at home, and going abroad to be no- 
body, to be good for nothing, and to be 
happy. He had been bred to the bar, but 
though getting early into something like 
practice, he grew disgusted, and especially 
with the tricks of the profession, and with- 
drew to an estate of £500 a-year—drawn 
thither, moreover, by the charms of the 
curate’s daughter. In a woodbine cottage, 
in a state of unusual connubial tranquillity, 
making no shew nor pretending to any— 
with a son and two daughters, brought up 
in a style only not of the coarser character— 
absorbed in the quiet pursuits of literature, 
he lived an easy and contented and indolent 
life for nearly twenty years—troubled only, oc- 
casionally, by the annoyances which his wife 
and family sometimes experienced from the 
magnificent and mortifying superiorities of 
an opulent neighbour—a sugar-baker, mak- 
ing some £50,000 a-year. 


Just as his family were growing up into- 


men and women, an old uncle, with whom 
he had had no sort of intercourse for years, 
and from whom he expected nothing, died 
and left him £10,000 a-year ; and though 
he himself would have taken the matter 
quietly enough, the family were bitten with 
the mania of eclipsing the sugar-baker. 
All sorts of absurdities ensue—jealousies are 
excited, and enemies are made on all sides 5 
their fine servants laugh at them—till the 
climax is completed by a masqued ball, into 
which the whole county make an irruption, 
M.M. New Series.—Vot. VI. No. 36. 


the force of. gratitude. 


and conspire in a general devastation and 
smashing of the accumulated splendour. 
Plucking up a little resolution, the good 
man takes his family to Bath, to separate 
them for a while from the scene of disgrace, 
and reduce the scale of his establishment $ 
but here, again, the importunities of his 
family, and his own facility betray him 
quickly into fresh mortifications and expo- 
sures. With new resolutions to be master 
of his own concerns, he has scarcely com- 
menced operations, when another unele 
dies, still richer than the former; and he 
now becomesa baronet with £30,000 a-year. 
Instead of removing to the county where 
this vast property lay, he is persuaded to 
return to the old neighbourhood, and, in 
spite of all expostulation and resolve, the 
family again enter the lists of rivalry with 
the sugar-baker, backed by the advantages 
of title and hereditary estates. 

But the fates are against him.. Thirty 
thousand a-year make him too conspicuous 
an object to live as he chooses—every body 
forms designs upon him, public or private— 
he is forced into the oftice of sheriffi—and 
drawn, in defiance of all his caution and 
resistance, into a contested election for the 
county—spends twenty or thirty thousand, 
and half as much more to establish his elec= 
tion before a committee, and thus gets in- 
volved in all sorts of county business, and 
plagued and solicited and harassed at every 
turn. In the meanwhile his family are 
breaking out into a thousand absurdities— 
among others, a’ French lady is intreduced 
to polish their persons and manners: she 
has a brother and cousin—the lady runs 
away with the son, and the gentlemen are 
on the point of starting with the daughters, 
when, luckily, the plot is detected, and the 
ladies rescued. Just at this period parlia- 
ment is dissolved ; he feels himself released, 
makes one desperate effort—breaks from all 
restraint, and finds himself at Great St. 
Bernard. 

The Wallachian’s. tale is illustrative of 
A young Greek 
girl—a foundling—is brought up by a Wal- 
lachian noble, as his daughter. Vor years 
he had lived upon his estates, unobserved, 
or at least undisturbed ; but by degrees the 
fruits of his industry—the indefatigable eul- 
tivation of his ‘property—beceme conspi- 
cuous, and he was compelled to take office 
in the court of the héspodar. By the in- 
trigues of the seraglio, he is finally heguiled 
from home, seized and carried to Constan« 
tinople, and thrown into prison his estates 
the meanwhile exposed, of course, to devas- 
tations. The young and charming Greek, 
though brought up in softness and indal- 
gence, and now deprived suddenly of all 
personal accommodations, resolves to at- 
tempt his reseue; and the difficulties she 
encounters, baffles, and surmounts, form the 

4M 


634 


body of the tale—closing with the scenes of 
the seraglio, which involve the death of 
Selim and Mustapha, and the preservation 
of Mahmoud, the present very extraordi- 
nary and almost European sovereign of the 
Turks. 

A love tale is, of course, mixed up with 
the leading incidents, but constituting a 
very small part of the interest; and some 
scenes of the marvellous are introduced, 
which lead to no results, and are left unde- 
cyphered. The whole tale discovers great 
familiarity, however acquired, with the 
manners, country, story and character of 
the Turkish provinces. Pieces descriptive 
of natural scenery occur of great maguifi- 
cence, and episodical narratives of singular 
vivacity—particularly the story of the boat- 
man on the Danube, who had been high in 
office in the divan, and who afterwards 
figures as the dethroner of Mustapha, and 
the Vizier of Mahmoud. We have alluded 
to the descriptive—we give an instance. 
Hebe, the heroine, is with a priest on Mount 
Athos.— 


I have yet (says he) one grand curiosity to show 
to you. Follow me, and see the true wonder of 
the Hayon Haros (Mount Athos)—the most mag- 
nificent sun dial in the world. 

They passed through a thicket, in which the 
ealoyer had collected the finer varieties of the 
Greek and Asiatic rose; and after some turns 
round the spiral ofa little path, cut by his hands 
in the rock, stood at the foot of the great central 
pinnacle of the mountain. 

This, said he, is the gnomon of our dial; and 
when those clouds below clear away, you shall see 
its plate. 

The increasing glow of the morning had begun 
to dissolve the vapours, which hitherto lay in 
enormous fleeces on the sea as far as the eye 
could reach; and a slight breeze soon catching 
them, developed the horizon of waters, lying with 
the smoothness of a mirror, and blue as the heas 
vens. 

« There,’ said he, * is our remembrancer of 
the passing of time. Follow the shadow of the pin- 
nacle, it is sixty miles long.” 

Ilebe saw, with delight and wonder, the phe- 
nomenon. A stupendous pillar of purple shade 
lay upon the deep, slowly pointing round, as the 
sun moved about the mountain; and touching, 
one by one, a circle of small islands, that gleamed 
across the distant. view like so many floating 
pearls. 

“ Our dial,” said he, “is alone among wonders. 
The sunrise throws the shadow to Salonika ; the 
sunset throws it round to Lemnos, Islands are 
our hour-marks ; and the circumference of our dial 
is three hundred miles.” 


There are five other tales, together occu- 
-pying little more than a volume, which have 
all of them, the author observes, appeared 
in ‘amore hasty shape in scattered publi- 
cations.” Of these the best probably is, the 
Married Actress, entering, as it does, into 
feelings by no means of an obvious or hack- 
neyed cast. The introductories to these 
tales are all of them exquisite morsels—the 
reader will not fail to distinguish the 


Monthly Review of Lilerature, 


[Dxc. 


‘ Italian,’ which describes the miserable 
influence of the Piedmontese government. 

Mémoires sur ? Impératrice Josephine, 
&§c. 1828—The writer of these memoirs is, 
no doubt, very well known at Paris, but the 
name has not reached ws. She speaks of 
herself as belonging to an émigré family, 
and as born in exile—in 1794 quite a child. 
Her friends were musical, and able, fortu- 
nately, to turn their talents to account, suc- 
cessively, in England, Hamburgh, and 
Copenhagen. Under the Consulate they 
returned to Paris, but the state of the 
mother’s health, and the fortunes of the 
family, compelled them to retire to Geneva. 
Here, after a residence of some continuance, 
they were presented to the Empress, who 
had gone to Geneva, on her divorce, to meet 
her son from Milan. They were before 
known to her, and she now cordially in- 
vited them to come and see her at Navarre. 
To Navarre they accordingly went, and re- 
mained till the Empress returned to Mal- 
maison ; to which place, though holding no 
office in the Imperial establishment, they 
still accompanied her, and there also the 
present volume leaves them, soon after the 
birth of the King of Rome. 

The anecdotes are not of Josephine only, 
but of everybody of whom anything can be 
recollected ; beginning in England, and 
accompanying the family migrations to 
Hamburgh, Copenhagen, Paris, Geneva, 
Navarre, and Malmaison, and making an 
agreeable volume, which any one may skim 
with pleasure. Many concern persons, who 
are of no historical, or even of colloquial 
distinction ; but by far the greater part do 
concern persons of whom the world has heard 
a great deal, and may veryallowably desire to 
hear more ; and, certainly, the general value 
of the collection is rather above par than 
below. The style of communication is easy 


and graceful, and the writer’s admiration” 


for Josephine, though enthusiastic, is very 
excusable—it is expressive of the feelings 
of a grateful protégée. She was introduced 
to her when very young, and distinguished 
by her in circles of splendour and scenes of 
gaiety, and naturally dwells with fondness 
on her recollections. She deprecates, very 
uselessly, the supposition of any undue bias 
—by birth and connection she was a Bour- 
bonite—had peremptorily refused an honour- 
able appointment in the court of the Queen 
of Naples, but Josephine was irresistible. 

We shall notice a few matters, as they 
occur, on turning over the leaves, without 
any effort at combining. 

While in England, Dussek and Cramer 
were visitors of the writer’s friends. On 
one occasion Dussek was behind his ap- 
pointment. ‘* What delayed you?” asked 
Cramer. ‘ I have been composing a little 
piece,’”’ said he, “‘ with which I was very 
much pleased ; but I threw it in the fire.” 
“ And why ??’—“ Why, there was a devil of 
a passage in it, which I have been labouring 
in vain, for hours, to execute ; and I knew 


J 


ne 


1828.) 


you would do it the first trial, and so I re- 
solyed to escape the mortification.’? This 
quaint confession of inferiority was made in 
the presence of thirty persons. 

At Hamburgh she saw Lady Edward 
Fitzgerald—Madame _ Genlis’s protégée, 
who was there the object of general admi- 
ration. The Duke of Richmond, she says, 
had offered to marry her, as soon as the 
period of mourning was past, but she re- 
fused, because she did not like him, and 
was afterwards married to M. Pitcairn, the 
Dutch Consul, at Hamburgh. We did not 
know what beeame of Pamela. 

At Paris, Madame Montesson is the 
leading figure. Bonaparte, in his Consu- 
‘late, trusted to her influence for the re- 
introduction and maintenance of better 
manners, after the rough style of the revolu- 
tion. She was the widow, by a sort of left- 
handed marriage, of the Duke of Orleans, 
the father of Egalité, and known, also; as 
the aunt of Madame Genlis. She kept up 
a sort of state, and in a period of returning 
ceremonial, as a person of royal connection, 
asserted a species of supremacy, to which 
every body submitted. She was the centre 
of the élite of existing society—collected 
around her the literati and artists, and was 
inflexible in exacting the observance of pro- 
priety. She gave the grand‘ball on the 
marriage of Louis Buonaparte with Hor- 
tense. This, it seems, proved but a miser- 
able match ; Louis was a quiet, retiring 
person, and fond of books, and made no 
great figure in society, and Hortense wanted 
to see him another Napoleon. Two letters 
of advice from Josephine, to her daughter, 
are given, in one of which she alludes to the 
supposed fondness of Napoleon for her. 
“ How,” says she, “can it have entered 
into your imagination, that I share in cer- 
tain ridiculous, and, probably, interested 

“epinions? Do not think I consider you as 
“my rival: we have both a hold upon the 
“same heart, but by different ties, though 


~ equally sacred ; and those who can see, in the 


Emperor’s affection for you, anything but 
the feelings of a friend and a father, will 
never understand him. He rises too much 
above the vulgar to be the slave of his pas- 
sions. His glory absorbs him too much, 
perhaps, for our repose ; but glory, at least, 
inspires no low desires. This is my pro- 
fession of faith in him.” 

The Emperor insisted on Talleyrand’s 
marrying Madame Grandt—a very beau- 
tiful woman, but a mere fool, and perfectly 
incapable of estimating her husband’s supe- 
riority. Somebody asking Talleyrand how he 
could tolerate her conversation—“ She does 
not fatigue me”’—was his reply. ‘* What 
beautiful diamonds you have got,” said she, 
to a Russian princess. “If you admire 
them, no doubt M. de Taileyrand would 
be delighted to present you with some 
equally beautiful.” “‘ What nonsense,” 
cried Madame Talleyrand, “ do you think 


I married the Pope 2?” Somebody, who 


Domestic and Foreign. 


635 


squinted excessively, addressing Talleyrand, 
at a critical period, asked him how affairs 
were going on—“‘as you see,’’ was his la- 
conic answer. 

The day on which were appointed the 
archi-chancelier, and archi-tresorier—‘ I 
prefer,” said Brogniart, a celebrated architect 
—‘ being archi-tete—he is not so easily 
made as either of the others.”’ 

An amusing account is given of the aris- 
tocratic feelings of the Genevese—of the 
vulgarity of the lower, and the fashion of 
the upper part of the town. The author's 
family had taken a very handsome residence, 
and cheap, in the lower part, but were 
obliged to migrate to the upper, to avoid 
being altogether cut by the inflexible fa- 
shionables of the town. A miserable place 
was with difficulty procured in the favoured 
spot. To console them, however, they were 
told they were occupying Calvin’s apart- 
ments. The drawing-room is frightful— 
but it was Calvin’s. There’s no seeing. 
Calvin, however, found light enough to 
write all his books. The noise of the prison 
is intolerable—the singing of the miserable 
wretches—the barking of the dogs—the 
swearing of the keepers—we shall get no 
sleep. Nonsense, Calvin slept very well. 
The argument was irrefragable and uni- 
versal. 

At-Geneva, Madame de Stael was, of 
course, the great lioness. Though no great 
beauty, her hands were good, and she con- 
trived to make them conspicuous, by con- 
stantly twisting a sprig of poplar round her 
fingers, while talking. She spoke of it, as 
an indispensible accompaniment, and in the 
winter substituted a slip of paper. Wherever 
she visited, she was presented with some- 
thing of this kind to twiddle with, which 
served her for the evening. The writer 
very correctly adds, she never talked, but 
harangued, or pleaded, and then, only, 
when there were present a good body of 
male listeners. Though she knew, or be- 
lieved herself constantly under surveillance, 
she was perpetually criticising public mea- 
sures, and was delighted with the thonght 
of exciting the fears of Robespierre on horse-~ 
back, as she called Buonaparte. At Copet, 
she gathered round her a society of men of 
letters, and seems to have treated the cus- 
tomary proprieties of society with great con- 
tempt. She married Rocca, an officer, who 
had seen a good deal of service—a very fine 
looking fellow—with a large scar from a 
sabre wound, on his face, but not otherwise 
remarkable. 

At Geneva, the writer’s family visited 
Huber. He had been blind from his seven- 
teenth year, at which early age had . been 
formed a passionate attachment to a young 
lady, whose friends opposed the union. 
But when he lost his sight, and all hopes of 
recovering it were abandoned, the noble 
girl determined nothing should separate 
them ; and, resisting the opposition of her 
family, as soon as she was of age, she mar- 

4M 2 


636 


ried him, and spent her life in contributing 
to his comfort. Her affection for him found 
a thousand resources of enjoyment. During 
the wars, she stuck pins of different sizes 
upon paper, and traced with him the cam- 
paigns. She contrived a little machine to 
enable him to write. She modelled, in re- 
lief, the neighbourhood of their residence 
for miles around, Huber’s taste had led 
him to Natural History, and even in this 
pursuit she facilitated and promoted his 
wishes. She read indefatigably to him 
books on the subject, and, particularly, such 
as regarded bees. Under his direction, she 
examined, with a microscope, the several 
parts of the bee ; and, through her eyes, he 
was finally enabled to draw up his very 
curious history of the bee, which is very 
highly and deservedly valued. “ If [had not 
been blind,” said he, “ I should never have 
known the happiness love is capable of pro- 
ducing. My wife, too, is always young, 
fresh, and lovely—shat is something.” 

At Nayarre, the country seat of the Em- 
press, in the neighbourhood of Evreux, the 
author found Madame Gazani, who held 
the office of reader to the Empress. This 
lady was a Genoese, the daughter of a public 
dancer.’ Buonaparte had seen her in Italy, 
and was so enchanted with her beautiful 
figure, that he undertook to provide for her 
and her husband, and she was accordingly 
placed, to save appearances, on the Em- 
press’s establishment. The ladies of honour 
reftised to associate—she appealed to the 
Emperor, and he insisted on their receiving 
her. But he resisted her blandishments. 
Two months after her arrival, fearing, says 
the writer, she was getting too great a hold 
upon him, he came suddenly to the Em- 
press—<‘‘ Send away Madame Gazani—she 
must go back to Italy.’’ “ No, Sir, I willkeep 
hernear me; you must not plunge into despair 
a young woman, whom you have torn from 
her duties. I shall myself soon, perhaps, be 
as unhappy as she (there were already whis- 

-pers of the intended divorce). We shall 
weep together—she will understand me—I 
will keep her with me, which will certainly 
prevent your Majesty meeting with her.”*— 
“¢ Well; 2s you please, but let me see her 
no more.”” The Empress, after her divorce, 
is represented as finding consolation in the 
society of this ladys—as one who had the 
same feelings for her husband as herself. 
This is really a very droll story, and could 
have entered into the head of nobody but a 
young French girl, The nonsense of 
modern sentiment, among ourselves, shews 
at least, a little more healthy vigour. 

Of Maria Louise, it is observed, no one 
phrase, or sentiment, was ever quoted, 
which shews distinctly there was really 
nothing to quote. Her conduct in 1814 
sufficiently measures the extent of her sen- 
sibilities. 

Several music composers are spoken of. 
Paesiello once said, singing required taking 
a hundred parts—ninety-nine voice, and 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[ Dxc. 


one skilj. How many are singing without 
any voice, and yet think they are doing ad- 
mirably. Napoleon once made some re- 
marks to Cherubini on his music, as being, 
probably, too learned. ‘‘ General,”’ said he, 
(it was in the time of the Consulate)—‘ do 
you win battles—that is your business ; leave 
mine, about which you know nothing, to 
me.’’ Napoleon never forgot this rudeness 5 
and long after, peremptorily refused Mehul, 
who wished to associate Cherubini with him- 
self in the office of maitre de chapelle—“ do 
not name him—I cannot bear him.” 

“¢ Science, science, nothing but science— 
that is all you give us,” said Napoleon, to 
Mehul; “of grace, gaiety, melody, you 
French know no more than the Germans.” 
Marsollier and Mehul got up a little plot. 
Mehul composed a new piece. Marsollier 
presented it as a charming thing he had 
just received from Italy. The Consul en- 
gaged to be present at the first performance, 
and took Mehul with him. He was de- 
lighted with the music, and exulted over 
Mehul, till the- end of the performance, 
when the author was called for, and Mehul 
presented himself. The Consul met the 
dénouement very well. ‘‘ Catch me always 
in the same way, and I shall enjoy your 
glory, and my own pleasure.”” Mehul, in 
repeating this story, used to speak of Napo- 
leon’s astonishment, and the sort of hesita- 
tion which preceded the compliment. 

The old story is here repeated, and from 
the mouth of Josephine, of the prophecy 
given by the old negress. It was in these 
terms. * You will marry very soon, and your 
marriage will be happy. You will become 
a widow, and then—then you will be queen 
of France ;. you will spend some glorious 
years, and then you will perish in a com- 
motion.”? In prison, with other royalists, 
she heard of Beauharnois’ death, and the 
prophecy seems then to have seized her. 
The ninth thermidor came—“ I am not guil- 
lotined yousee—I shall be queen of France.” 
When relating these things to her suite, at 
Navarre, she said, ‘‘ This is exactly the pro- 
phecy. The end troubles me. I am here 
calm and retired; I concern myself with 
no public matters—I do all the good I can, 
and so I hope I shall die in my bed. | It is 
true, Marie Antoinette’’—here she stopped, 
and her attendants hastened to change the 
conversation. 

The mention of the guillotin reminds us 
of what is said of the inventor. M. Guillos 
tin, an intelligent physician, invented it 
about two years before the revolution, -to 
abridge the sufferings of criminals. It was 
seized by the revolution to accelerate the 
dispatch of the unfortunate. ‘I knew 
him,” says the writer, ‘in his old age 
—he could never console himself for the in- 
voluntary stain upon his name. His vener~ 
able figure bore the impression of deep 
sorrow, and his hair, perfectly white, attest- 
ed his sufferings. He wished to relieve, and 
he contributed to destruction.’? Had execu. 


1828.] 


-tions been less rapid, the people had been 
sooner fatigued’ with what they ran to as to 
spectacles. 

Madame Tallien separated from Tallien, 
and was married to the Prince de Chimaye. 
“© She will always be Madame Tallien, ne- 
vertheless,”’ said Tallien. ‘‘ That name will 
always be more conspicuous than Princess 
de Chimere.” 

The style in which the Empress lived at 
Navarre, was, in the highest degree, splen- 
did. Twenty-two tables were kept, which 
seems, at length, to have distressed her, and 
by an effort, they were reduced to sixteen. 
On the birth of the King of Rome, she 
gave a magnificent entertainment to the citi- 
~zens of Evreux ; and, on her return to Mal- 
‘maison, had an interview with Napoleon. 
The Empress received him, par une délica- 
tesse digne d’elle, in the garden. They sat 
together, in view of the windows, but at too 
great a distance to be heard. On parting, 
the Emperor kissed her hand, and Jose- 
phine, through the day, appeared well con- 
tent with the interview, regretting only her 
inability to do anything for this heurewx de 
la terre. 


Present State of the Tenancy of Land, 
by L. Kennedy, and T. B. Granger. 1828. 
—cCustoms are local things, and, in all 
parts of the world, are found to be of equal 
force with written laws, and often control- 
ling them. Any one, of course, would be 
apt to think that, on the matter of tenancy, 
there was one law for the whole kingdom ; 
and that what was not determined by law, 
was arranged by specific agreements between 
landlord and tenant. But there are scores 
of things, with which neither general laws, 
nor specific agreements have anything to 
do, and which depend, wholly, on local cus- 
tom. The period of entrance upon a farm 
is fixed on custom, and varies in different 
counties, and even in different parts of coun- 
ties — what, again, the outgoing tenant 
shall leave, and the incoming take—the cir- 
cumstances in which either party shall have 
an option—in some places the out-goer is 
entitled to the coming crop, and in others 
not—sometimes the in-comer is allowed to 
plough the land before possession, and, in 
others, not, or subject to the caprice, and, 
probably, sulkiness of the out-goer; and 
may, by possibility, be prevented from get- 
ting a crop for eighteen months, &c. These 
things, which are everywhere regulated by 
custom, it is of importance to landlords and 
farmers to be acquainted with ; a book of 
reference, for the whole country, seemed, to 
the compilers, a work of utility, and they 
_ have, accordingly, supplied one. Every 
county is carefully gone over, and the gene- 
ral customs of tenancy stated—accompanied 
with a slight sketch of the surface—the pro- 
_ ductions, soils, manures, and systems of 
j cropping. 
_ To these statements—which have plainly 
their use, and not merely to the farmers 


Domestic and Foreign. 


637 


and landlords, but, also, to men of inquiry, 
whose object is to understand thoroughly 
the state and condition of the country, 
though such knowledge may not immedi- 
ately touch their interests, or be directly 
convertible to practical purposes—is pretixed 
a very long dissertation upon what may be 
termed Agricultural politics. The authors, 
we presume, are surveyors, and the interests 
of the landlords, who, of course, are their 
employers, it is natural for them to consider 
of the first importance. Accordingly, in 
discussing these matters, they are advocates 
for Corn Protecting Duties, on the grounds, 
mainly, of the great burdens which press 
upon the land—tithes, rates, taxes, roads, 
&c., but which, really, seem scarcely to 
afford any pretence ; and we venture to re- 
commend to the authors, if they have any 
desire to be corrected, supposing them 
wrong, a perusal of Captain Potter’s recent 
pamphlet. 


There, are, however, some points very 
well urged—first, upon landlords, to give 
leases to their tenants, if for nothing else, 
to insure justice to the land—to exert them- 
selves to relieve the out-going and in-com- 
ing tenants from annoying and injurious 
practices—and next upon the farmers, to 
rescue the miserable labourer from parochial 
dependence, and abolish the practice of 
paying labour out of the rates. The prodi- 
gious difference of cultivation in the north, 
and south, they attribute, mainly, to the 
difference in the customs of tenancy. In 
the northern counties leases are general ; 
the new comer is not shackled by being 
compelled to take what he does not want, 
and his capital is thus more at his com- 
mand. To this, also, they trace the increase 
of the poor rates, for it is observable these 
two things go together—the tenant is crip- 
pled at the outset, and, with his capital 
locked up, he is driven to encourage the 
parochial system—the consequence of which 
is, the labourer is degraded, the farmer em- 
barrassed, and the /and beggared. 


The Anglo-Ivrish, 3 vols, 12mo., 1828.— 
This is a pleasant vehicle for the discussion 
of Irish affairs, and, obviously, the produc- 
tion of a man who knows what he is talk- 
ing about. The object is to correct the 
existing prejudices against the Irish—the 
old native Irish, and the old English colo- 
nists. The hero of the tale is the son of a 
peer, who had been an active coadjutor of 
Lord Londonderry, in bringing about the 
Union. The youth himself is born and 
bred in England, in the full fastidiousness 
of English aristocratic feeling, and in con- 
tempt and loathing for everything Ivish in 
manner and sentiment, and above all, Irish 
ewpression of sentiment. 'The family are, 
of course, absentees, and the property 
managed by Scotch stewards. Though en- 
tertaining a perfect horror of the Catholics, 
and their Associations, they are politically 
disposed to Emancipation, in the hope ap« 


638 


parently of quieting restless spirits, and, 
especially, because they believe the Union 
had been finally consummated with this 
understanding. Lord Londonderry is made 
to say, not that Emancipation was stipu- 
lated, but that the Catholics, and Irish lead- 
ers, were allowed to deceive themselves on 
this point. The panacea for all evils is io 
make the Irish English. 'The hero of the 
tale is the representative of English and 
Orange prejudices against Ireland. This 
change of sentiment is, of course, to be 
accomplished by the agency of love and the 
ladies. 

At school, and at college—in the streets, 
in the country, he is meeting, perpetually, 
with Irish, and always accompanied with 
something to heighten his disgusts. On his 
father’s death, he is left to the guardianship 
of Lord Londonderry, and a Mr. Keightley, 
a cousin, an Irishman, and descended from 
the early English colonists, who, whether 
Protestant or Catholic, amalgamate well 
with the original, and “ mere” Irish. The 
vulgarity of this guardian, or, at least, his 
obyious disregard of English proprieties, 
revolts the youth, and disgusts him with the 
very name of Keightley. At his first school 
vacation, he goes to visit his sister, then an 
invalid in Devonshire, and under the care 
of the wife of this Mr. Keightley, and his 
younger daughter. This daughter is a very 
extraordinary specimen of Irish vivacity— 
beautiful as a seraph, but her freedoms with 
his sister, are excessively offensive to the 
niceties of his dignity. When at Cam- 
bridge, he again encounters numbers of his 
countrymen, and again receives new dis- 
gusts, and, especially, from their forward 
and bragging manners. Coming to London, 
he dines with Croker, and meets with more 
Trishmen—chiefly those connected with the 
press—reporters, editors, leader-writers, 
&c., who were, of course, not likely to efface 
unfavourable impressions. The dinner 
affords an opportunity of shewing up the 
late admiralty secretary, and this is done at 
considerable length, and not unsuccessfully. 
‘The secretary is exhibited scribbling in the 
drawing-room, whilst the party are assem- 
bling, a sheet for Murray’s Quarterly— 
talking of one thing, and reviewing another 
—deprecating the very natural constructions 
of his guests—no affectation—the impera- 
tiveness of business, &c. After dinner, and 
at table, we find him doing the same thing, 
or something like it—begging the company 
to proceed with their conversation—they 
know he can very well follow two trains of 
thought ; and, when going to the drawing- 
room, suddenly recollecting and sending 
for his secretary, to tell him he shall want 
him in the morning, just to go to the Medi- 
terranean, and beg him to be ready, &c. 
This, it might be supposed, is intended to 
quiz the funny pretensions of the ex-secre- 
tary, but a great deal of it is evidently sober 
admiration of his extraordinary versatility 
and promptness. 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


{Dec. 


The youthful hero now comes into par- 
liament, and arranges for a political career, 
and the acceptance of office. His interview 
with the minister is attended with some un- 
satisfactery conversation, but the conse- 
quences are suddenly broken in upon by a 
little private fracas. He falls desperately in 
love with a married lady, or rather she— 
she is an Irish lady—falls desperately in 
love with him, and he has a narrow escape. 
Trish-like, she precipitates too much—he 
hangs back—her impatience breaks out— 
she bursts into unlady-like violence—flies 
from him and her husband, at once—throws 
herself into the arms of a Methodist preacher, 
and is overtaken by the raving husband (an 
Irishman, of course), who pistols the mise- 
rable preacher ; and then, binding the ma- 
niac wife to the corpse, shoots himself 
through the head. But though the hero (the 
Honourable Gerald Blount—we cannot do 
without his name) thus escapes—it is not 
without being drawn into a duel, in which 
he kills, or rather believes he kills, his an- 
tagonist. 

Luckily the peace of 1814 was just con- 
cluded, and he flies with his second, Cap- 
tain Flood, to Paris, to be out of the way 
for a time. Here, at Pére la Chaise, he 
enters into a conversation with a French 
lady, full of mystery—she knows every- 
thing about him, but he can get no clue for 
her. Napoleon returns ; and Blount, with 
the rest of the English, flies to Brest—sees 
the Pére la Chaise lady’s head, from a 
window—gets up the next morning too late 
for the packet—pursues it in a boat—climbs 
up the ship’s side—misses his hold—catches 
another glance of the lady, and falls into his 
own boat again. The next day he sails in 
another for Bristol—is overtaken by a storm 
—driven out of his course, and wrecked 
upon the Irish coast. After a marvellous 
escape, he is taken up exhausted on the 
beach—opens his eyes—sees again the fair 
vision—faints—is conveyed to a hut, and 
provided with, he knows not how, proper 
comforts, and a direction to remain quiet 
till the next afternoon. 

Finding, however, to his horror, that he 
is in Ireland, and on his brother’s property, 
his first thought is to get out of it; and, in 
spite of his unknown friend’s written direc- 
tion, mounts the coach which was passing 
for Dublin. The coachman is an old tenant 
of his brother’s, or his own, turned out by 
the tyranny of the agent ; and, while telling 
Blount the story, in a fit of emotion over- 
turns the coach, and smashes his own thigh, 
and breaks Blount’s arm. To Dublin, how- 
ever, he at last gets, by post, and is confined 
at Morrison’s for some time with his broken 
limb. By degrees he is able to look about 
the town, and is, reluctantly enough, com- 
pelled to confess its beauties. By-and-by, 
also, he attends a debate of the Catholic 
Association, and, by a little anachronism, 
listens to O’Connell and Shiel; is struck by 
the style of their discussions, and somewhat 


1828. 


shaken in his prejudices against the Irish. 
He was, however, on the point of quitting 
Treland, when, in the company of a Mr. 
Gore, a man in office, an acquaintance, who 
had in London borrowed money of him, in 
a very Irish off-handed manner, he meets 
with a lady—a daughter, indeed, of Mr. 
Gore’s—who looks very like the Pére la 
Chaise lady ; and is, for some time, by 
little artifices of hers, a good deal perplexed 
—she is, and is not the lady, and the 
reader himself can make little or nothing of 
the matter. His admiration of her keeps 
him in Ireland, but the society of Gore and 
his friends, thoroughly disgusts him with 
the Orange party, and he is led, step by 
step, to wish to see himself the real Irish. 
His sister is now residing on her own pro- 
perty, in the very neighbourhood of the 
family estates, and of the Keightleys, 
against whom, it has been seen, Blount was 
exceedingly prejudiced, chiefly as being 
Trish, and, as he believes, low Irish. To 
visit this sister he is finally determined, by 
the impulses of the ambiguous lady, who, 
at length, frankly confesses she is not the 
lady, and assures him he will find her at his 
sister’s. 

In the coach, which conveyed him to the 
south, he meets with an elderly gentleman, 
and entering into a long and serious discus- 
sion of Irish affairs with him, is argued out 
of some more of his prejudices; and, on 
_taking leave, has reason to believe his con- 
‘vincer was his old guardian, Mr. Keightley. 
Proceeding now to his sister’s residence, he 
falls into the hands of the Rockites, and is, 

‘for some time, kept in durance ; but luckily, 

by his sister’s popularity, and the influence 
of the Captain Rock of the neighbourhood, 
his old acquaintance, the coachman, who 
had overturned him, he is conducted to his 
_sister’s, where he is reconciled to the 
 “Keightleys—introduced to the eldest son, 
who is on the point of marrying his sister, 
and proves to be the person he believed he 
had killed in the duel—and, finally, to the 
Pere la Chaise \ady—the original Miss 
Keightley, the beautiful seraph whom he 
had first seen in Devonshire. Intimations 
are given of his future marriage with this 
lady—the death of his brother, by which 
he becomes Lord Clangores—and his final 
and entire conversion on a full knowledge 
of the Irish character. 

With a very considerable knowledge of 
life and manners, instances of ignorance, 
or, perhaps, forgetfulness, occur, which were 
little to be looked for. Mr. Blount talks 
of his delightful rambles at Cambridge, in 
August—Captain Blount, at Paris, parades, 
in his habitual dress, the uniform of the 
10th Hussars—and, in the year 1814, we 
hear of a purse of sovereigns, &c. 


Memoirs of General Miller, of the 
Peruvian Service, 2 vols, 8vo. 1828.—The 
subject of these memoirs was born about the 

end of the year 1795, and, at fifteen, en- 


a Se 


Domestie and Foreign. 


639 


tered the British service, in which he was 
uninterruptedly engaged till the peace of 
1815 ; having been present at the sieges of 
Cuidad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebas- 
tian, at the battle of Vittoria, and the in- 
vestment of Bayonne—witnessed the fall of 
General Ross, at Baltimore, and accompa- 
nied the troops destined to act against New 
Orleans. The two following years were 
spent on the continent, partly in a French 
mercantile house ; but, disliking the em- 
ployment, and yet unwilling to be idle, and 
the necessity of doing something, probably, 
pressing upon him, he bent his steps to- 
wards South America; and, as his good 
luck would have it, preferred Buenos Ayres, 
where few, it appears, had gone, to Co- 
lombia, which was overrun with English 
adventurers. Fortunately, he got a favour- 
able introduction to Puyrredon, the supreme 
director, and, within a month, was pre- 
sented with a captain’s commission, and 
directed to join the army, then encamped 
near Val Paraiso, and preparing to assist 
the Peruvians, under the command of San 
Martin. This was in January 1818; and, 
through the whole war, to the battle of 
Ayacucho, which, in December 1824, finally 
secured the independence of Peru, was 
Miller actively employed, by sea and by 
land, under Cochrane, San Martin, and 
Bolivar—several times severely wounded, 
and rising, successively, through the grada- 
tions of major, lieut.-colonel, colonel, and 
general of brigade. At the conclusion of 
the war, he was appointed, first, governor of 
Puno, and then of Potosi, in which latter 
office he continued till October 1825, when 
his health failing, and compelling him to 
return to Europe, he was presented with 
20,000 dollars—leave of absence for two 
years, and a testimonial of service, couched 
in the most honourable terms, by Bolivar. 

The memoir is written by a brother of 
the general (the swelling title has something 
unduly ostentatious about it), the details 
of which are collected from his private 
papers, journals, and recollections: the 
writer himself has visited a considerable 
part of the scenes he describes—and contain 
a pretty full account of the war of indepen- 
dence, in the provinces of Rio de la Plata, 
Chili, and Peru—the whole interspersed 
with descriptions of the country, and man- 
ners of the people, and, particularly, with 
accounts and anecdotes of all the leading 
personages of South America. Though 
little can be said for the skill with which 
the book is constructed, it is a very useful 
one ; for we scarcely know where the de- 
tails of these wars can be gathered with any 
completeness. Though things are exhibited 
not in the clearest manner, nevertheless, 
with a little patience and perseverance, a 
fair and distinct account may be extracted, 
for the book is not deficient in fulness. 
The author, too, sticks to his business ; 
and, whatever he writes, the reader may be 
certain it is all about South America: and 


640 


we assure him, on our own view of the mat- 
ter, he may, with the exception of Co- 
lumbia, get to understand the story, and 
course of the revolutionary war very well. 
He will, perhaps, accept our help. 

The first movement in Chili, was in 
July 1810, when the captain-general, Car- 
rasco, was displaced by Count de la Con- 
quista, who favoured the appointment of a 
junta in September, which acknowledged 
Ferdinand, and its own authority was im- 
mediately recognized by all, high and low. 
During the election of the Congress, which 
assembled in June 1811, an attempt to re- 
establish the old government failed, and the 
ringleader was shot. ‘The Congress itself, 
however, in December, was dissolved by 
the sudden usurpation of the three brothers, 
Carrera, one of whom assumed the supreme 
authority, and exercised it with great cruel- 
ties. The dissatisfaction excited by the 
tyranny of this man, prompted Abiscal, 
viceroy of Peru, to invade Chili, but he was 
successfully resisted by Carrera, aided by 
the patriots, among whom O’Higgins and 
M‘Kenna were conspicuous. About the end 
of 1813, Carrera was ousted, and O’ Higgins 
took the command of the army, and had some 
successes against the Peruvians. At this 
time, Captain Hillyear, of the English navy, 
mediated between the parties, and the 
Peruvians agreed to withdraw ; but, before 
the terms of the treaty could be executed, 
Carrera again got the government into his 
hands: and scarcely was he in possession, 
when intelligence arrived of the Peruvian 
government’s refusing to accede to the 
treaty, and of the Peruvian forces being 
close at hand. O’Higgins sacrificed his 
resentments, and united once more with 
Carrera to repel the enemy again. But 
their unlted exertions were this time in 
vain. Osorio, the Peruvian commander, 
carried all before him, and O’Higgins, in 
October 1814, fled with a considerable body 
of emigrants to Mendoza, where San Mar- 
tin was encamped, with the forces of Buenos 
Ayres. Chili was ruled successively by 
Osorio and Marco, with extraordinary seve- 
rity, till San Martin’s invasion in the be- 
ginning of 1817. At the time O’Higgins 
fled to him for refuge, San Martin had just 
been appointed to the government of Cayo, 
on the frontiers of Chili; and, from that 
moment, he bent all his energies to the 
assembling of a force adequate to the reco- 
very of Chili from the hands of the viceroy 
of Peru. Full two years were spent in pre- 
parations for this enterprise ; but, almost 
immediately after crossing the Andes, one 
fortunate battle, that of Cachabuco, gave 
him the sovereignty of Chili. He, how- 
ever, declined the honour the Chilenos 
would have conferred; and O’Higgins 
was, in consequence, named Supreme Di- 
rector. Inflamed with success, San Martin 
resolved to push forward the cause of inde- 
pendence, and carry his successful arms into 
Peru. He flew to Buenos Ayres, laid his 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Dec. 


plans before the government, was furnished 
with some additional troops, and in January 
1818, when Miller joined him, was en- 
camped near Val Paraiso, preparatory to 
his advance upon Peru. 

But just at this period came back, with 
considerable re-inforcements, Osorio, to re- 
invade Chili ; and marching upon the capi- 
tal, was encountered by San Martin and 
O’ Higgins, and finally defeated at the bat- 
tle of Maypo, which fixed (says Miller) the 
destinies of Chili. Fresh assistance was 
required, before he could venture with his 
reduced force into Peru, and he accord- 
ingly returned once more to Buenos Ayres, 
to solicit a new reinforcement. In the 
meanwhile an expedition was dispatched by 
the Chilenos, to intercept some vessels, 
bringing supplies to Peru from Spain, which 
succeeded. This was in January 1819, by 
which time Cochrane arrived, and new ex- 
peditions were planned along the coast, 
especially to Callao, most of which failed, 
but finally one against Valdivia accom- 
plished its. purpose. The capture of Val- 
divia, February 1820, the only place of 
strength which had remained in the roya- 
lists’ hands, left San Martin, who had, by 
this time, returned from Buenos Ayres, at 
full liberty to pursue his plans upon Peru ; 
but unluckily, just at this period, broke out 
disturbances in. the Plata provinces—Tu- 
caman, Cordova, &c., and San Martin was 
commanded to proceed thither, and bring 
the revolters back to submission. Reso= 
lute, however, not to be diverted from his 
favourite object, he refused obedience—but 
refused on the ground, that such was the 
unsettled state of the government, he knew 
not whom to obey ; and, forthwith—know- 
ing perfectly what he was about—he re- 
signed his command into the hands of the 
soldiers, who, of course, re-appointed him. 

By these several impediments, the libe- 
rating army, as it was now termed, amounts 
ing to 4,500, was unable to embark before 
August (1820). The royalist force in Peru, 
at different points, was calculated at 25,000; 
but the commanders, Laserna, Valdez, 
Penuela, were notoriously not acting very 
cordially together. Landing at Pisco, after 
encountering sundry obstacles, and a variety 
of fortune, in the following May (1821), 
they advanced within two leagues of Lima. 
An armistice was instantly agreed upon, 
and terms of accommodation proposed. 
These, however, were finally rejected by the 
royalists ; and, in July, hostilities re-com, 
menced, and so actively on the part of the 
patriots, that the royalists, finding their 
supplies cut off, were compelled to abandon 
Lima. The capital was immediately seized 
by San Martin, who forthwith declared him- 
self Protector of Peru (August 1821). At 
Lima he remained with a part of his troops ; 
and, while Las Heras was dispatched to 
harass the retreat of the royalists, he took 
possession of Callao, to prevent Cochrane 
seizing the castles, which he was disposed 


» 


=i 


1828.] 


to do, for the exclusive advantage of Chili. 
Cochrane made demands upon San Martin, 
which he was either unwilling or unable to 
comply, and they separated in anger, and 
Cochrane proceeded to California. 

‘By this time Lima was heartily sick of 
San Martin, and his unoccupied troops ; 


‘and, appointing Torre Tagle swpremo dele- 


gado, he sailed to Guayaquil, to confer with 
Bolivar, and when they at last met, July 
1822, the meeting was productive of little 


satisfaction. The two eminent leaders could - 


come to no agreement—Bolivar insisting 
on uniting Guayaquil to Colombia. Re- 
turning to Lima, San Martin resumed his 
authority ; but in September, the Congress 
assembling, he resigned his office, and being 
honoured with the title of Founder of the 
Liberties of Peru, and a pension of 25,000 
dollars, he finally withdrew from public life, 
and going to Europe, settled at Brussels. 
The Congress now appointed an execu- 
tive committee; and, under the command 
of Alvarado, an expedition was sent to In- 
termedios Puertos, which finally failed at 
all points. A president, Riva Aguero, was 
named (Feb. 1823) ; and, under his direc- 
tion, another effort was made, with 5,000, 
for the same object, commanded by Santa 
Cruz. In the meanwhile Cantarac, the 
royalist commander, finding sundry things 
operating against the patriots—their recent 
defeats—the unsettled state of Chili—the 
anarchy of the Plata provinces—the misun- 
derstandings of Peru and Colombia—deter- 
mined on advancing again upon the capital. 
Before this, however, could be accomplished, 
3,000 Colombian troops had arrived from 
Guayaquil. Bolivar had been invited—and 
Sucre (a diplomatic agent from Colombia) 
had been appointed Commander-in-chief. 
At the head of not more than 5,000, 
Colombians and all, Sucre could not ven- 
ture to meet Cantarac, who immediately 
re-entered Lima at the head of 7,000, 


' (June 1823). This occupation of the capital, 


owever, by Canterac, was of short continu- 
ance. The successes of Santa Cruz, in the 
south, compelled the royalists to muster all 
their strength against him, and Cantarac 
ain evacuated the capital ; and, to shorten 

e story, by October, completely destroyed 
Santa Cruz’s army. 

But soon things turned again in favour 
of the patriots. Bolivar—the only man who 
could save them—arrived at Lima, in Sep- 
tember, and was forthwith invested with 
supreme authority, civil and military. His 
first cares were directed to settling the dis- 

tes of the chiefs, which were, at last, 

ly arranged, by banishing the late 
president—his next to the suppressing a 
mutiny among the troops. In February, 
1824, he was named Dictator, and the 
Congress dissolving itself, left him absolute. 


His whole force was now directed against 


thé royalists ; and, with 6,000 Columbians, 

44,000 Peruvians, the career of success 

scarcely interrupted, up to*the battle 
.M. New Series. —V ou. VI. No. 36. 


Domestic and Foreign. 


641 


of Junin, in August; when leaving the 
army, under Sucre, he returned to Lima to 
attend to affairs on the coast,.and hasten 
the re-inforcements from Colombia. _ Sucre 
was ordered to avoid engagements, but the 
advance of the royalists left him no alterna- 
tive; and, in December, he fought the 
decisive battle of Ayacucho, in which the 
viceroy was taken, and after which the 
royalists were no longer able to muster or - 
rally again. 

In February 1825, a new Congress was 
assembled, and Bolivar resigned the Dic- 
tatorship, and was with difficulty persuaded 
to continue at the head of affairs. In April, 
he set out on a sort of tour of inspection, 
along the coast, to Arequipa—from thence 
to Cuzco la Paz, Puno, and in October to 
Potosi, where Miller received him, and ob- 
tained from him leave of absence, and, as 
has been stated, an honourable testimonial 
of conduct. 

On Boliyar’s return to Lima, some jea- 
lousies arose, and the Peruvians were disposed 


' to get rid ofthe Colombians. Bolivar wished 


to impose on them the code Boliviano. 

The members of the Congress, about to 
assemble on February (1826), were desired 
to submit to Bolivar their qualification ; 
they refused—and he threatened to abandon 
Peru. Petitions were got up—the deputies 
returned home without assembling—he con- 
sented to stay, and was named President 
Sor Life. 

By this time, affairs in Colombia de- 
manded his presence: for Paez refused to 
obey Santendet, the president in Bolivar’s 
absence (Sept. 1826). Once out of the 
country, the party opposed to Bolivar, and 
foreign influence, quickly gathered courage, 
and spoke out. The general feeling was 
the Code Boliviano, and Bolivar himself had 
been forced upon the Peruvians. Elections 
for a new Congress took place, which assem- 
bled in June 1827, deposed Bolivar, and 
elected La Mar president. : 

To return for amoment to Chili—O’ Hig- 
gins, who, as we have seen, was named 
Supreme Director, after the battle of Co- 
chabucho, continued in that office till June 
1823, affecting, on many occasions, and by 
sundry changes, to give his fellow-citizens a 
constitutional government, till at last, wea- 
ried by the delusions practised upon them, 
and exasperated by the tyranny, not of 
himself, but of his agents, the people rose 
in tumults, and drove him from his throne. 
A Congress followed, and General Preyre 
was elected Director, who finally captured the 
island of Chiloe. In 1826, Freyre resigned 
and Admiral Blanco soon after. The 
office is now held by General Pinto, a man, 
it seems, of liberal sentiments, and a culti- 
vated mind. 

From Miller’s book, some account, also, 
of the changes and progress of Buenos 
Ayres, and Bolivia, or Upper Peru (cor 
sisting of what were formerly Plata pro- 
vinces) might be obtained, but not with the 

4N : 


642 


same authority, or clearness: We shall 
soon haye an opportunity of supplying the 
deficiency. 


Nollekens and his Times, by T. Smith. 
2 vols. 8vo-—Nollekens was one of the 
most successful makers of busts and sepul- 
ehral monuments in his day—a dextrous 
and felicitous transferer of likenesses—but 
as little entitled to class with intellectual 
artists of ancient or modern times, as any 
man who ever gained a reputation without 
deserving it, He was indeed a man utterly 
without cultivation; with no defined no- 
tions of the principles of his art ; perfectly 
ignorant of its history—insensible to the 
beautiful conceptions of antiquity, and quite 
incapable of appreciating their superiorities. 
He had no reading in him, or literature of 
any kind—no romance—no poetry—no 
visions; but looking upon his profession as 
a mechanical trade—a business of manipu- 
lation—piqued: himself upon his executions 
in the very spirit with which a shopman 
might on his dexterity in packing a parcel. 
A pains-taking fellow, in short, who was 
able to model what stood before him. Of 
all feeling of the ideal he was totally desti- 
tute—his notion of perfection was limited 
to the production of the truest copy of the 
figure before him. The rule and compass 
did every thing for him. Bor and bred 
among statues and paintings, he had some 
tact in selecting figures “and attitudes ; but 
his very - Venuses,- for which he at one 
time gained some celebrity, have all the 
faults of individual nature. His stooping 
Venus has thick ancles—imperfectly formed 
thighs—defective, that is, in the filling up 
of the Greek statues—a bad abdomen—but 
a back of unrivalled beauty—all nicely and 
aceurately copied from the female who stood 
before him. The toes alone were taken from 
the Venus de Medici—those of his living 
model were of course, like all women’s, crip- 
pled from the compression of tight shoes. 

The history of an artist, is, somebody 
says, the history of his works, but those of 
Nollekens could furnish nothing of any in- 
terest ; for they were none of them works of 
fancy or adventure (save only the Venuses 
before alluded to), but pieces made accord- 
ing to order. The character of the man, 
and that was of the coarsest and most sor- 
did kind, accordingly supplies the materials 
of his biography. He was nothing but a 
grovelling miser—his whole soul was bent 
upon money-making, and he could not part 
with money even for his own gratification. 
He matches Elwes in sordidness, but Elwes 
was a gentleman in-manners and cultiva- 
tion, to which Nollekens had no pretension 
whatever. He was low and vulgar without 
redemption — conceited — jealous — suspi- 
cious—detractive—and full. of the most 
unmitigated prejudices. Of Flaxman, he 
once said—‘ I don’t like him ; he holds me 
very cheap, and he’s always talking of the 


simple line in the antique; why, he has” 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


. Yorkshire. 


(Dec. 


never been at Rome; he has never been 
over the Alps; he has never been at the top 
of Mount Vesuvius, where I have washed 
my hands in the clouds: what can he know 
about the matter ? he never stays a minute 
longer than to speak to Smith, when he 
comes into-my studio.” 

Nollekens was born in 1737. His father 
and grandfather were painters, and natives of 
Antwerp. He himself was born in London, 
and at thirteen placed with Scheemaker, 
then, probably, the best statuary in the me- 
tropolis, and with him he continued for ten 
years, working always, and indefatigably, 
in his vocation, but only working manually 
—doing nothing to enlighten or enlarge 
his experience, nor mixing with any ca- 
pable of supplying his manifest deficiencies. 
The Scheemakers lived grubbingly, and 
Nollekens knew no other mode of life, nor 
ever after regarded any other. He very 
early started for the prizes of the Society of 
Arts, and gained several of them. At 
three and twenty, with the little money he 
had thus acquired, he went to Rome, and 
forthwith turned his talents to account. In 
conjunction with antiquity dealers, he re- 
stored mutilations, and fitted heads and 
limbs to torsos—bought up terracottas—and 
puffed off modern fabrications—thus. gain- 
ing considerable sums—and all the while 
living in the most beggarly style of sordid- 
ness. One hit produced 1,000 guineas 
a botched Minerva, now at Newby Park, in 
While at Rome, Garrick re- 
cognized him, with—‘‘ What, are you the 
little fellow to whom we gave the prizes at 
the Society of Arts?” He employed him 
forthwith to make his bust—Nollekens’s 
first ; and Sterne soon after did the same— 
which brought him into notice. ; 

On his return to London, he came quick! 
into full employment ; and though still liv- 


ing in the most hugger-mugger style, he ~ 


was known to be wealthy, a holder of stock 
to some amount—a thing so rare among 
artists, thatit gave him consideration among 
his fraternity. He was soon admitted into the 
Academy, and patronized by the king. He 
now married a daughter of Welch—a man 
who succeeded Henry Fielding as a magis- 
trate, and whose name and fortunes are 
familiar to the readers of Johnson’s biegra- 
phers. The lady was the Pekuah of the 
Rasselas, of whom Johnson used to say—— 
“ Yes, I think Mary would have been 
mine, if little Joey had not stepped in.” She 
shared to the full all Nollekens’s propensi- 
ties ; and one of the volumes is half filled 
with specimens of their miserableness. ‘She 
used to walk round Oxford Market, when 
she went to the butcher’s, several times, to 
give her dog an opportunity of picking up 
scraps, till her purpose was detected; and 
she was assailed with, “here comes Mrs. 
Nollekens and her bull-bitch.”” Both of 
them had a taste for spices —Nollekens 
pocketed nutmegs at the Academy dinners ; 
and she, when she visited the grocer’s, had 


a 
- fieiently acquainted with the general form ; there. 


1828-] 


always some “disagreeable flavour in her 
mouth,”’ for which she begged the shopman 
to give her a clove or a bit of cinnamon. 

. The dialogues between them are not to be 
tolerated. 

Perfectly unlicked as Nollekens was, 
some of his uncouthnesses are somewhat 
amusing— 

When I was modelling the king’s bust, I was 
commanded to go to receive the king at Bucking- 
ham-house, at seven o’clock in the morning, for 
that was the time his majesty shaved. After he 
had shaved himself, and before he had put on his 
stock, I modelled my bust. I sof him down, to 
be even with myself, and the king seeing me go 
about him and about him, said to me. ‘‘ What do 
you want?” I said, “I want to measure your 
nose. The queen tells me, I have made my nose 
too broad.” 


~ West was sitting once to Nollekens, when 


the Dukes of York and Cumberland came 
in— 

“ How’s your father?” asked Nollekens. To 
which the duke, with his usual condescension, 
adds Smith, smilingly informed him the king was 
better. The Duke of Cumberland then asked 
Nollekens, “ Why a man of his years wore so 
high a toupee to his wig?’ Iustead of answering, 
Nollekens wished to know why /e, ‘the Duke of 
Cumberland, wore those mustakis? The Duke 
of York smiled, and said, ‘‘ You have it now, 
Cumberland.” 

I remember, says Smith, his once requesting a 
lady who squinted dreadfully, to look a little the 

~ other way, for then, said he, ‘‘I shall get rid of the 
shyness in the cast of your eye ;” and to another 

lady of the highest rank, who had forgotten her 
position, and was looking down upon him, he 
cried, “ Don’t look so scorney ; you’ll spoil my 
busto, and you’re a very fine woman; I think it 
will be one of my best bustos.” 

. * Qnce, when modelling the bust of ‘a lady of 

_~* high fashion, Nollekens requested her to lower 

her handkerchief in front ; the lady objected, and 

observed—“ Iam sure, Mr. N., you must be suf- 


fore there can be no necessity for my complying 
with your wish.” Upon which N. muttered— 
“There is ne bosom worth looking at beyond the 
age of eighteen.” 

Of his entire want of the commonest ad- 
vantages of the commonest education, these 
phrases may sufficiently show—I sot him 
down—they went and washed theirselves— 
—arter all, &c. Some specimens of his 
spelling are—yousual—sarvices—jenerly 
Decay) cca (cold)—facis—eupple— 
boath sexis—ould mades—lemman—youm- 
mer in his face—chimisters, &c. 

When he was examined before a Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons on the 
Elgin marbles, the following question was 
put—“ Do you think that the Theseus is a 
closer copy of fine nature than the Apollo ?” 
“No, I do not say it is a finer copy of na- 
ture than the Apollo.” “Is there not a dis- 
tinction among artists, between a close imi- 
tation of nature and ideal beauty?” “I look 
upon them as ideal beauty, and closencss of 


Domestic and Foreign. 


643 


study from nature.” Manifestly he did not 
know what was meant by ideal beauty— 

Once a lady, with her three daughters, visited 
Mr. N., to shew himthe drawings of her youngest, 
who was a natural genius. Upon his looking at 
them, he advised her to have a regular drawing 
master ; “and I can recommend you one ; he only 
lives over the way, and his name is John Varney.” 
The lady asked him if be were a man of mind? 
“ Oh, yes,” said N., “ he’s a clever fellow, one of 
our best: I'll ring the bell and send my maid for 
him ; he'll soon tell you his mind.” 


Yet some person of distinction, after sur- 
veying his studio, observed, “* What a mind 
that man must have.” And Dr. Johnson 
went no farther than—‘‘It is surprising 
how much ignorance upon points, we find in 
men of eminence.””— 

Nollekens was once at Burney’s musical par- 
ties.—“* Dr. Burney,” says he, “I don’t like this 
kind of music; I heard a great deal of it in Italy, 
but I like the Scotch and English music better.”” 
Dr. Burney, with some degree of irritation, step- 
ping forward, replied, “Suppose a person to say 
—well, [have been to Rome, saw the Apollo, and 
many fine works, but for all that give me a good 
barber's block.” ‘* Ay, that would be talking like 
a_fool,’’ replied the sculptor. 


Of all his female figures, the one. with 
the sandal, carved for Lord. Yarborough, 
was considerably the greatest favourite with 
the public; but that, on which. he chiefly 
plumed himself, was seated. with her arms 
round her legs. This was purchased at his, 
sale by Lord Egremont, who engaged Rossi 
to execute it in marble, with strict injunc- 
tions to make no alteration. Though de- 
fective in many points, the attitude was a 
natural one, and acquired by. mere chance, 
as good attitudes often are, observes Smith. 
The woman from whom it was modelled, 
after standing for some time to Mr. N. for 
parts of a figure upon which he was then 
engaged, was desired to dress; and upon 
her seating herself on the ground, to put on 
her stockings, her posture so pleased the 
sculptor, that he immediately cried—*“ Stop, 
don’t move, I must model you as you now 
sit,”’ &c. 

In the same way, after a great deal of 
anxiety and trouble about the drapery of the 
king’s bust, and throwing the cloth once or 
twice every day for nearly a fortnight, it came 
excellently well, by mere chance, from the fol- 
lowing circumstance.—Just as he was about 
to make another trial with his drapery, his 
servant came to him for money for butter 5 
he threw the cloth carelessly over the shoul- 
ders of his lay-man, in order to give her the 


money ; when he was forcibly struck with 


the beautiful manner in which the folds 
had fallen ; and he hastily exclaimed, push- 
ing her away—< Go, go, get the butter.’” 
He often said—‘ This drapery was the best 
he ever cast for a bust.’” 

Half-witted as he was, there was occa- 
sional sharpness even in his replies. Jemmy 
Boswell once met him at the Pantheon— 
66 Why, Nollekens, how dirty you go now ! 

4 2 


644 — 


I recollect when you was the gayest dressed 
man in the house.’” .“ That’s more than I 
cduld ever say of you,’’ was N.’s replys 
“and. certainly,” adds Smith, ‘ Boswell 
looked very badly when dressed; for as he 
seldom washed himself, his clean ruffles 
served as a striking contrast to his dirty 
flésh.”’ 

My Lord Somebody, with a friend, was 
ofice sitting to Nollekens, and something 
in the sculptor’s dress excited their smiles— 
which at last he observed—when thrusting 
bis thumb into the mouth of the model, he 


impetuously exclaimed — “‘ If you laugh, 


Pll make a fool of ye.” 

His treatment of his workmen, to whom 
he was indebted for so much of his fame, 
was miserably sordid ; and even of the poor 
girls, who stood for his Venuses—witness 
this expostulation—“ Pll tell his worship 
Collins, in another place, what a scurvy way 
you behaved to young Bet Balmanno yes- 
terday. Why the girl is hardly able to 
move a limb to-day. To think of keeping 
a young creature eight hours in that room, 
without a thread upon her, or a morsel of 
any thing to eat, or a drop to drink, and 
then to give her only two shillings to bring 
home. Neither Mr. Fuseli, nor Mr. Tre- 
sham would have served me so. How do 
veu think I can live and pay the income 
tax,” &c. ? 


Nollekens was in possession of a set of those 
@xtremely rare engravings, from the Aretin sub- 
jects, so often mentioned by print collectors; but 
itso happened, as he was glancing at them one 
day, his confessor came in, who insisted upon 
them being put into the fire, before he would give 
him absolution. I once saw them; and he lent 
them to Cosway, to make tracings from them, 
However, this loan Cosway stoutly denied, which, 
when N. heard, he exclaimed—‘* He’s a d—d 
liar—that every body, knows; and I know this, 
that I could hardly get them back again out of his 
“hands.”’, Upou N. being asked how he could, as 
an artist, make up his mindto burn them, he an- 
_pwered—“ The priest made me do it.” And he 
was_now and then seen to shed tears for what he 
ealled his folly. “He was frequently questioned 
thus—Where did you getthem, Sir? Whose were 
“they? His answer was, “I brought them all 
“the way from Rome.’ 


But once—this priest being detained by 
the rain, till N.’s dinner time, he sat down 
with him to a pheasant... After dinner, a 
bottle of wine was brought, and N. tak- 
ing one glass with him, dropped asleep. 
‘Waking up again, he begged the priest to 

. take another— 

“Tank you, Sare, I have a finish de bottel,”’ 
The deyil you have,” muttered N. ‘* Now, Sare, 
as de rain be ovare, I vil take my leaf.” “Well, 
do so,” said N,, who was not only determined to 
let him go without his coffee, but gave strict or- 

_ders to the maid not to let the old rascal in again. 
“Do you know,” says he, ‘‘ he ate up all that 
large bird, for he only gave me one wing ; andhe 
swallowed all the ale ; and out of a whole bottle 
of wine, I had only one glass,"” 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


[Dec. | 


A word or two should be added of Smith - 
—the author. He was himself a pupil of 
Nollekens—had known him alkhis life, and 
had expected some considerable share of his 
enormous wealth ; but was finally cut off 
with the appointment of executor, and 
£100. The great mass of the accumula- 
tions fell, perhaps accidentally, to Douce, 
who, in conjunction with a Mr. Balme, 
was appointed residuary legatee; and on 
Balme’s death, was coupled with Beechey 
and Smith, in a new appointment of exe~ 
cutors—and no mention of residwary lega- 
tees. Out of his recollections, Smith of 
course will get a trifle. He is now keeper 
of the prints and drawings in the British 
Museumi—a hunter up of modern antiqui- 
ties—very curious about the residences of 
persons formerly distinguished—éespecially 
about St. Martin’s Lane and Covent Gar- 
den—much of which he has sprinkled 
over the volumes—“ and has enough ta 
fill two volumes, containing,’’ he says, 
‘¢ some curious collections towards the his- 
tory of that most frequented of parishes, 
which he hopes, with the blessing of health, 
and continuance of memory (for the pos- 
session of which organ, the friendly Dr. 
Spurzheim has given him some credit—but 
what does he want with memory, when the 
collections are already made ?) to live to see 
published.”” The reader sees what he has 
to expect. 

These volumes, on the whole, will very 
well match with the recent memoirs we 
have had from the theatre. The tone is 
precisely in unison with them from begin- 
ning to end. The greater part of the se- 
cond volume is. occupied with sketches of 
cotemporary sculptors and painters—and we 
had marked several scraps—some of them 
remarkable enough—but we cannot find 
room. Fuseli’s repartees, though occa- 
sionally smart, are rather rude and rough 
than well pointed. 


A New System of Signals, by which 
Colours may be wholly dispensed with; 
Illustrated by Figures, and a Series of 
Evolutions ; describing in a Familiar Man- 
ner the General Movemenls of a Fleet. 
By Rear Admiral Raper, London, Saun- 
ders and Ottley.—This work has excited 
in us, and will, too, in our readers, unusual 
surprise, In the first place we are asto- 
nished that a British admiral, employing 
his abilities and experience, when unoccu- 
pied in the actiye duties of his profession, 
should find any difficulty in obtaining an 
immediate and thankful attention to any 
suggestions for the benefit of the naval 
service he may please to communicate to 
the admiralty. Admiral Raper, an expe- 
rienced and distinguished officer, has to 
apply, year after year, for a hearing, In 
1815, the gallant officer says :— 

Ishowed my system on this principle to a dis- 
tinguished flag officer, then a Lord of the Admi- 
ralty, whose talents are still in the remembrance 


a 


: 
2 
d 


1828.] 


of the service and of his friends. He thought so 
favourably of it, that, having suggested one or 
two alterations, which I effected to his satisfac- 
tion, he directed me to deliver it to the President 
of a Committee of Officers then engaged on sig- 
nals; bat it was returned tome ina few days with- 
out its haying been even taken into consideration | 
a circumstance I have since had occasion to recaj 
to the recollection of Lord Melville. 

~ In 1822, another distinguished flag officer kindly 
offered to recommend it to Lord Melville, as an 
acquisition to the service; but here I was again 
disappointed, on receiving it some months after 
wards from Vice-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, 
who informed me that the Board had no inten- 
tion of changing the signals then in use, 

In 1825, I obtained permission to see the sig- 
nals then in use, which had been adopted in ]815> 
‘and after having carefully examined them, I 
again transmitted my system to the Board of Ad- 
miralty, and pvinted out the numerous adyan- 
tages it possessed oyer those signals; and farther 
Tepresented, that as my code required less than 
half the number of flags and pendants, an impor- 
tant economy would result from the adoption 
of it. 

On that occasion their lordships honoured me 
with a letter of thanks, and my code, together 
with two others, composed also by admirals, was 
submitted to a committee of flag officers, one of 
whom, after having had our signals under his 
examination for about a month, resigned his seat, 
and gave in a code of his own.* 

As soon as the deliberations of the Committee 
were terminated, I addressed a letterto the Board 
of Admiralty, requesting to be informed whether 
or not my code had been adopted ; I received for 
answer, that no one code had been adopted, but 
that the Committee were directed to select from 


’ the several propositions such as might form the 


best general system of signals, In a subsequent 
etter, Iwas informed that no part of my code had 
been selected for adoption; and that the only 
point of coincidence between my code and the one 


mecommended for adoption was in a single signal ; 
_yiz. the use of the ball to direct the distant signals 


to be employed ; and that the use of this ball had 
suggested itself to their lordships, and, they be- 
lieved, to some members of the Committee, without 
reference to my proposition. 

This use of the ball is explained in the gencral 

yiew, facing page 1; it has always formed a 
striking peculiarity of my system; it had already 
been submitted to the same Members of the Board 
of Admiralty in J822; and in testimony of its 
utility I must add, that an eminent flag officer on 
seeing it, for the first time, in my code, declared 
to me thatit was an improvement which had been 
always much wished for by Lord Nelson. 
_ As soon as I was informed that it was adopted 
for the service, I urged my pretensions to the 
merit of the discovery ; and on subsequently re- 
questing to be informed of their lordships’ deci- 
sion on my claim, I received for answer, that they 
did not consider that point of such importance to 
His Majesty’s service as to require them to enter 
into any investigation asto whom the priority of 
inyention belonged, or of any particular mode of 
its application. 


. © ‘ Myself in counsel his competitor.” —Shaks- 
peare. DITOR, 


Domestic and Foreign. 


645 


Such unworthy treatment, savouring as 
little of personal justice as of true patriot- 
ism, or public duty, arouses the indignation 
of the worthy officer, and compels him, in 
his own defence, to take out a patent, “in 
order to ensure to himself the merit of an 
invention, which had been the result of many 
years’ assiduous application.” 

The improvements in our nayy have 
been few, and those very slowly adopted. 
The causes are numerous. Some are known, 
and others remain veiled in the mysteries 
of a public office. Among the causes is 
this glaring error. Every mechanical im- 
provement, adapted to the navy, is sub- 
mitted to a trio, or a board, of superannuated 
old military engineer officers: We beg to 
inform our readers that, however efficient 
that splendid corps is, in performing all the 
arduous duties of military engineering, that 
it by no means follows that the officers are 
really engineers, or have a profound know- 
ledge of those philosophical mechanics which 
such a board should have. Another cause 
is the general ignorance of natural philo- 
sophy, on which every improvement must 
be founded, among officers of every deno- 
mination ; so that when an improvement, 
built on the truest philosophical principles, 
is proposed, it is a mere chance if it is un- 
derstood, and a yet greater odds if it be 
adopted. The Barbaric method of mea- 
suring tonnage, pursued with blunder- 


headed perseverance, has been one cause of - 


the injuries which the proprietors of our 
mercantile navy haye suffered, and are suf- 
fering. Until the scientific method, intro- 
duced by Chapman into Sweden, is fol- 
lowed by us, our mercantile navy must be 
inferior in construction to’ those countries 
who take science for their guide. The 
gunnery of the navy.is yet in a very back- 
ward condition, and the carriages of the 
guns as rude as in the days of Elizabeth. 
All those ships’ companies, which have been 
distinguished for the accuracy and rapidit 
of their firing, were indebted to the ski 
and knowledge of their respective captains, 
and not to the Admiralty, for either asystem of 
scientific rules, or for powder to practice the 
men. If our limits would permit us, we 
could greatly extend our observations on 
this subject, so deeply interesting to the 
country ; if an opportunity offers, we shall 
consider ourselves in readiness to enter very 
fully into the matter. 

Now to the work under our observation. 
Admiral Raper, in common with every 
other naval man, is aware of the great im- 
portance of ships communicating with each 
other; and, being acquainted with the im- 
perfect method now pursued in our navy, 
has. offered a more. easy, comprehensive, 
and perfect method than has yet been made 
known. The chief improvement, a very 
great one, though very simple, is in super- 
adding forms to colowrs. In the present 
imperfect system, colour only is used—so 
that when the distance is too great, or 


_ 


646 


the atmosphere too unfavourable to dis- 
tinguish colours, there are no means of 
communicating intelligence. If we could 
laugh at such absurdity as the following, 
we would, but it is too contemptible even 
to smile at. In the old system, there is a 
signal, consisting of colowr only, to inform 
a ship, which has made signals, that their 
signal is not visible! Where such absur- 
dity originated we leave the admiralty to 
determine. 

The chief framer of the system, now in 
use, was Sir Home Popham.* The errors in 
this system are palpable and numerous, 
and have called on the attention of the 
Board of Admiralty more than once for im- 
provement. The principal objections are— 
Ist, the blended use of mwmerals and let- 
ters, which cause a superfluity of flags, 
which must create confusion and delay :— 
2d, the making signals of a negative import 
follow affirmative. Thus, “ Can come up 
with the chace”—*“ Cannot come up with 
the chace’”—“ In condition to renew the 
action, 2, C, D,’—“‘ Not in condition, 
2, C, E.””—3. In using interrogatories, nu- 
meral, and orthographical flags. Besides 
these glaring faults, there are many more 
of minor importance, all of which have 
been avoided by Admiral Raper. 

As we before remarked, the system pro- 
posed by Admiral Raper, consists; princi- 
pally, in superadding form to colour. It 
seems to us, from the author’s own ana- 
lysis of his system, that colowrs are actually 
superfluous. First, we have a complete 
series of numeral flags, each numeral de- 
noted by some specific colour ; thus, No. 1, 
red, with a-white cross, and so on. Next, 
a series of pendants, indicating, in the same 
way, the numerals, substitutes, &c. Then, 
we have the great improvement, a combi- 
nation of flags, and pendants, of different 


forms, which indicate the numerals, sub- ~ 


stitutes, &c. Now it is clear that, if by 


these combinations any signal can be made, © 


there is no need of colour. This combina- 
tion enables ships to communicate with 
each other, when co/owr is not to be dis- 
tinguished, and, consequently, when it can 
be distinguished the communication must 
be yet more easy. We, therefore, at once, 
say, that the gallant admiral is not aware 
of all the benefit he has conferred on the 
navy. Hehas completely shewn the inwii- 
lity of making colour a means of receiy- 
ing, or communicating intelligence. 

The importance of this discovery can 
only be fully appreciated by naval men. 
The saving, during war, in particular, 
‘would be considerable, and the labour of 
working signals materially diminished. 

_ We may now offer a few observations on 
the combinations of colours hitherto used by 
the navy. The prismatic colours only 
navy; but as it appears to differ only in a slight 
degree from that of Sir H. Popham, it is plain 


that the system still pursued is that introduced 
by the above-mentioned officer. 


Monthly Review of Literature, 


(Dec. 


should have been used, as all mixtures vary’ 
materially, according to the medium through 
which they are seen. Flags pierced with 
other colours, must, at a moderate distance, 
become indistinct ; those crossed are liable 
to the same objections; others composed of 
colours, which, by becoming blended from 
different tints, must create doubt. All 
these are serious errors, and their effects 
must have been often felt, and that, per- 
haps, in. trying situations. The substitu. 
tion of combinations of forms sweeps, at a 
single stroke, all these evils into the deep. 
Where forms only are used, the flags may, 
be all lighter (in weight), a point of import~ 
ance when blowing hard, or when great 
celerity is required. The-two colours best 
discerned on the ocean are white and black. 
White has rather the advantage in clear, 
fine weather. Black can be seen at dusk, 
or in dark cloudy weather, better than any 
other; and, therefore, we think that all 
the bunting used in the navy for signals, 
should be either black or white—we should 
prefer the former. ‘There should always be 
on deck two sets of signals, one much 
smaller than the other, which ought to be 
used in port, in fleets, during fine weather, 
and by ships, in blowing weather, when 
near enough for the forms to be distin- 
guishable. ° 

We observed that the interrogative flags, 
and pendants, were superfluous—the ad- 
miral removes in a masterly and simple 
observation, all the difficulties which might 
be apprehended from the want of them. 

As certain combinations are assigned to the ex- 
clusive use of the Admiral, if a ship of the fleet 
employs any one of them in his presence, with or 
without her own distinguishing pendants, it be- 
comes at once Interrogative; and the same argu- 
ment applies to the signals assigned to the use of 
the ships of the fleet when employed by the Ad+ 
miral. Thus, for example, the signal which sig- 
nifies, ** I can come up with the chase without 
parting company,” when addressed by the Admi- 
ral to a ship in chase, demands of the chaser 
whether he can come up with the chase without 
parting company. 

By this means, the whole ‘of the signals are ren- 
dered interrogative without employing an addi- 
tional symbol; and thus Interrogation, when 
colours fail, which has never before been’ practi- 
cable, is expressed by the distant signals with the 
same facility as any other communication. 


Another improvement must not be passed, 
over unnoticed—that of uniting specific 
combinations with specific purposes. Thus, 
a triangular flag, over or under a flag, ins 
dicates distress. For example, a triangular 
flag over Flag No. 1, means, “ The ship on 
fire ;’’—over No. 2, ‘* No hope of extin« 
guishing the fire’””—over No. 3, “* Not in a 
condition to renew action.” It is clear, 
that in such circumstances, simplicity of 
communication is of vital importance. 

We shall not presume to speak of the 
tactical part of the work, which refers to 
the evolutions of flects. 


It would not in- 


-. 


1828.] 


terest our readers, and it could not be ex- 
plained accurately, and in detail, without 
engraved diagrams. We can only say, that 
they appear to us excellent. 

We are conscious that the foregoing re- 
marks are rather desultory and general, and 
we have made them so ‘on purpose, since a 
dry dissertation on telegraphic communica- 
tions, could not have interested our readers, 
or conveyed the kind of information we are 
desirous of giving. Enough has been said 
to shew the importance of the subject, to 
point out the absurdities and evils of the 
existing method, and to demonstrate the 
great improvements of Admiral Raper’s 
system 5 and. we now terminate our obser- 
vations, by congratulating the navy, and 
the nation, on the publication of this im- 
portant work, in which a complicated sub- 
ject is treated with perspicuity, and ex- 
pressed with an elegance of diction,’ and 
correctness of collocation, not often found 
in the lucubrations of the “ University 
bred” practised writer, and which demands 
the immediate attention of the Admiralty, 
and the support of every naval officer, who 
can feel for the victim of the slights and 
impertinencies of office, and appreciate im- 
Exavanent in his high profession. 


r Life i in India. 3 vols. 12mo. 1828,.— 
The great business of life in India, as well 
as elsewhere, in the world of novels at 
least—ay, and in the world of realities too 
—is still to be matching and marrying. In 
England, the ladies must wait and watch, 
but in India, they are snapped up at once, 
and the connubial knot is tied with a ce- 
lerity- proportioned to the speed with which 
death steps in to loosen it again. No where 


‘in the world is it less “‘ indissoluble.”’ 


The passengers of an Indiaman consisted 
incipally of Colonel Howard, of the India 
ice, his two nieces, the Miss Percys, 
peice girls both, full of wisdom and 
‘virtue, and two other young ladies, one a- 
Miss Hume, still wiser than they—pru- 
dence, indeed in her own person—and a 
Miss Panton, a lively girl, and a little of 
the giddiest—returning to their friends, 
and all of them under the care of Colonel 
Howard. Besides this party, there were 
two or three other ladies—a few officers, 
whose leave of absence had expired—-and of 
course, a batch of writers and cadets. Long 
before they reach the Cape, one of the offi- 
cers, a Captain Bently, and the youngest 
Miss Percy, are deeply smitten with each 
other; though no formal declaration takes 
place ; at the Cape appears a Mr. Fortescue, 
who also seems a little struck with the 
eldest ; and Miss Panton loses no time in 
flirting with any body who will flirt with 
her. Between the Cape and Ceylon they 
are overtaken, and taken—it was in time 
of war—by a French frigate, the Captain 
of which, as if he had been the Grand Sig- 
nior himself, insists upon all the ladies, to 
the exelysion of the gentlemen—the dis- 


Domestic and Foreign. 


647 


tress of Colone] Howard, and, of course, 
the distraction of Captain Bently—being 
taken on board his own ship, though he had 
really no manner of accommodation for 
them. Scarcely were these luckless dam- 
sels on board, than an English ship of force 
comes in sight, and recovers the captured 
vessel ; but the French frigate, without loss 
of a moment, claps all sail to, and escapes ; 
and, after cruising about for a time, lands 
the ladies at the Isle of Bourbon, where, at 
length, a cartel of exchange arrives, and 
after getting new rigged, and a few female 
comforts about them again, they finally 
reach the Hoogley and their friends. 

In the meanwhile, however, Colonel 
Howard and Captain Bently had been dis- 
patched to the Nepaul war; but a Mrs, 
Russel, a relative of the colonel’s, a leader 
of fashion at Calcutta, introduces the Misses 
Percy to India life. Mr. Russel is in the 
civil service, and keeps a large establish- 
ment, gives gay parties, and visits the go- 
vernor ; and the splendid interior of go- 
yvernment-house is thrown open in magni- 
ficent fetes. Opportunities are seized of 
alluding to, and explaining native customs, 
such as suttees—the scape bull—exposure of 
female infants, &c. The business of match. 
making is indefatigably pursued by all par- 
ties from the very moment of landing. 
Miss Eliza Percy—she, of course, thinks of 
nothing but Captain Bently, and searches 
the Gazettes for the killed and wounded. 
Mr. Fortescue re-appears from the Cape, 
and in the midst of his marked attentions 
to the elder Miss Percy, suddenly becomes 
mysterious, and almost shuns all approach 
to her. Miss Hume, though a very grave 
young lady, is speedily caught up by a 
countryman, a Major Melville ;: and Miss . 
Panton, though thinking now and then 
about West, one of her shipmates, accepts 

the proposals and the pearls of a Mr. Mare 

riot,, the resident of Cawnpore, mainly be- 
cause his are the first offers. Dispersions 
now take place; first, Mrs. Melville goes 
with the Major up the country—then Mrs, 
Panton accompanies the resident to Cawn- 
pore; and very soon Captain Bently gets 
wounded, gets well, gets leave to come to 
Calcutta, gets Eliza Percy’s consent and the 
Colonel’s, gets married—and then, also, 
proceeds northward, accompanied by his 
wife’ and her sister Charlotte, who /an- 
guishes—Fortescue is more and more mys- 
terious, more and more irresistible—more 
and more withdrawing. 

Captain Bently and the two sisters— 
Charlotte in a separate boat—are now 
pulled up the river, and all the perils, 
which that turbulent and unruly stream can 
fling in the way of passengers, are encoun- 
tered, and poor Charlotte, but for the very 
timely and most unexpected appearance of ° 
Fortescue, must have become food for the 
sharks. What brought Fortescue there ? 
He was on his way to Cawnpore, where a 
very lamentable affair had just occurred. 


684 


The resident, jealous, or at least suspicious, 
of his giddy wife—at least not well pleased 
with her levities—had provoked her, by 
some very reasonable expostulations, to fly 
into the arms of West, her old shipmate, 
who unluckily happened to come in the 
way, and in a manner forced the poor man 
to take her with him. The astounded Cor- 
nuto sunk under the shock, and the fury of 
his feelings, and the fervours of the climate, 
conspire in a few days to send him to the 
grave. Fortescue was ordered to take his 
duties. 

But Mrs. Marriot’s violence produces 
more miserable consequences, and some 
which eventually pressed heavily upon her 
friends. West had the charge of some 
treasure for the Nepaulese army, and through 
her waywardness he neglects to keep a good 
look out; and Omeer Sing, a celebrated 
Pindaree, surprises the party, and gets pos- 
session of the rupees. In despair West 
blows out his brains, and for some time 
Mrs. Marriot is heard of no more. Omeer 
Sing must be pursued; and Major Mel- 
ville, unluckily—nobody else being at hand 
—though an employment somewhat below 
his rank—is despatched for the purpose of 
overtaking the plunderer, and is thus sepa- 
rated from his newly-married lady. Omeer 
Sing is like an eel, perpetually slipping 
from the Major’s grasp, and at length com- 
pletely baffles his pursuer. Extraordinary 
exertions soon affect the Major’s health, and 
he is taken seriously ill, but getting a little 
better, he hastens to return to his wife. On 
the road he relapses, and the miserable wife, 
alarmed by the delay, sets out to ascertain 
the cause, and meets him within a day or 
two’s march, just in time to receive his last 
breath. The attendants of both were all 
Hindoos, and of course fly from the pollu- 
tion of death; and the poor forlorn lady is 
left to dig with her own hands a hole in the 
sands, and bury the body. In a state of 
raving insanity she is at length found by a 
neighbouring indigo-planter, and by dint of 
kindness and good nursing is brought back 
by degrees to her senses; and in the same 
house finds the now miserable Mrs. Marriot, 
to whom she endeavours zealously to mi- 
nister relief, physical and spiritual ; but she 
is still self-willed, and, in an act of violence, 
bursts a liver abscess, and dies. 

In the meanwhile, Captain Bently is 
commanded to supply the place of Major 
Melville, and, if possible, seize Omeer Sing; 
and nearly a whole volume is occupied in 


Monthly Review of Literature. 


[Dec. 
threading the shifts and mancuvyes of that 
very subtle and illusive person, who t last 
after. the most miraculous escapes, at the 
great fair of Hurdwawe, in the vicinity of 
Delhi, gets pistolled, as well as his coal- 
black steed—another Pegasus—in a con- 
flict, and thus restores Captain Bently to 
his bride. By this time, Fortescue’s myste- 
ries began to clear away. An uncle of his 
had insisted, on his death bed, on a pledge 
to marry his daughter ; and whichever re- 
fused to complete the contract, was to forfeit 
the very ample fortune he bequeathed. Till 
Fortescue saw Charlotte Percy, he had no 
desire but to marry his cousin, though he 
had not seen her since she was eight years 
of age, and she was now eighteen, the very 
age fixed upon for the marriage. The cou- 
sin had been too young to have a will of her 
own—had acquiesced in the arrangement, 
and was now on her way to India to com- 
plete it. By relinquishing the ‘property, 
Fortescue might have released himself, but 
the lady was coming, and he was of course 
too delicate to hurt her delicacy, though 
dying with love for Charlotte Percy, and 
she, indeed, though he could only guess at 
that, for him. By the greatest good luck in 
the world, when the young lady came to 
Calcutta, Fortescue was at Cawnpore, and 
before he could return, she found time to 
like somebody else; and promptly taking 
her own measures, she wrote to her cousin, 
and frankly telling him she liked another, 
resigned her claims to him and the pro- 
perty. This was a charming solution of all 
embarrassments ; he flies to Charlotte, ex- 
plains, and is accepted on the spot. Caps 
tain Bently returns from his irksome ser- 
vice; and Mrs. Melville has a charming 


with every body else connected with them= 
as happy as a residence in India—in the 
Upper Provinces—remote from. European 
society—with the augmenting uncertainties 
and vicissitudes of such a country— can 
suffer them to be. siden kaa 
Though understanding, no doubt, the 
country, and the scenes, and the society, 
which the writer undertakes to describe, it 
is scarcely possible for any thing in the 
shape of a story to be less fixing. Never- 
theless, more is to be learnt of the domestic 
condition of Anglo-Indians in this way, 
than by a score of books of travels, and for 
such a purpose, it is well worth a perusal, 
Omeer Sing occupies too much of the tale. 


little boy, which gives her something to 5 
love, and she is comparatively happy—along 7 


* 


1828.) 


[ 649 4 


MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 


TuE chief exploit of Drury Lane, during 
the month, has been the production of Mr. 
Knowles’s play of “‘ The Beggar of Bethnal 
Green.”’ It is no pleasure to us to speak of 
the ill success of any man, and it is always 
a matter of regret to speak of the failure of 
an ingenious and industrious writer, who 
must have feelings enough of his own to 
satisfy, at seeing the toil of months undone 
in minutes. 

But even our respect for Mr. Knowles 

_goes far to qualify our regret for his failure. 
He ought not to have produced such a 
Drama as “ The Beggar of Bethnal Green.” 
A writer who had the power of speaking 
the language of our established dramatists, 
ought not to have humiliated himself to the 
vulgar babble of this dull performance. If 
he must be a borrower, he ought to have 
borrowed better ; and, while the hundreds 
and thousands of extinguished plays lay 
before him, if he would but take the trouble 
to dig them from their cemeteries, he 
should not have fixed his affections on a 
subject that no ability could revive: a story 
of the hovel, common-place, tiresome and 

incapable. Under what impulse “ The 
Beggar of Bethnal Green,” vulgarized by 
our street ballads, and intrinsically one of 
the most stupid and foolish attempts at low 
romance, attracted Mr. Knowles’s attention, 
it is difficult to conceive. But we must 
acknowledge, that nothing could have been 
farther from alleviating any of the insipidity 
of the original, than the present mode of its 
transmission to the Drama. The play 
opened with a display of the extravagant 
admiration of three London apprentices for 
the beauty of the Beggar’s daughter, which 
‘succeeded by the appearance of their 
e masters to drive them from the pur- 
suit, which three masters likewise found the 
irresistible nature of her charms, and fell in 
love on the spot, which three again were 
hunted by their wives, jealous of course, and 
_ delivering the general enchantress up to the 
parish beadle, who, in his turn, felt the force 
of Cupid, let drop his official wrath, and 
followed in the train: the matchless 
mendicant following the persuasion of her 
eyes by the persuasion of her voice, an ex- 
periment which was most injudiciously 
urged on that very graceful and popular 
actress, Miss E. Tree, and which for the 
honour of melody, we hope she will be 
advised never to make again. 
_ This specimen of the pleasantries and 
_ probabilities of the play was nearly enough 
for the audience, and disapprobation soon 
began to transpire, gently at first, but intelli- 
gibly. The effect of this intimation on the 
actors was so obvious, that thenceforth it 
might be only fair to discharge the author 
_ of a large portion of his responsibility. In 
the scene in which the dramatic interest 
naturally was to be concentrated, the inter- 
_ M.M. New Series.—Vor..VI. No. 36. 


view of the lovers, one was asleep by the 
author’s will, and the other, the lady, 
seemed to be as completely asleep by her 
own. But in the interval of this somnolency 
on the stage, the audience were fatally 
awoke, and the evidences of their opinion 
were of the most unequivocal order. Mr. 
Mude, to whom, by the ill-omened destiny 
of the piece, the task of explaining the emo- 
tions of the lovers, sleeping and awake, was 
confided, declaimed at such intervals as he 
could, with much more industry than effect, 
and the uproar of the theatre at length put an 
end to one of the most unaccountable scenes 
of loye-making, that was ever presented 
since the invention of slumber. 

Mr. Cooper, then relieved of his passion 
and his age, came forward to propitiate the 
audience, and by his respectful and well 
expressed address, obtained a reprieve for 
the child of his adoption. But the public 
mercy had no more healing effect upon the 
play, than upon other culprits. Scene after 
scene prolonged its existence only to increase 
its sins, and the curtain fell in the midst 
of decided condemnation. Mr. Cooper, on 
his return to announce the next night’s 
performance, certainly rather failed of his 
managerial pledge, which had been, that if 
the audience disapproved of his Beggar, he 
should beg no more at that theatre. After 
standing the helpless mark of every species 
of public opinion, he announced the repeti- 
tion of the fallen drama. But a wiser 
council was held behind the curtain, and 
Bethnal Green no more finds its hero upon 
the stage. 

It gives a curious conception of theatrical 
sagacity, to tell, that this play had been 
actually received at both theatres, honoured 
by the undoubting approbation of the 
arbiters of taste in both, and when with- 
drawn from one theatre on account of some 
financial matters, was welcomed, what is 
moreto the purpose, paid for, by anticipation, 
at the other. Such is the tale. Not that 
we object in the slightest degree to Mr. 
Knowles’s getting as much for his labours 
as he can; nor to the adoption of the per- 
fectly fair custom of securing an author, at 
least in part, against a failure, in which 
others may be alone to blame. But the 
circumstance is curious still, and would lead 
us to think that in some instances the judges 
of stage authorship are too much enamoured 
of the title page, to put themselves to the 
pain of cooling their passion by dipping into 
the work. 

We trust that henceforth Mr. Knowles 
will turn from the treacherous foundation of 
other men’s building, to some substratum of 
his own. He has hitherto laboured wholly 
and. solely upon re-cdification. He has 
never ventured, in his boldest attempts, to go 
beyond the brick and mortar limit of some 
mouldering predecessor. His Virginius, 

40 


650 


William Tell, and Gracchus, have been all 
reconstructions, not copies, for they have 
not soared to the originality of a copy ; they 
have been re-raisings of the fallen material, 
in the fallen shape, and on the spot where 
it had fallen. We must reprobate this 
practice, because, were it to go on to the 
world’s end, it would add nothing to our 
mental wealth—it would be but Voltaire’s 
conception realized, of filling one bottle by 
emptying another ; the literary feast would 
be a perpetual réchauffé, growing more 
flavourless at every new warming. And the 
vexation at this indolence or inauspicious 
activity, is the more perplexing, when the 
writer is capable of something better. We 
have no doubt that Mr. Knowles could 
invent something of bolder pattern than the 
plot of any tragedy that he has patched, 
since the first era of his taking the needle 
in hand; and speak in his own person, 
sentiments more natural, worthy of his 
understanding, and suitable to the principles 
of a British subject, than the best raving 
that flourishes in the mouths of the best of 
his heroes, Swiss, Roman, or Bethnal 
Green. He has more poetry in him, too, 
than he could find in the whole turgid and 
trite vocabulary of the last age of the 
drama; and we earnestly entreat him, as he 
values his reputation, and hopes to efface the 
memory of his mendicant, to apply his mind 
to the straight-forward course of inventing 
for himself, and seeking, in his own feelings, 
the only source of dramatic power which can 
last beyond the crash of the orchestra, or the 
daubings of the scene painter. 

Drury Lane has made a valuable addition 
to its popularity, in Miss Phillips, the new 
tragedian. It is so long since an actress 
‘of any tragic promise has appeared, that 
this young person has been welcomed with 
lavish panegyric. She undoubtedly deserves 
a considerable degree of public favour. Her 
appearance is advantageous. Her height, 
countenance, figure and movement, are 
suitable to the stage. Her voice has the 
_rare and valuable quality of combined soft- 
ness and clearness, and her judgment evi- 
dently leads her to avoid outraging nature, 
the common fault of tragic débutantes. She 
resembles Miss O’Neil more than any of 
that actress’s crowd of imitators, and her 
performance of Miss O’Neil’s principal 
characters, has exhibited the mental likeness 
no less than the personal. 

To Mrs. Haller, on the stage, or off the 
stage, we have all along objected. The whole 
conception of the character is repulsive and 
unnatural, the passion extravagant, and the 
action improbable. But Sheridan’s skill in 
spurious sentiment—that language which was 
familiar to him through life, and which was 
at once his talent and his disgrace, the 

» source of his popularity and his ruin—has 
introduced eloquence and feeling into the 
lips, that in actual society must have been 
stained by grossness or imposture. The 

_ offence of the guilty wife and mother, is 


Monthly Theatrical ‘Report. 


. sion, there are other remarks which the case 


[Dec. 


covered by the sorrow, the trials, and the 
surviving affection of the penitent; and the 
stage wife becomes a model of virtue, where 
society would have stamped her! with the 
lowest degradation of a corrupt heart—and’ 
the stage husband flourishes as a model of - 
delicacy, when the true state of the case) 
would have branded him as the mark for 
perpetual scorn. i 

But Miss O’Neil’s tears, and Miss Phil« 
lips’s, in due succession, subdue the audi- 
ence ; and Mrs. Haller triumphs in renewed - 
saintship, and the honours of society. 

Braham, the Atlas, or Colossus of opera, 
alternately, as he bears it on his shoulders, 
or sees it creeping at his feet, has displayed 
his powers, in the old and favourite perfor- 
mances of “ Guy Mannering,”’ and the 
“ Lord of the Manor.’’ A new opera, from 
the French, in two Acts, is in preparation, 
of which he is to play the hero, and will, we 
may fairly predict, be the supreme stay. 

French translations are the order of the 
day. Some of the critics are indignant at 
this system of smuggling. But on the true 
principles of political economy, it is folly to 
manufacture the commodity that we can 
buy at less expense. The French farces 
are ready for our use. Why exhaust our 
faculties in producing a home fabric, that 
would, probably, be not half as well re- 
ceived in the market ? Another grand con- 
sideration is, also, before us; that, proba- 
bly, not two, out of the two hundred who 
supply this demand, would be capable of 
any other traffic. On the whole, the only 
parties aggrieved are the French scribblers 
themselves, who see their little ingenious 
inventions nightly maltreated on the English 
stage ; and, in the spirit of Sheridan’s jest, 
“ disfigured, by our adaptors, like stolen 
children, to make them pass for their own.” 
As the matter stands, a Parisian melo- 
dramatist is no longer in a condition to 
ascertain the quantity of hissing that is des- | 
tined for his laurels. Once he bore the — 
agonies of but one sibilant spot in. his 
own noisy and theatre-hunting capital. 
Now he is hissed through the twelve mil-_ 
lions of Great Britain, and the seven mil- — 
lions of ITveland, simultaneously. He is 
hissed through America, with its twenty 
millions, from the bitterness of Hudson’s 
Bay criticism, down to the fat and foggy 
insolence of the Floridas. New South 
Wales, with its incipient empires, is next 
the place of his penalties ; and he is fortu- 
nate if he has not the additional and deeper 
excruciation of an amateur performance by 
the officers, civil and military, of a hill post 
in Hindostan, or a stockade in Birmah. 

At Covent Garden, a very melancholy, 
and very formidable train of circumstances 
has put the drama to flight fora while. The 
late combustion of the gas and oil, from the 
reservoirs, is too well known for our enter- 
ing into the detail. But pained as the pub- 
lic must be, by any loss of life on the occa- 


1828] 


fully merits. It would be desirable to know 
whether some very singular carelessness has 
not been displayed for some time as to the 
state of the gas. Certainly no one could 
have sat in the dress circle for the last year, 
er gone down the stair-case leading to the 
piazza, without ascertaining for himself, 


that the material of some most pernicious - 


effluvia was at work below. Whether 
Managers ever made the discovery for 
themselves, every passer-by might ‘nose 
it in the lobby ;’’ and there the nuisance 
remained, poisoning the air, and the audi- 
ence along with it, month after month. 
The employment of gas in houses, where it 
must often be enclosed in unventilated 
apartments, has been so often shewn to be 
hazardous by its explosion, that it must be 
difficult to justify its employment in a build- 
ing, where not merely a few tables and 
chairs, but the lives of some thousands, 
must be risked ; and we shall rejoice if this 
accident, perilous and painful as it is, should 
be the means of expelling gas from the in- 
terior of every public building, where it can 
escape unfelt, and be undiscovered, till some 
thoughtless hand. touches it into explosion. 
Its uses are fairly defined; it is an admira- 
ble street-illumination; it may light our 


Monthly Theatrical Report. 


651, 


signal posts, and beacons; in open shops, 
and other places, exposed to a constant con» 
munication with the external air, nothing 
can be safer or more serviceable. But, in 
our churches, our ware-houses, our dwel- 
ling-houses, and, above all, in our theatres, 
the chances of explosion are so many, the 
difficulty of providing against it so great, 
and the loss of life so menacing and sweep- 
ing, that its use becomes scarcely less than 
a public crime. 

The managers and proprietors of the 
theatre, have distinguished themselves, in 
the present calamity, by yery meritorious 
exertions; and we are much gratified by 
saying, that their efforts to alleviate the 
distress of the hurt survivors, and their fami- 
lies, have been considerably successful. The 
transfer of a portion of the company to the 
Lyceum, has been well received. Kean’s 
performance has revived in its popularity, 
by the greater facility which the size of the 
theatre offers; and the usual favourities of 
the audience have played with an increased 
effect, which we hope will some time or 
other teach managers the advantage of 
limiting their theatres to a size, in which an 
audience can hear without a trumpet, and 
see without a telescope. 


VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS. 


es 


Ulrie’s Chronometer.—A most import- 
ant improvement, or rather combination of 
improvements, has lately been effected in 
time-keepers, by a German of the name of 
Ulric, who has succeeded in reducing to 
practice several theoretical improvements, 
which had hitherto defied the skill of our 

_ most experienced artists. In the patent 
marine time-keeper we are now describing, 
_ the irregularity, arising from inequality in 
the power exerted by the main spring, is 
prevented by the transfer of the motive 
power to a spring lever; which, capable of 
_ receiving only a certain portion of power 
~e _from the spring, can only impinge on the 
‘balance axis with a certain and determinate 
force. This force, invariably the same, 
will, of course, always impel with the same 
effect. Tio secure an isochronous motion, 
the spiral, or pendulum spring, is made per- 
 fectly taper, an object obtained only through 
the medium of an elaborate tool, con- 
_ structed for the express purpose of reducing 
them to this form. The variation between 
the sea and land rates, in the best chrono- 
meters hitherto constructed, is remedied, 
by the introduction of a balance, without 
iron or steel, consequently free from mag- 
Aiartic properties, or influence, yet possessing 
@ compensating power, considerably more 
sensitive, and more active, than any pre- 
viously used, without any liability to per- 
vent distortion of its true figure, by any 
msition from one temperature to another. 


Ky / 


4 


The imperfection, technically called trip- 
ping, and which is so frequently the cause of 
much error and miscalculation, is entirely 
prevented ; nothing short of a violence suf- 
ficient to destroy the machinery of the time- 
piece can cause it to trip. They admit of 
being cleaned without the danger of dis- 
turbing their rates, and, indeed, without 
disturbing those parts on which ‘the accu- 
racy of their movement depends; a quality 
which every one, who has the use or care 
of chronometers, will be able to appreciate. 
The most inexperienced person may be 
safely intrusted to wind them up, no change 
of position being necessary, and no possibi- 
lity of over winding or winding wrong, ex- 
isting. An increased solidity is introduced 
into every part, diminishing almost te anni- 
hilation the risk of accident by any ordi- 
nary occurrence, and, consequently, re- 
moving one very fruitful source of anxiety 
to the navigator. We are happy to bear 
personal testimony to the unreserved and 
courteous manner in which Mr, Croucher, 
who has obtained the patent from Ulric, 
submits these valuable instruments to the 
inspection of all who feel interested in the 
subject. 

To harden Plaster Casts and Alabaster. 
—The following process has obtained a 
patent in France. The piece of plaster, or 
alabaster, after being shaped, is put for 
twenty-four, hours into a furnace. If the 
piece is ,only cighteen lines thick, thre¢ 

402 


652 


hours in the furnace, heated up to the tem- 
purature required for baking bread, is suffi- 
cient: if thicker, it is left in for a propor- 
tionably longer time, at the end of which it 
is withdrawn with caution, and cooled, after 
which it is put for thirty seconds into river 
water, withdrawn for a few seconds, and 
then, again, immersed for a minute or two, 
according to its thickness. The piece is 
then exposed to the air, and, at the end of 
three or four days, has acquired the hard- 
ness and density of marble. It may then 
be polished. 

To Destroy Flies.—During the course 
of the last summer, numerous accidents to 
children were recorded, in consequence of a 
deleterious composition, generally king’s 
yellow, a preparation of arsenic, being em- 
ployed for the destruction of flies; this ob- 
ject may be accomplished very safely, and 
completely, by a strong infusion of quassia 
wood sweetened with sugar. 

Encke’s Comet.—On the second or third 
of the last month (November), Encke’s 
comet, the original discovery of which we 
owe to the sister of the late Sir William 
Herschel, and the return of which has been 
recently expected by astronomers with much 
anxiety, was found -by Mr. South, in that 
part of the heavens exactly; which theory 
had assigned as its place at the time. As 
this nebulous body is much too small te be 
visible in any ordinary telescopes, we only 
notice its return as indicating, in an exten- 
sive degree, the perfection to which the 
science of astronomy is brought. 

Fall of an Aerolite.—The following ac- 
count of -an aerolite, weighing thirty-six 
pounds, which fell at 11, A.M., September 
14, 1825, at Vaigou, one of the Sandwich 
Islands, is given by a lieutenant of Captain 
Kotzebue, in his voyage round the world. 
A short time previous to its fall, the sky 
became charged with clouds, until the 
whole island was covered with a dense 
black veil. The fall of the stone was imme- 
diately preceded by a violent gust of wind 
from the N. W., and, even at sea, sounds 
like those of thunder were heard. Imme- 
diately after these detonations, the aerolite 
fell in the middle of the village of Gana- 
gauro, and broke into pieces on touching 
the ground. The Russian travellers gathered 
many of these pieces, one weighing fifteen 
pounds. They resemble the aerolites gene- 
rally known. 

German Method of Expediting Vege- 
tation.—A branch, proportioned’to the size 
of the object required, is sawn off the tree, 
the flowers of which are to be produced, and 
is plunged into a spring, if one can be 
found, where it is left for an hour or two, 
to give time for such ice as may adhere to 
the bulb to melt, and to soften the buds; 
it is then carried into a chamber, heated by 
a stove, and placed in a wooden vessel, 
containing water; quick lime is to be 
added to the water, and left for twelve hours. 
The branch is then to be removed into 


Varielies. 


-tions where the radiation of caloric goes on 


(Dec. 


another vessel, containing fresh water, with 
a small quantity of vitriol to prevent its 
becoming putrid. In a few hours the flow- 
ers will begin to appear, and, afterwards, 
the leaves; if more quick-lime be used, 
the flowers will appear quicker; if, on the 
contrary, none be used, the branch will 
vegetate more slowly, and the leaves will 
precede the flowers. 

Observations on Amber.—It is well 
known that amber is most commonly found 
in brown coal, and that it has been observed 
in the trunk of a tree, lying in a mass of 
brown coal. There is no doubt whatever of 
this fossil resin having been originally a 
vegetable product. The numerous bodies 
found inclosed in it, as, for example, spi- 
ders, wings of all sorts of insects, a corolla, 
perfectly blown, impressions of bushes and 
branches, which are not uncommon, suffi- 
ciently prove that amber, like common 
resin, originally flowed in the state of a 
balsam; and that it afterwards hardened 
into the form of a resin ; which, on ana- 
lyzing, is found to contain, at least, five 
different substances:—1l. An odoriferous 
oil in small quantity :—2. A yellow resin, 
intimately combined with this oil, and 
which readily dissolves in alcohol, ether, 
and the alkalis, which is very fusible, and 
resembles common resins not of fossil origin : 

3. A resin, difficultly soluble in cold alcohol, 
better in boiling alcohol, from which it 
separates, on cooling, in the form of a white " 
powder, and which dissolves in ether and 

the alkalis. These two resins, and the 
volatile oil which ether extracts from am- 

ber, form, after the evaporation of the ether 

upon water, a natural viscous balsam, of a 
strong smell, and a bright yellow colour, 
which, subsequently, hardens, preserving a | 
portion of its odour. There is every reason a 
to suppose that this body is precisely what 
amber originally was, but still, perhaps, less 
rich in essential oil than then, and that the 
insoluble parts of amber have been formed, — 
by time, from the alteration of this balsam, 
a portion of which has been enveloped, and 
defended from further alteration. The 
fourth substance contained in amber, is 
succinic acid, which is dissolved with the 
balsam by ether. The fifth substance is 
insoluble in alcohol, ether, and the alkalis, 
and bears some relation to the matter which 
has been found in gum lac, and which has 
been designated as the principal of lac; this is 
found in the greatest quantity when this 
resin is dissolved by an alkali, and bleached 
by chlorine and precipitated. 

Influence of Radiation on Malaria.— 
A theory of very considerable importance 
has recently been laid before the public, by 
Mr. Addison, the ingenious author of a dis- 
sertation on the Malvern Water, that the 
radiation of caloric from the earth has great 
influence in determining the site of malaria. 
The following is a brief summary of his 
views on the subject: viz. all those situa- 


oer? @ 


1828.] 


with rapidity, are occasionally, if not ‘at all 
times, extremely unhealthy ; while others, 
where this process is diminished, are, on the 
contrary, much less obnoxious to’ disease : 
debilitated constitutions are invariably found 
to regain the tone and vigour of health, 
much more perfectly and more quickly, in 
places little influenced by radiation, or re- 
moved from the sphere of its effects, than in 
others exposed to the depositions which it 
causes from the air; and in the radiation 
of caloric may be found the cause of the ac- 
tivity of those exhalations with which the 
sun in tropical climates, especially, saturates 
the air: in fine, that in this important pro- 
cess, one of the principal causes of malaria 
will be found. 

Useful Cement.—A useful cement, for 
general purposes, is composed of two parts 
of rosin, melted over a slow fire, into which 
one part of the quantity of plaster of Paris 
is to be introduced, and well mixed by 
stirring them; add two parts of shell lac, 
and the whole being in a fluid state, consti- 
tutes a firm and durable cement. 

Gouty Inflammation cured by Vaccina- 
tion.—The following cure, from the North 
American Medical Journal, deserves to be 
noticed.—A lady of hereditary gouty dia- 
thesis had been inoculated for the small-pox 
some fifty years ago, and had it severely. 
Some time since, Dr. Coxe was requested by 
her to vaccinate her servant girl, which he 
did, and successfully. She was, herself, 
labouring at this time under a severe attack 
of gout in her right wrist, which was 
swollen and extremely painful, her system 
being feverish, &c. He inserted, with her 
permission, a ‘portion of the virus into the 
affected part, with the view of ascertaining 
whether she could take the vaccine disease, 
and if so, what effect it would produce upon 

‘~ the gout. Somewhat to his surprise, and 
_ greatly to his satisfaction, she not only had 
the genuine disease, but the swelling and 
pain immediately left her arm, and long 
efore the scab, which was green, had 
dropped off, she was as well and as comfort- 
able as she had ever been in her life. 
cicatrix remaining is of the genuine porous 
kind. 

Cure for Bugs.—It has been supposed 
that the cimex lectularius, or house-bug, 

_ was unknown in England before the fire of 
London, in 1666, and was introduced in 

‘some foreign timber employed in rebuild- 
ing the city; but we are told by Mouffet, 
that in 1583, Dr. Penny was sent for in 
great haste to Mortlake, in Surrey, to visit 
two noble ladies, who thought themselves 
affected by the plague, but whom he found 
had only been severely bitten by bugs. 
These insects are exceedingly prolific, as 
the female lays numerous eggs in the cavi- 
ties of walls, or wood work; and these are 
hatched in about three weeks. In order to 
-clear a house of bugs, the leading point is 

_ cleanliness in every respect. The first young 

+ begin to burst from the eggs carly in spring, 

a y 


——— 


Varieties. 


The ' 


653 


frequently even in February. At this season 
it is that the greatest attention is required. 
The bed infected by them ought to be 
stripped of all its furniture, which should be 
washed, and, if linen, even boiled, or if stuff, 
hot pressed. The bedstead should be taken 
in pieces and dusted, and washed with spirits 
of wine in all the joints and crevices, for it 
is in these parts principally that the females 
deposit their eggs. This done, all the cavi- 
ties should be well filled with the best soft 
soap mixed up with verdigrease and Scotch 
snuff. On this composition the young will 
immediately feed, after leaving the eggs (if 
any escape the cleaning) and will be de- 
stroyed, as will also such of the old ones as 
happen to be left. But for destroying the 
larve of perfect insects, nothing answers 
better than oil of turpentine impregnated 
with camphor. It is probable that the bulb 
of an onion or garlic, which, cut and applied 
immediately to the place stung, instantly 
removes the pain occasioned by the sting of 
a wasp, would be equally efficacious with 
regard to the bite of bugs. 

Steam Machinery for Stone-cutting.— 
About twenty years since some machinery 
was erected in Dublin for the purpose of 
cutting and polishing stone ; from the want, 
however, of a demand for the article when 
so elaborated, the undertaking failed, and 
the projector, we believe, was made a bank- 
rupt: a patent has recently been obtained 
in this country for the application of a steam- 
mill to the same object, and the machinery 
is now in operation in Westminster. The 
process of cutting up the stone is very much 
expedited, while it is done with greater 
facility and exactness, and the polish is far 
higher and more durable than can be com- 
municated by men’s labour. We have men- 
tioned the existence of this factory, in the 
hope that, as the means of enriching our 
domestic architecture, are thereby considera- 
bly reduced in price; they may become more 
extensively known, and more frequently 
adopted. 

Easy Method of Preserving small Birds. 
—Birds to the size of a pigeon may be pre- 
served from putrefaction by an easy process, 
and by a method which will effectually 
guard them against the attack of insects. 
Carefully remove the abdominal viscera at 
the vent, by means of a wire bent to a hook 
at one end; then introduce a small piece of 
the antiseptic paste, and afterwards as much 
clipped cotton or tow as may be thought 
sufficient, with some of the paste mixed with 
it; remove the eyes, and fill the orbits with 
cotton imbued with the paste; draw out 
the tongue, which remove, and’ pass a wire 
from the mouth into the cavity of the cra- 
nium, merely to give the antiseptic access 
to the brain: bind a piece of thread round 
the rostrum, another piece round the body 
and wings, then hang it up by the legs, and 
pour in at the vent from half’an ounce to 
two ounces, according to the size of the bird, 
of alcohol; let it be hung in an airy situa- 


654 


tion, and it will soon dry without any un- 
pleasant smell. The antiseptic paste is 
made by mixing eight parts of finely pow- 
dered white arsenic, four parts of Spanish 
soap, three parts of camphor pulverized in a 
mortar, with a few drops of alcohol, and one 
part of soft soap. 

Chinese Horticulture. —The following 
method is described as being practised by 
some Chinese, retained by Count Linhares 
in Brazil. The tree practised upon was a 
Brazilian myrtle. The branch to be sepa- 
rated and planted, already some inches in 
thickness, was surrounded by a band of 
straw, mingled with horse dung, forming an 
envelope five or six times as large in dia- 
meter as the branch itself; then an annular 
incision was made below this part, and water 
was allowed to drop from a considerable 
height on to the wrapped part. The vessel 
is usually a cocoa-nut shell, pierced with 
very fine holes. In about two months the 


Varieties. 


(Dec. 


branch is separated from the tree and 
planted. To obtain rapidly growing trees, 
the Chinese choose the upper smaller 
branches; but for more production, and 
better trees, they choose stronger branches 
that are nearer to the earth. 

Common Salt in Chili.—An incrustation 
of salt, 30 miles in length and several miles 
in width, is found on the coast of Chili to 
the south of Coquimbo. It has the appear- 
ance of that compact ice which forms on 
the surface of lakes and rivers in America 
towards the middle of winter. The thick- 
ness is about two feet. When a block of it 
is removed, the space is soon filled up by 
new salt. The great road runs for a con- 
siderable distance along the edge of this 
curious formation. It has frequently hap- 
pened that when mules, horses, and even 
men have died in this part of the route, their 
bodies have been perfectly preserved for a 
long time afterwards. 


WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS. 


The Life and Times of Francis the First 
of France. In 2 vols. 8vo. 

Conversations on Intellectual Philosophy, 
In 2 vols. 12mo. 

The Manual for Invalids. 
cian. 

A New Year’s Eve; and other Poems. 

3y Bernard Barton. 

The Interpositions of Divine Providence ; 
selected exclusively from the Holy Scriptures. 
By Joseph Fincher, Esq. 

A. Treatise on the Structure and Diseases 
of the Teeth. By Thomas Bell, Esq., 
F. L. 5., Lecturer at Guy’s Hospital. 

The Principles of Natural Philosophy, 
developed and applied in explaining the 
Phenomena of Chemistry, Electricity, Gal- 
vanism, Magnetism, and Electro-Magnet- 
ism. By. Thomas Exley, A. M., Associate 
of the Bristol Phil. and Lit. Soc. In 1 vol. 
Syo. 

Montmorency ; a Tragic Drama. Minor 
Poems. By G. H. W. Montague. Also, 
by the same Author, Lagillon; a Tragic Ro- 
mance, &e. 


By a Physi- 


Narrative of a Tour from the Bank to ~ 


Barnes, by way of Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, 
Brentford, Putney-bridge, &c. &c. By an 
Inside Passenger. 'To which is appended, 
A Model for a Magazine. 

The Legends of the Lakes, or Sayings 
and Doings at Killarney. By Crofton 
Croker. 

A Topographical and Genealogical His- 
tory of the Hundred of Carthampton, Somer- 
setshire. By James Savage. 

A New Edition of Thucydides, illustrated 
with maps, drawn from actual Surveys ; 
with Notes, chiefly Historical and Geogra- 
phical. By the Rev. T. Arnold, Head 
Master of Rugby School. 

Ussays on the Universal Analogy between 


the Natural and the Spiritual Worlds. 
the Author of the Memoirs of a Deist. 

A Treatise on the Diseases of the Bones. 
By Benjamin Bell. 

Letters from the Augean. 
Emerson, Esq. In 2 vols. 8vo. 

The Economy of Human Life. Translated 
into French, by Mrs. Davidson. 

A Volume of Sermons. By the Rev. T. 
Arnold, M, A., Head Master of Rugby 
School. 

Friendly Advice to My Poor Neighbours; 
in a Series-of Cottage Tales and Dialogues. 
By a Layman. In] vol. 12mo. 

An Account of the Fellowships, Scholar- 
ships, and Exhibitions attached to the Uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Pub- 
lic and Endowed Grammar Schools, Char- |. 
tered Companies, and Corporate Bodies 5 — 
giving the Names of the Founders, and a 
Statement of the Qualifications requisite for 
the respective Candidates. In small 8vo. 

The Rey. T. Huntingford has a volume 
in the press, upon the Intermediate State of 
the Soul after Death. 

Ecclesiastical Annals, from the Com- 
mencement of Scripture History to the 16th 
Century. Translated and Abridged from 
the Latin of Professor Spanheim, of Ley- ~ 
den. By the Rev. G. Wright. In 1 vol. 
8yo. 

Friendly and Sensible Advice to the Ro- 
man Catholics of England. Fourth Edition. 
Edited by the Rev. W. F. Hook, M.A. | 

The Circle of the Seasons, for the Year 
1829 ; with a newly digested Preface on the 
Phenomena of the coming Year. 

The Village N ightingale, and Other 
Tales. By Miss Dagley. 

A History of the University of ‘Leyden. 
By Professor Siegerbeck. 

The Rev. J. Seager has in thesarpss, Hoo- 


By 


By James 


18287] 


geveen on the Greek Particles. Translated 
into English, and Abridged for the Use of 
Schools. 

~ Anne of Geiorstein ; or the Maiden of the 
Mist. In3 vols. By Sir Walter Scott. 

The Annual Biography and Obituary for 
1829, will soon be ready. 

The second Volume of Mr. Sharon Tur- 
ner’s Modern History of England is in the 
press. It will contain the Reigns of Ed- 
ward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth ; with chap- 
ters on the Corruptions of the Ancient Ca- 
tholic Church which occasioned the Refor- 
mation—On the Rise and Progress of Lu- 
ther—On the History and Proceedings of 
the Council of Trent—and on the Massacr 
of St. Bartholomew. : 

An Essay on the Deafand Dumb, shewing 
the advantages of Medical Treatment in 
early Infancy, with Observations on Conge- 
nital Deafness. By J. Harrison Curtis, 
Esq., Surgeon Aurist to the King. 

Mahometanism Unveiled: being an At- 
tempt to Explain, on a new but strictly 
Scriptural Principle, the Growth and Per- 
manence of this Arch-heresy. By the Rev. 
Charles Forster, B. D., Chancellor of Ard- 
fert. 


LIST OF NEW WORKS. 


BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

The Literary Remains of the late Henry 
Neele, consisting of Lectures on English 
Poetry, Tales, and other Miscellaneous 
Pieces, in Prose and Verse, post. 8vo. 12s. 
boards. 

Memoirs of Doctor William Wright. 
8yo. 12s. boards. 

Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci, late Bishop 
of Portoia, Reformer of Catholicism in 
Tuscany, during the Reign of Leopold. 
_ Edited by Thomas Roscoe, Esq. 2 vols. 

*  8vo. 24s. boards. 

Tales of Woman; designed to exhibit 

the Female Character in its brightest points 
of View. 2 vols. post. 8vo. 18s. boards. 
Memoirs of Doctor Parr. By the Rev. 
William Field, the second and concluding 
volume. 8vo. 14s. boards. 
Beer ad CLASSICAL. 
Remarks, Explanatory and Tlustrative, of 
the Terentian Metres; with a Sketch of the 

History, &c. of Ancient Comedy. By J. 
_ M‘Caul. 8vo. 4s. sewed. 

_ Gesinni’s Larger Hebrew Lexicon, trans- 
lated by Leo. vol. 2. £1. 10s. the 2 vols. 
“£2.)14s. 
fade: MEDICAL. 

-_ Coloquet’s Anatomy, translated by Dr. 
Knox. 8yo. 21s. boards. 

' Medical Calendar, or Guide 
+ Schools. 12mo. 4s. boards. 
A Manual on Midwifery. By Michael 
_ Ryan, M.D. 12mo. és. boards. 

“Alta _ MISCELLANEOUS. 

_ Essay on Comets, which gained the First 
_. of Dr. Fellowes’s Prizes, proffered to those 
ho had attended the University of Edin. 


ise 


to the 


List of New Works. 


655 


burgh, within the last twelve years. By 


‘David Milne, A.M. 4to. 10s. 6d. boards. 


A Map of the Stars, with the figures of 
the Constellations. 2s. 6d. 

Stark’s Elements of Natural History. 
2 vols. 8vo. £1. 12s. boards. 

Griffith on Seamanship. 8vo. 9s. bds. 

A Series of Etchings Iustrative of 
Architectural Antiquities of the County of 
Suffolk. By Mr. Davy. folio. £8. 8s. large 
paper, £11. 11s. By the same author, Views 
of the Genilemen’s Seats in Suffolk. Im- 
perial 8vo. 30s. 

Practical Suggestions and Instructions to 
Young Attornies, &c. By George Thomp- 
son, Attorney at Law. 12mo. 12s. bds. 

Time’s Telescope, for 1829. 12mo. 9s. 
boards. 

The Prophetic Messenger, for 1829. 
price 2s. 3d. 

Wellbeloved, on Highways. 8vo. 18s. 
boards. 

Ballantyne’s Examination of the Human 
Mind. 8vo. 12s. boards. 

NOVELS AND TALES. 

The Trials of Life. By the Author of 
De Lisle. 3 vols. 11. 11s. 6d. boards. 

Zillah ; a Tale of the Holy City. By 
the Author of Brambletye House. 4 vols. 
iZmo. 21. 2s. boards. 

The Protestant ; a Tale of the Reign of 
Queen Mary. By the Author of De Foix, 
&e. 3 vols. Post 8vo. boards. 

The Man of Two Lives; a Narrative. 
Written by Himself. 2 vols. 12mo. 18s. 
boards. 

The Living and the Dead. Second 
Series. Post 8vo. 10s. Gd. boards. 

POETRY. 

Scenes of War, and other Poems. 
John Malcolm. 12mv. 7s. boards. 

The Wanderer’s Legacy ; a Collection 
of Poems on varieus Subjects. By Catha- 
rine Grace Godwin. 12mo. 8s. Gd. boards. 

The Universal Prayer, &c. By Robert 
Montgomery. 12mo. 7s. 6d. boards. 

Church-yard Gleanings, and Epigrammatic 
Scraps. By W. Pullen. 12mo. ds. bds. 

The Sorrows of Rosalie ; a Poem. 12mo. 

Poetic Effusions. By W. Moore. 12mo. 
os. 6d. boards. ‘ 

The Golden Lyre ; or, Specimens of the 
Poets of England, France, Germany, and 
Italy, in the Original Language. Printed 
in gold. 18mo. 10s. 6d. 

RELIGION, MORALS, &c. 

An Examination of Scripture Difficul- 
ties, elucidating nearly Seven Hundred 
Passages in the Old and New Testaments, 
designed for the Use of General Readers. 
By William Carpenter. $8vo. 10s. boards. 

Mattheson’s Advice to Religious In- 
quirers. 12mo. 4s. boards. 

Observations upon the several Sunday 
Services prescribed by the Liturgy through- 
out the Year. By Dr. Alexander Jolly ; 
one of the Bishops of the Protestant Hpis- 
copal Communion in Scotland. 12mo. 
Price 4s. boards. 


By 


[ 656 J 


[Dec. 


PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 


—— 


List of Patents, which, having been granted 
in December 1814, expire in the present 
month of December 1828. 


10. R. Dickenson, Esq., London, for 
improvements in the manufacture of barrels 
and other packages made of iron or other 
metals. 

— R. Salmon, Woburn, for improved 
movements and combinations of wheels for 
working cranes, mills, and all sorts of ma- 
chinery, either portable or fixed. 

— E. Glover, Walworth, for apparatus 
for drawing or extracting bolts, nails, §c., 
and for other purposes. 

12. H. J. Winter, Dover, for his method 
of giving effect to various operating pro- 
cesses. 

15. J. C. Dyer, Camden Town, for ad- 
ditions and improvements on machinery 
for the manufacturing of cards for carding 
wool, silk, tow, and other fibrous materials 
of the like description. 

— J.F. Wyatt, London, for an inven- 


tion of a new kind of bricks or blocks— 
one for fronting houses, one for a new 
method of binding brick-work ; also for 
paving floors, and for stairs. 

20. W. Everhard, London, for an im- 
provement in the manufacture of soap. 

— J. Smith, Newark-upon-Trent, for 
an improved self-acting sash fastening. 

— W. Dickinson, Esq., London, for an 
improvement in implements applicable to 
the ship’s nun buoy and beacon buoy.} 

— J. Vallance, Brighton, for an im- 
proved method of constructing casks and 
vats, and cocks. 

24. F. Konig, London, for imnprove- 
ments on his method of printing by ma- 
chinery. 

— W. Cooke and E. Jorden, Norwich, 
for their apparatus for the detection of 
depredators, which they denominate the 
thieves’ alarm. 

27. J. White, London, for a new and 
improved method of making candles. 


MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 


Tue fortunate conclusion of wheat sowing was the signal for expediting what re- 


mained of getting up the potatoe crop, and storing mangel-wurtzel. 


Next in order came 


ploughing up the stubbles for spring fallows, which is, generally, in great forwardness, as 


have been all our autumnal occupations. 


Some partial and temporary interruptions to. 


getting in the wheat seed occurred, from the dry and bound state of the soil, which was 


fortunately relieved by intervening showers; indeed, this drought was a feather in the . 


scale of.interruption, compared with, we are almost ashamed to repeat, the nearly universal 
foul state of the lands, the report of which is echoed from one end of the island to the 
other... The couch grass and weeds bore such a luxuriant head, in many parts, that it 
was found no easy matter to cover the seed: and on such Jands the young wheats have 
come up so thin and poor, that it has not been judged prudent to risk the crop: it has 
been ploughed up, and, in all probability, the season and the labour have been lost. These 
foul tilths, besides abounding in couch grass, afford a most nourishing and convenient har- 
bour for the slugs, which also generally abound on clover leys. The great moisture of 
the summer season contributed infinitely to the increase of these vermin, the most effectual __ 
method for the destruction of which is heavy rolling, and treading with sheep. The 
greater part of the young wheats, however, fortunately, have the most promising appear- 
ance; and on the best lands there is some apprehension of over luxuriance. The 
opinion formerly given seems universal, that the shortness of the late crop, and the 
favourable state of the weather for sowing, have had such a powerful influence on the 
farmers, that a greater breadth of land has been sown with wheat, during the present 
season, than was ever before known in Britain. It is averred that one-fifth of the crop 
of wheat has been expended in seed. 

To recur to the late crops—we stated in our last, to the utmost verge of probability, 
the satisfactory reports; some of them, indeed, of a very flattering nature. On the 
other hand, it must not be concealed, that as we advance.i in experience of the quality and 
produce of the new wheats generally, the original opinion is fully confirmed of their 
deficiency in both respects. The uncommonly great quantities threshed have afforded 
very ample opportunities of forming a judgment. It is said that unusual quantities, for 
the season, of new barleys, likewise, have been at market. The acreable quantity of bar- 
ley was no doubt large, but the quantity of fine malting barley is at no rate so: and good 
samples of both wheat and barley must inevitably bear a high price, whatever quantity — 
may be imported; for weight and quality are peculiar and governing objects in this 
country, as the immense difference in prices, and the neglect of inferior samples, even in 
times of scarcity, amply testify. Both oats and beans bear a great price, notwithstand- 
ing their very considerable crops ; and potatoes, though abundant, are said to be dear 
in the country, as they certainly are in all large towns. From their excellent quality, 
potatoes will prove a rare addition to the stock of bread, and great quantities will be used 


\ “ 
oh ee ni et oa ee 


1828.] Monthly Agricultural Report. 657 


as cattle food. Foreign wheat being now admissable at the low duty, one shilling per 
quarter, has, for the present, considerably reduced prices. Clover seed was well harvested, 
but the crop has nothing to boast of, whether in regard to quantity or quality. The crop 
of hops is full as large as was expected, and good samples are in request at a considerable 
price. The holders of wool say, there is as little demand for it, as though the article were 
out of use ; nor is there any prospect of a change, unless some improvement can be made 
in our British short wools, on which subject we recommend to our flock masters a perusal 
of Mr. Trimmer’s pamphlet, published by Ridgway. 

The dryness and fineness of thé season has had a material good effect on the grass, 
rendering it more nutritious to cattle than latter grass usually is found ; but, in low situa- 
tions, there is much risk with sheep upon the meadows ; this circumstance has contributed 
to enhance the price of cattle, particularly cows, which bring great prices : those forward in 
calf, indeed, are very dear. The rot in sheep, most unfortunately, considering the dear- 
hess of provisions, has made an alarming progress upon all unsound lands, and its usual 
concomitant, the foot-rot, is also complained of. For the first, when the constitution is 
thoroughly affected, there is noremedy ; but timely care will remove the foot-rot, a species 
of chilblain, the ancient and effective remedial process for which, is well known to all 
shepherds ; but being attended with considerable trouble, they are not always disposed to 
take time by the forelock. The feet of those that appear to limp or halt, must be care- 
fully examined, and washed clean with soap and warm water, and the animals housed 
a while upon a dry floor, spread with fresh slacked lime. Should, subsequently, inflamma- 
tion continue, with the growth of fungous flesh, the usual escharotic, butter of antimony, 
may be moderately applied to the parts, with a feather ; finally, and most materially, the 
convalescents, when turned off again, should be provided with dry and sound pasturage ; 
and the disease being infectious, separation is of the utmost consequence. 

Upon arable farms, the luxuriance of the young stubble grasses has produced a great 
and wholesome resource for stock. The quantities.of all kinds of cattle and sheep food 
for winter supply, hay, straw, late grass, reots, are immense; but the feeders complain that 
they have thence been compelled to purchase their stores at too high a price ; nevertheless, 
they who are fortunate in the improvement of their cattle, will scarcely fail of an indem- 
nification in the spring markets. The horse market has undergone no change, nor is it 
probable, from the enormous destruction and consumption of that most unfortunate race 
of animals. Pigs, which had given way some time since, are again rallying in price, and 
it is said the country is yet understccked with that important species. 

Wishing to impress upon the minds of those, in whose power the remedy, if any there 

_ be, must lie, we make a quotation from our October report: “‘ It is, in fact, a strange oc- 

currence, that the most important occupation, in the most flourishing and opulent coun- 

* try upon the face of the earth, should be so managed as to be incapable of giving bread 

for the labour it requires. Something, surely, must be radically wrong—must be rotten 

to the core, in such a state of things.” Here we have one, if not the principal cause, 

of that excessive demoralization which has so long prevailed among the lower classes in 

the country. Our correspondents, particularly from the west, express much alarm from 

~ the distress which may be expected among the labourers, during the coming winter, 

assuring us, at the same time, that itis utterly out of the power of the tenantry to make 

_ any addition to the present rate of wages, however insufficient, Perhaps ancient custom 

weighs too powerfully with them, and they do not make a fair balance of the account, as 

connected with the heavy expence of supporting paupers. A due consideration of the 

old plan of allowing the labourers each a small quantity of land, which has lately, in seve- 

ral parts of the country, been successfully experimented, is submitted to the serious con- 

sideration of land-holders and the heads of parishes. For examples, we refer to the course 

ted py the worthy Rector of Sutton, Birmingham, Notts; and to that at Gotham, 

by a benevolent member of the Curzon family, chief proprietor of the parish. Such a 

scheme may not be needed, or may be impracticable in many parishes ; but experience 

_ has proved that it would, in some situations, be highly advantageous, both to the labourers 
and the community. 


Smithfield. —Beef, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 4d.—Mutton, 3s. 8d. to 4s. 8d.—Veal, 3s. 8d. to 5s. 2d. 
—Pork, 4s. to 5s. 6d.—Dairy Pork, 6s. to 6s. 2d.—Raw fat, 2s. 5d, 
Corn Exchange.—Wheat, 60s. to 92s.—Barley, 33s. to 458.Oats, 20s. to 35s, 
_ —Bread, London 4 Ib. fine loaf, 1s.—Hay 50s. to 105s.—Clover ditto, 70s. to 110s.— 
Straw 34s. to 42s. 
Coals in the Pool, 38s. to 42s. per chaldron. - 


Middlesex, November 2\st. 


; MM. New Series.—Vot. VI, No. 36. 4.P 


[ 658° J- [Dre 


MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 


Sugar.—The Sugar Market was in a very languid state all the last week ; the purchases 

did not exceed 1,500 hogsheads, yet the prices did not recede; the holders were very firm, 
and if there were any alteration, we think that higher prices were paid for good and strong 
descriptions above 60s.: at the close of the market, the estimated sales of Muscavadoes, 
this day, were 700 hogsheads.. Lumps continue scarce. 
* Coffee.—The public sales of Coffee, last week, were inconsiderable: the holders were 
not inclined to sell to any extent, and as the buyers could only purchase with difficulty at 
former prices, the latter were not eager to buy. Jamaica and Demerara sold also with 
briskness at very full prices ; British Plantation at former prices: market heavy. 

Rum.—The speculators continued to buy every parcel of Leeward Island Rum that 
appeared on the market last week ; they purchased nearly 500 puncheons, and there were 
no further supplies. Jamaica Rums continue neglected. 

Brandy.—This market which has been firm, has received a further impulse by the 
declared price, 115 for new, and 125 for old—the latter is much higher than last year : 
the general request appears to be checked by the late advance. 

Geneva.—In Geneva there are few sales, and no alteration in prices. 

Hemp, Flax, and Tallow.—The demand and prices of Tallow continue to fluctuate 
considerably, the price of Yellow Candle Tallow had advanced to 40s. 3d. and 40s. Gd., 
at which extensive sales have been effected, and the prices have since declined 9d. to Is. 
per cwt. Hemp and Flax are higher ; the letters from St. Petersburgh are dated 3ist ult., 
Exchange, 10. 7-16. Tallow, 103; Casks bought, 600; bought, not shipped, 1,500 ; 
shipped off, 153,000. Freight, 37s. 6d. 


Course of Foreign Exchange.—Amsterdam, 12. 2.—Rotterdam, 12. 2. — Antwerp, 
12, 21.__Hamburgh (Marco Banco), 13. 13.—Altona (ditto ditto), 13. 13}.—Paris 
(three days’ sight), 25. 45.—Bordeaux, 25. 70.— Frankfort-on-Main, 151.—Peters- 
burgh Rble. (3 Ibs.), 10.—Vienna (effective), 10.—Trieste, 10.—Madrid, 37—Cadiz, 
374.—Bilboa, 361.—Barcelona, 36.—Seville, 36}.—Gibraltar, 46.—Leghorn, 483.— 
Genoa, 25. 40.—Venice, 474.—Naples, 393.—Palermo, 121.—Lisbon, 46.—Oporto, 
47.—Rio Janeiro, 314/.—Bahia, 36/.—Dublin (21 days’ .ight), 13.—Cork, 13. 5 

Bullion per Oz.—Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od.—Foreign Gold in Bars, 
£3. 17s. 104d.—New Doubloons, £0. 0s.—New Dollars, 4s. 9Zd.—Silver in Bars, 
(Standard), £0. 4s. 112d. 


Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
Wo tres, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. Birmingham Cana, 294/.—Covyen- 
try, 1,080/.—Ellesmere and Chester, 109/7.—Grand Junction, 302/.—Kennet and Avon, 
2721.—Leeds and Liverpool, 455/.—Oxford, 700/.—Regent’s, 253/._Trent and Mersey, ia 
G4 sh.), 8107.— Warwick and Birmingham, 255/.—London Docks (Stock), 887.— West ? 

ndia (Stock), 217/.—East London Water Works, 118/.—Grand Junction, 56/.—_ 
West Middlesex, 69/.—Alliance British and Foreign InsuRaNncE, 94/.—Globe, 1582— 
Guardian, 22/.—Hope Life, 517.—Imperial Fire, 105/.—Gas-Licutr Westminster Char- 
tered Company, 53/.—City, 0/.—British, 11 dis.—Leeds, 195/. 


ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, f 
Announced from the 22d of October to the 23d of November 1828 ; extracted from the 
London Gazette. 


BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 


S. Moscrop, Stockport, linen-draper 

G.A, Baker, Blackman-street, Southwark, cheese- 
monger 

H. Cooper, Snow-hill, St. John-strect, stationer 

E. B. Skelton, M. M. Skelton, E. Skelton, H. 
pbelton, Southampton, stationers and booksel- 
ers 

L. Moris, Bristol, tobaeconist 

E. Darby, Pimlico, oil and colourman 

J. Farrar, Liverpool, merchant. 


BANKRUPTCIES. [This Month, 133.] 
Solicitors’ Names are in Brackets. 


Allen, F. Newbury, tea-man. [Hadwen, Pan- 
cras-lane, Cheapside 


oa 


Ascough, G. C, North Shields, tinman. 
and Co., Nicholas-lane * 

Burnell, J. Bishop Auckland, tallow-chandler and ~ 
grocer. [Troiter, Bishop Auckland; Griffith, 
Gray’s-inn oe 

Beckton, J. Manchester, shoemaker, [Claye and 
Thompson, Manchester; Adlington and Co., 
Bedford-row 

Burrell, J. Rotherhithe victualler. [Kelly, New- 
inn 

Baylis, J. junior, Kidderminster, victualler. [Col- 
lins, Doctor’s-commons 

Bockham, E. Old Kent road, Camberwell, builder. 
[Shebbeare, Child’s-place 

Bentley, J. Ipswich, turner. [Nelson, Milman- 
street 

Brett, S. Manchester, merchant. 
Beck, Lothbury raatey 


(Lowry 


[Fyson and 


1828. ] 


. Burton, W. BGreightmet, whitster. 
and Co. Ledsord-row 


[Adlington 


‘Banks, J. B. Gutter-lane, lace-dealer. [Leigh, 
George-street, Mansion-house 
Boyee, W. C. Worcester, silk-mercer. [ Platt, 


» New Boswell-court; Welles and Dicken, Wor- 


evster 
~Brown, D. Halifax, merchant. [Walker, Lin- 
[Battye 


coln’s-inn-fields ; Alexander. Halifax 
“Brown, P. Searboroagh, linen-draper. 
and Go., Chancery-lane; Heap and Co., Scar- 
borough 
Burton, R. Little Bolton, cotton-manufacturer. 
(Clarke and Co., Lincoln’s-inn-Fields ; Higgin- 
botbam, Ashton-under-Lyne . 
Briggs, T. E. St. James’s-street, feather-manu- 
_ faeturer. [Abrahams, Clifford’s-inn 
Bury, W. Notting-hill,. dairyman. 
. _ Chaneery-chambers 
Brain, R. Great Tower-street, broker. [Bous- 
field, Chatham-place ‘ 
Bissell, J. Vipton, haker. [Holme and Co., New- 
inn ; Parker, Birmingham 
Boddington, G, Giltspur-street, victualler. [ Downs, 
Furnival’s-inn 
Bushby, T. Green-street, Kent, grocer. [Ronolds, 
King’s-arms-yard ; Ward, Sittingborne 
Blackwell, C. Bedford-court, cutler. [Sutcliffe 
and Co,, New-bridge-street 
. Bartram, J. Alfreton, mercer, [ Bromley, Gray’s- 


(Jehnson, 


inn 
- Cotton, R. T. Worthing and Great St. Helen’s, 
surveyor and builder. [James, Bucklersbury 
Cooper, E. Leamington-priors, grocer. [Bur- 
bury, Warwick; Meyrick and Cox, Red-lion- 
square 
_ Clark, T. Union-street, Blackfriar’s, victualler, 
and Bridge-road, Lambeth, and Chatham, linen- 
draper. [Dax and Son, Gray’s-inn 
. Camara, A, da, and Julio da, Old Broad-street, 
and Madeira, kingdom of Portugal, Madeira 
wine-merchants. [Lewis, Bainard-street 
Chesters, G. Ellesmere, maltster. [Rosser and 
. Son, Gray’s-inn; Griffithes and Co., Oswestry 
Clark, T, and G, Bryson, Bridge-road, Lambeth, 
' and Chatham, liven-drapers. [Ashurst, New- 
gate-street 
_ Dobson, L. Leeds, woollen-cloth-merehant. [Wil- 
_ .. son, Southampton-street, Bloomsbury 
Drinkwater, W. Manchester, woollen - draper. 
_. [Makinson and Saunders, Temple 


_ . Deakin, J. Crawford-street, linen-draper. [Tur- 
~ ner, Basing-lane 
_Dennis,, W.. Emsworth, linen-draper. [Farrar, 


__ Godliman-street 
Durham, W. Hoxton, merchant. [ Williams, Copt- 
~ hall-eourt ~ 
. Eyre, E. Well’s-street, blind-maker. [Hardwick 
- ~ and Guest, Lawrence-lane 
English, E. and A. B. Becks, Bath, upholsterers. 
ot and Rose, Essex-street; Crutwell, 
ath 


- Edgley, T. G. Essex-wharf, Strand, coal-mer- 
~ chant. [Hoppe, Sun-court 

; * Eales, W. Crawford-street, linen-draper. [Smith, 

Walbrook 

_Fridy, T. Boughton, Kent, grocer. [Ogden, St. 
Mildred’s court 

Ford, R. junior, Commercial-road, Limehouse, 
earman. [Wells, York-terrace, Commercial- 


~ road 
Goodhugh, W. Ox‘ord-street, bookseller. [Bart- 
ley, Somerset-street 
“Giles, G. L. and J. T. Douglas, Commereial- 
place, City-road, cotton-wadding-manufactu- 
- vers. [Young and Gilbert, Mark-lane 
Gillham, S. Christ-church, Surrey, baker. [Ho- 
__ ward, Bouverie-street 
Gregory, A. Torquay, milliner, [Brutton and 
» Co,, New Broad-street ; Brutton, Exeter 
- George, P. Bow, linen-draper, [Ewington and 
, 4 », Walbrook 
Green, R. Birmingham, hatter. [Holmes and 
__ Co,, New-inn ; Bartleet, Birmingham 
Greenfield, F. Whitecross-street, surgeon. [Hall 
~ and Co., Salteys’-hall 
ope A. Royal Exchange Gallery, merchant. 
Nind and Cotteril, Throgmorton-street 


» Bankrupts. 


659 


, Hawke, ©. M, Old Broad-strect, stationer. [Win- 
ter and Co., Bedford-row 
.Haynes, J.  Ratcliffe-highway, 
(Jones, Size-Jane 
Hands, I, junior, Aston, Warwick, brass-founder. 
{Austen and Robson, Gray’s-inn; Palmer, Bir- 
mingham 
, Hewlett, ‘T. Week, St. Lawrence, Somerset, linen- 
draper and grocer. [Jenkins and Abbott, New- 
inn; Clarke and Son, Bristol 
Harris, E. Worthing, linen-draper. 
sing-lane | 
Hopkins, W. Oswestry, ironmonger, [Ellis and 
Co,, Chaneery-lane ; Holden, Liverpool 
Harker, G. Langthorpe, coal-merchant. [Daw- 
son and Co., New Boswell-court ; Hirst, Bo- 
roughbridge 
Haden, S. junior, Worcester, scrivener. [Car- 
dale and Co., Gray’s-inn ; Parker and Smith, 
Worcester 
Hatch, J. Pershore, rope and twine-spinner. 
([Bodenham, Furnival’s-inn; Woodward, Per- 
shore 
Havard, T. Bromyard, victialler. 
eoln’s-ion 
Johnson, W. Goole, druggist. [Wiglesworth and 
Ridsdale, Gray’s-inn-lane 


linen-draper, 


(Turner, Ba- 


[White, Lin- 


Jeffery, B. Abehurch-lane, merchant. [Haynes, 
Fenchureb-street 
Jacobs, S. Fleet-market, salesman. [Matanle, 


Pancras-lane, Cheapside’ 

Johnston, 'T. Cheapside, warehouseman. [Hurd 
and Co., Temple; Hadfield and Co., Man- 
chester 

Jarrin, W. A. New Bond-street, confectioner. 

. _ [Hiteheock, Davies-street — 

,Jameson, J. senjor, Neweastle-upon-Tyne, wool- 
len-draper. [Bell and Brodrick, Bow-church- 
yard; Brown, Newcastle 

Jones, W. Kidbrook, hay and cattle - dealer. 
(Alexander, Clement’s-inn ; 5 

- Jones, H. Great Russel-street, Bermondsey, 
leatber-dresser. [Ashurst, Newgate-street 

- Key, J. Newcastle-uuder-Lyme, grocer. [Harvey 
and Co,, Lincoln’s-inn-Fields; Plant, New- 
castle-under-Lyme : Ki 

Kirby, J. aud J. Thomas, Knightsbridge, linen- 
drapers. [ Davison, Bread-streety 

Lewis, W. St. Martin’s-lane, pianoforte-maker. 

., [Pavidson, St. Swithin’s-lane 

Lander, J. Birmingham, and W. Benbow, Liyer- 
pool, merchants. [Tooke and Carr, Bedford- 
row 

Lambert, R. Preston, innkeeper. [Hurd and 
Jobnson, Lemple; Troughton and Sons, Pres- 
ton : 

Lovatt, S. Derby, cabinet-maker. [Fox, Ash- 
berne; Barbor, Fetter-lane 

Lindgreen, H. J. Commercial-chambers, Minories, 
broker. [Batho, America-square 

Lacy, C. Tottenham and Nottingham, lace-ma- 
nufacturer, [Adlington and Co., Bediord-row; 
Hamilton, Manchester 

Littley, W. and T. Parker, Bath, builders. [Jones, 
Crosby-sqnare ; Hellings, Bath 

Love, B. L. Great Yarmouth, merchant. [Fran- 
cis, New Beswell-court 

Looder, W. Watford, ironmonger, [Ashley, Royal 
Exchange 

Lomas, J. Westminster - bridge - road, tayern- 
keeper. [{Edis, Broad-street-buildings 

Moseley, E, Camberwell, coal-imerchant. [Mey- 

Manley, G. Suffolk-street, wine-merchant, [Or- 
lebar, George-street, Hanover-square 


mott and Son, Great Surrey-street . 
Moraira, G. Henrietta-street, Brunswick-square, 


merchant. [Holmes, Liverpool-street . 
Manby, E. Long-acre, chemist. [Spyer, Austin- 
friars 


Meadowcroft, T. and R. H. Millner, Liverpool, 
merchants. [Chester, Staple-inn; Gandy, Li- 
verpool ’ 

Meredith, S. Manchester, linen-draper. [Jones, 
Size-lane 

Morgan, J. Bromyard, butcher. [Woodward ard 
Stanley, New Broad-street - tT 

Martin, I. G. Threadneedle-street, broker. [Scar~ 
gill, Hatton. court av} 


4P2 


660 Bankrupls. (Dec. 
Nickson, R, M. Chesterfield, mercer. [Lowes, Smith, R. Birmingham, victualler and water- 

Temple; Calton, Chestertield gilder, [Holme and Co., New-inn; Parker, 
Nicholas, FE. Newport, Monmouth, bookseller, Birmingham 


(Williams, Verulam-buildings; Davis, Aber- 
gavenny 
Newland, J. Liverpool, shoemaker. [Tooke and 
Carr, Bedford-row ; Capper, Birmingham 
Osborne, T, an! J. K. Richards, Lombard-street, 
engravers. [Richardson, ironmonger-lane 
Poole, S. A. Exeter, dyer, [Turner, Milman- 
street ; Turner, Exeter 
Possman, C. B. Stafford, scrivener. 
Gracechurch-street 
Patrick, D. Hereford, draper, [Robinson, Pan- 
- _ eras-lane, Cheapside 
Paxton, . J. Waterloo-road, parchment-dealer. 
(Brookes, Lincoln’s-inn-Fields : 
Parry, T. Caecrugog, Hope, Flinstshire, drover. 
EPhilpot and Stone, Southampton - street, 
Bloomsbury ; Rowlands, Mold 
Peakman, J. Redditch, needle-maker. [Benbow 
and Co., Lincoln’s-inn; Vernon and Co., 
Bromsgrove 
-Parkes, J. Mark-lane, sacking-manufacturer. 
[Currie and Co., Lincoln’s-inn 
Pinder, E. Warwick, builder. [Meyrick and 
Cox, Red-lion-square; Bury, Warwick 
Pyke,'l’, Henley-upon-Thames, draper. [Ashurst, 
Newgate-street 
_Ryle, J. B. Manchester, ironmonger. [Ellis and 
Co., Chancery-lane} Hampson, Manchester 
Robinson, J. Moushalm, Chelmsford, tea-dealer. 
[Bell and Co,, Bow-church-yard 
Rees, C. G. Tokenhotise-yard, broker, [Brooking 
and Surr, Lombard-street 
Slater, J.and F., and G. J. Skilbeck, King-strcet, 
Cheapside, and Manchester, fustian-finishers., 
[Whitelock, Cateaton-street 
Smith, E. Cheltenham, silk-mercer. [Bousfield, 
Chatham-place 
Simpson, G, East India-chambers, Leadenhall- 
street, insurance-broker. [Ogle, Great Win- 
chester-street 
Sykes, J. Driglington, maltster. [Walker, Lin- 
coln’s-inn-Fields ; Alexander, Halifax 
Simpson, J, Caistor, victualler. [Fawcett, Jewin- 
street 
Smith, W. B. Horsley, clothier. [Beetham and 
Sons, Freeman’s-court ; Wathen, Stroud 
Stodart, J. Tooley-street, linen-draper. [‘Turner, 
Basing-lane 
Shipley, W. Bagshot and Staines, coachmaster. 
[ Bousfield, Chatham-place ; Richings, Staines 
Shaw, W. Leicester, horse-dealer. [Austen and 
Hobson, Gray’s-inn; Freer, Leicester 


(Dickinson, 


he J. S. Liverpool, miliner. [Falcon, Tem- 

ple 

Thompson, T. G. Piccadilly, saddler. [Mathews 
and Randall, Castle-street, Holborn 

Tanner, E. Tower-street, wine-merchant. [ Hewitt, 
Tokenhouse-yard 

Tilney, J. C. Castle-street, Holborn, wine-mer- 
chant, [Constable and Kirk, Symond’s-inn 

Thomson, J. Liverpool, brewer. [Kearsey and 
Co., Lothbury; Williamson, Liverpool ; 

Tomkins, T., J. Buckler, and F. Thomas, 
Packer’s-court, Blackwell-hall, factors. [Free- 
man and Co., Coleman-stieet 

Tordoff, J Bradford, grocer. [Few and Co., 
Henrietta-street, Bloorne and Co. , Leeds 

Turner, J. Hatherleigh, spirit-merchant. Lux- 
more, Red-lion-square ; Darke, Launceston 

Tomson, T. Cambridge, stone-mason, [Coe, Hat- 
tou-garden 

Ward, J. R. Bermondsey-street, chemist, [ Bow- 
den and Walters, Aldermanbury 

Womersley, D. and T. Lambert, Love-lane, hat- 
manufacturers, [Clutton and Co,, High-street, 
Southwark 

Wigham,M. Red-lion square, apothecary. [Tay- 
lor, New-inn 

Wadsworth, T. Bolton-upon-Dearne, 
(Capes, Gray’s-inn 

Welcher, M, Lower Grosvenor-street, lodging- 
house-keeper. [Nicholson, Lancaster -place, 
Strand , 

bai J. Aylesbury, saddler. [Jones, Birchin- 
ane 

Womersley, E. ‘Little Guildford-street, South- 
wark, bat-manufacturer. [Fitch, Union-street, 
Southwark 

Walker, J. Leeds, stuff-manufacturer, [Battye 
and Co., Chancery-lane; Morris, Bradford 

Williams, J. Bristol, woollen-draper. [Dash- 
wood, Three-crown-square, Southwark 

Walls, R. Ponder’s-end, carpenter. [Whitting- 
ton, Dean-street, Finsbury-sqnare 

Walker, J, Ormskirk, draper. [Blackstock and 
Bunce, Temple 

Young, R, otherwise R. S, Young, otherwise R. 
S. Young Mearing, formerly of Threadneedle- 
street, since of Kingsland-road, afterwards of 
the East India-echambers, Leadenhall-street, 
since of Kingsland-road, afterwards of Liver- 
pool, and late of Laurence Pountney-square, 
merchant. [Jones and Howard, Mincing-lane. 


butcher. 


ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 


Rey. F. H. Brickenden, to the Rectory of Hog- 
geston, Bucks.—Rev, W. H. Edmeades, to the 
Rectories of Nursted and Ifield, Kent.—Rev. J. 
T. Maine, to the Rectory of Husband’s Bosworth, 
Leicester.—Rey. G. Lavington, to the Vicarage 
of Wrookwardine, Salop.—Rey. W. H. Parry, to 
the Rectory of Holt.—Rey. E. Marsham, to the 
Rectory of Stratton Strawless..—Rey. P. Gurdon, 
to the Rectory of Southbergh.—Rev. J. Nelson, 


Domestic Chaplain to Lady Suffield—Rey. S. ~ 


Tillbrook:, one of H.M.'s Preachers at Whitehall, 
—Rey. G. Butland, to the Rectory of Ringmore, 
Devon.—Rey. W. Brook, to the Curacy of St. 
Maurice, Winchester.—Rey. W. Hilyard, to the 
Rectory of Market Deeping, Lincoln—Rev. E. 
Palling, to the Vicarage of Cuckney, Noits.— 
Rey. G. Freer, to the Living of Yaxley.—Rey. 
W. Colville, to the Rectory of Bayham, Suffolk.— 
Rev. F. Leighton, to the Rectory of Cardiston, 
Salop.—Rev. J. Browne, to the Curacy of Milton, 
Hants.—Rey. E. J. Moor, to the Perpetual Cu- 


racy of Kesgraye, Suffolk.—Rey. C. B. Bruce, to 
the Rectory of St. James, South Elmham, Sut- 
folk.—Rey. G, P. Richards, to the Living of Kew 
and Petersham.—Rey. W. Young, to the Rectory 
of Aller, Somerset.—Rey. S. H. Banks, to the 
Vicarage of Dullingham, Cambridge.—Rey. W. 
Birkest, to a Prebendal Stall in the Collegiate 
Church of Wolverhampton.—Rey. S. Revell, to 
the Living of Wingerworth, Derby.—Rey. W. 
Bowe, to the Prebend of Compton Dundon, Wells. 
- Hon. and Rey. E. Grey, to the Rectory of St. 
Botolph, London.—Rey. C. Webber, to the Dean- ~ 
ery of Rippon.—Rey. J. G. Dowland, to the Vi- 
earage of Brodwiusor, Devyon.—Rey. T. Salway, 
to the Rectory of St. Florence, Pembroke.—Rev. 
J. Monson, to be Chaplain in Ordinary to- the 
King.—Rev. J. Procter, to the Curacy of Ho- 
rendy.—Rey. N. Jebb, to be Chaplain to the Bi- 
shop of Limerick.—Rey. J. Topham, to the Ree- 
tory of St. Andrew, Droitwich, Worcestershire. 


1828. ] 


[ 661 ] 


INCIDENTS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS, IN AND NEAR LONDON, ETC. 


——_ 


CHRONOLOGY, 

October 23.—Sessions commenced at the Old 
Bailey. 

— The new church of St. Paul, Islington, con- 
secrated. 

— Sessions ended at the Old Bailey, when 25 
received sentence of death, 80 of transportation, 
and 92 to hard labour and imprisonment, 

25.—The ceremony of opening the St. Katha- 
rine Docks, near the Tower, took place. At two 
o'clock the dock gates were opened, and nine yes- 
sels, dressed in the colours of all nations, en- 
tered, whilst a small park of artillery discharged 
repeatedly during their entrance, and four bands 
of music cuutributed their aid to announce the 
event, and during the ceremony. 

27. Parliament prorogued to December 18. 

30.—His Majesty has given a donation of £200 
towards completing the repairs of the German 
Lutheran Church inthe Savoy. 

31.—Intelligence arrived of the Turks surren- 
dering Varna to the Russians. 

November 10.—Lord Mayor’s Day celebrated 
in the most splendid manner; most of His Ma- 
jesty’s ministers attended at the dinner at Guild- 
hall, which was decorated in the most tasteful 
and elegant style. 

18.—An accident, accompanied by the loss of 
three lives, and the serious injury of several indi- 
viduals, took place in Covent-garden Theatre, 
owing to the explosion of one of the gasometers, 
which several workmen were employed in re- 
moving. 

19.—The Lord Mayor laid the key-stone to the 
last arch of London Bridge. 

— Mr. Justice Parke, the new judge, took his 
seat in the Court of King’s Bench. 

21,—Averages attained such a height, that the 
ports, for the admission of foreign grain, were 
opened, upon payment of ls, per quarter for 
wheat; 3s. 4d. for barley ; and 7s. 9d. for oats. 

22.—The London Committee for the subscrip- 
tions in behalf of the distress caused by the malig- 
nant fever at Gibraltar, published an address, in- 
forming the public of the great alleviation their 
bounty had already effected, with stroug claims for 
its continuance. 

MARRIAGES. 
' Lieut.-Gen. Sir H. Montyesor to Miss Fairman. 
—Sir C. Dillon, bart.,to Sarah, widow of the late 
Rey. Dr. Miller.—J. Broadhurst, esq.,to the Hou. 
Henrietta Mabel, daughter of Lord H. Fitzgerald 
aud Baroness de Roos.—Hon. W. Pole Tilney 
Long Wellesley to Helena (Mrs. Bligh) third 
daughter of Colonel Thomas Paterson.—Lord 
Howard de Walden to Lady Lucy Cavendish 
Bentinck, third daughter of the Duke of Portland. 
—Captain Franklin, R.N., to Jane, daughter of 
‘J. Griffin, esq. ; it will be recollected that Captain 
F.’s first wife (Miss Porden) expired on the day 
after he departed on his late Arctic expedition.— 
Charles John, second son of W. Manning, esq., 
M.P., to Catherine Sophia, daughter of Major 


Gen. Sir R. D. Jackson,— Viscount Ingestrie, 

eldest son of Earl Talbot, to Lady Sarah Eliza- 

beth Beresford, only daughter to the late Marquis 

of Waterford.—H. T. Jones, esq., to Caroline, 

widow, of Sir R. Hardinge, bart.—R. Davies, 

esq.‘ R.N., to the Dowager Lady Kircudbright. 
DEATHS. 

In Alfred-place, the Hon, E. Rodney, son of 
the late Admiral Lord Rodney.—At Wembly- 
park, 82, J. Gray—At his son’s house, Mr. James 
Hansard, Southampton - street, Bloomsbury- 
square, Tuke Hansard, esq., 79, printer to the 
House of Commons.—In Newman-street, G. Wil- 
son, esq., 74.—In Grosyenor-street, Mrs, Combe, 
widow of H. C. Combe, esq.—Mrs. E. Fisher, 
sister in law tothe Bishop of Salisbury.—Sir W. 
Forbes, bart.—Catherine, only sister of the Right 
Hon. J. Calcraft, M P.—Hon. H. Savile, brother 
to the Earl of Mexborough.—At his seat at Hag- 
ley, 66, George Fulke, Lord Lyttleton. — Dr. 
George Pearson, senior physician to St. George’s 
Hospital.—At Parham, Lord de la Zouch, 74.— 
Corbyn Lloyd, esq., of Lombard-street, banker.— 
At Laxton-hall, Lady Carbery, 60.—Major Charles 
Stewart, 95, Royal Marines.—S. Marryat, esq., 
67, one of H.M.’s counsel.—Rey. J. L. Moore, 
77, who performed the duties of Bengoe (Herts), 
for 52 years, was chaplain of the county gaol 
41, and formerly master of the Free Grammar 
School, Hertford. — At Brighton, Harriet Lau- 
ra, second daughter of Sir E. Bacon, bart.— 
At Windsor, Margaret Frances, 36, the only 
child of the late Richard Tunnacline, esq, of 
Manchester.—Lady Caroline Dormer, 76, sister 
to the late Earl of Dorchester, at whose death the 
title became extinct.—_At Woolwich, the Rey. J. 
Messitor, 65.—In Great Mary-le-bone-street, B. 
Pereirar esq., nephew of Sir Manasseh Lopez, 
bart.—At Brixton, aged 28, after six months se- 
vere suffering, which she bore with the most 
exemplary patience, Caroline Martha, only 
daughter of Charles Ball, esq., deceased, of Mer- 
roe, and widow of Francis Collins, of Dorset- 
place, who, with two infants, died a short time 
before her lamented death. Highly accomplished 
and with a mind the most susceptible, she pos- 
sessed all the dignified character of a female, 
united to the most amiable simplicity of manners 
and ingenious heart. 

MARRIAGES ABROAD. 

At Florence, the Earl of Dartmouth to the Hon. 
Frances Barrington, second daughter of Viscount 
Barrington.—At Munich, Y. Brown, esq., to the 
Hon. Steuarta, fifth daughter of Lord Erskine, 
H.M.’s minister plenipotentiary to the King of 
Bavaria. 

DEATHS ABROAD. 

At Madeira, Captain Canning, of H.M.’s ship 
Alligator ; he was the eldest son of the late mi- 
nister, and was drowned while bathing-—At Paris, 
Frances, the wife of the Hon. Henry Count Dil- 


662 Incidents, Marriages, Sc. 


lon.—At Toulouse, the Hon. E, Stourton, son of 
Lord Stourton.—At Genoa, the Hon, 'T. Howard, 
son of Lord and Lady Howard, of Effingham.— 
At Valence, on his way to Nice, Captain Bligh.— 
At- Vienna, General Mack, who, since his sur- 
render of Ulm to Napoleon Buonaparte, lived in 
the greatest privacy on a pension from the Em- 
peror of Austria.—At Sierra Leone, Lieut.-Col. 
Lumley, licut.-goy. of that place,—At Lausanne, 
Catherine, wife of J. W. Fane, junior, esq., and 
daughter of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, bart.—At 
Paris, M. Mazue, inspector-general of the Uni- 


- (Dee, 


versity, and author of “ L’Histoire de la Réyo- 
lution (de 1688) d’Angleterre.”- -At Grand Cairo, 
Mr. J, Webster, in consequence of the fatigues 
occasioned by a visit to Mount Sinai.—Lately at 
Gibraltar, of the plague, the venerable Arehbishop 
of Elvas, who, some months ago, had taken 
refuge in that fortress from the usurpation of Don 
Miguel.—At St. Petersburgh, the Dowager Ein- 
press of Russia, widow of the eecentrie, but un- 
fortunate, Paul.—At Dresden, the Dowager Queer 
of Saxony, 77. ‘ 


\ 


MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES ; 
WITH THE MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 


—— 


NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 


Notice is now given officially of an intention to 
apply, inthe next session, to Parliament, for an 
act for forming a railway between this town and 
the city of Carlisle ; the faeility of communication 
which the rail-road willatford, must increase im- 
mensely every description of trade between Nor- 
thumberland, Durham, and Cumberland, while it 
will become, as it were, the high road between 
Newcastle and Liyerpool, and so open an easy 
intercourse with Ireland, by joining the canal 
which extends from Carlile to the sea. 

The Marquis of Londonderry’s projected har- 
bour, at port Seaham, is now proceeding with 
uncommon expedition, and will be ready to re- 
ceiye a small number of vessels before the close 
of the next year. 

Green peas, grown in the garden of a person 
named Brittlebanks, in Gilesgate, Durham, were 
sold in the market of that city on the 3d of No- 
vember, for 5s, a peck. Ripe strawberries were 
gatheredin a garden in Durham on the Gth of 
November, 

A most horrid murder was committed at Thorp, 
near Stockton-on-Tees, on the 10th of November, 
The son of an aged farmer, named Hutchinson, 
whilst the family were at dinner, seized a poker, 
and struck his brother so violent a blow on the 
head, as instantly to deprive him of life. He 
then took up a hatehet, and struck his father till 
he was dead. He has been committed to Durham 
Gaol. He has been occasionally affiicted with 
insanity; and the exciting cause of the paroxysm 
on this occasion is supposed to haye been some 
family dispute about money matters. 

A requisition was in a course of signature, the 
last week.in November, calling a meeting of the 
county of Northumberland to express its opinion 
on the Protestant Question. — 

The 20th instant, about 3 o’clock p.m., the Eye 
Pit at Washington exploded. The heavy frame 
work erected at the pit’s mouth, with the large 
pulley wheels attached to it, were thrown down, 
and the whole of the machinery destroyed ; corves 
and other missiles were projected from the bot- 
tom of the pit, and scattered in the surrounding 
fields. An immense cloud of smoke issued from 
the shaft, accompanied with a report surpassing 
that of the largest piece of artillery, which was 
heard through all the surrounding villages.. By 
this catastrophe 14 persons have been deprived of 
* jife.—Tyne Mercury. 

Married.) At Heighington, the Rev. C. Ps 


Vivian to Grace Anna, second danghter of Lieut.- 
Gen. Aylmer.—At Aycliffe, W. Robson, esq., to 
Miss Robson.—At Warden-church, E. Johnson; 
esq., to Miss Atkinson. 


Died.] B. Wharton, esq., of Old-park, Dur- 
ham, formerly joint-secretary of the Treasury, 
and, 18 years M.P. for Durham.—At Berwick, 
Mr. Miller Ritchie, 77, formeriy a printer of emi- 
nence in London.—At Newcastle, Mr. Bewick, 76, 
the celebrated engraver on wood.—At Durham, J, 
Hobson, esy.; Miss Anne Jane Trotter.—At Ches- 
terle-street, J. Wolfe, esq.—aAt Trewhitt-house, 
J. Smart, esq. ' 


YORKSHIRE. 

Ata recent meeting (Oetober 17), of the town 
and neighbourhood of Hudderstield, it was unani- 
mously resolved to establish an infirmary in con- 
junction with the present dispensary, on such a 
seale as may be adequate with the resources of 
the district, and the wants of its diseased poor, 
and that it be denominated ‘The Huddersfield 
and Upper Agbrigg Infirmary ;” and such has 
been the munificence of the contributions, that 
upwards of £8,000-have been already subscribed 
for that purpose, besides annual subseriptions 
amounting to £600!!! : 

It is in contemplation to ent anew canal from 
the Stamforth and Keadly navigation, to com- 


mence near the new Wike at Thorne, and to join — 


the Goole Canal near Pollington. ‘This will open 
an easy communication between the Trent anc 
the West Riding of Yorkshire. 

On the Ist of November, John Bugg, of Catfoss, 
gamekeeper to Richard Bethell, esq., shot a white 
robin red-breast. The little stranger is about as 
white as a canary-bird (so says the ‘* Hull Adverr 
tiser”); (we always thouglit a canary bad been 
yellow), and has a shade of red on the breast. 
‘The bird will be preserved. 

On the 12th of November, a hare was shot upon 
the Duke of Devonshire’s estate at Landsborongh, 
the head, breast, neck, one ear, and both fore 
legs, were perfectly milk-white ; and all the other 
parts a beautiful grey. _ 

On the night of the Ist of November,.a man 
named Thomas Hudson, living at Leeds, seized a 
neighbour’s wife, called Susannah Almond, and 
pricked her in the arms and various parts of her 
body with pins. When taken before the magis- 
trates, his defence was, that she was a witch: 
and he said she had put the evil spirits into him, 
which could only be got out by drawing her blood ; 
and, he wanted the magistrates to let him prick 
her abit, He was bound over, to keep the peace, 


1828.] - Yorkshire, Cheshire, 


/On the 10th of November, a Brunswick Club 
was formed at Leeds: and on the 19th a similar 
institution was set on foot at Ripon. 

Efforts are making to establish a Deaf and 
Dumb Asylum in the county of York. The Barl 
of Fitzwilliam will give £500 towards the building 
fund, and Lord Milton £100, besides becoming 
annual subscribers. 

- Benjamin Golt, esq., has presented to the Leeds 
Museum a meteoric stone, which is said to be the 
largest in this kingdom, one only excepted. It 
felkin a shower, in France, on the 26th of April, 
1803, at Aizle, in the department of Orme. 

Married.| At Pontefract, the Rey. E. Walter 
to Miss Pyemont.—At York, the Rey. E.T. Leigh 
to Miss Barlow.—At Halifax, Captain Suther- 
Jand to Miss Walker.—At York, Mr. 'T. Fisher to 
Miss Charlotte Benton.—At Leeds, T. Brooke, 
esq., to Miss Higham.—At Skelton, W. Lake, 
junior, esq., to Miss Thompson.—At Ripon, R. 
Pearson, esq., to Miss Lax.—At Hull, Mr. Rees 
Davies to Miss Dean. 

Died.| At Leeds, Mr. G. Webster, 68.—At 
Ashram Richard, J. Chivers, esq.—At Wensley, 
the Rev. J. Costobadie.— At Finkley-hall, S. 
Were, esq.—At Richmond, G. Smith, esq.—At 
Methley-park, the Hon. H. Savile.—At Doncaster, 
Captain Maquill.—At York, Captain Sutton.—At 
Norton, T. Ew! ank, esq. 


5 CHESHIRE. 
A resolution was passed by a numerous bench of 
magistrates, assembled at the late General Quarter 


Sessions, held at Knutsford, expressing a decided 
opinion that it would be extremely desirable for 


the county of Chester to be included in the cir-. 


cuits of the judges of Westminster Hall, provided 
that such arrangement would not interfere, in 
other respects, with the constitution of the Pala- 
tine Courts, which have some advantages of im- 
portance to the county. 

At a meeting of the broad silk weayers of Mac- 
clesfield, held November 3, it was resolved, “ That 
the distressed situation of the silk weayers of 
Macclestield, in consequence of the gradually in- 
creasing importations of foreign wought silks, 
renders it necessary that their embarrassed state 
should be faithfully represented to the Board of 
Trade—That the direct tendency of the present 
Free Trade System is to reduce the wages of la- 
bour, and support the price of the necessaries of 
life ; ard under this pernicious system, the wages 
of the silk weavers of Macclestield have been re- 
duced 40 to 50 per cent., thus introducing want 
and misery even when in full employment, and 
deteriorating the condition of the labouring poor 
without receiving any eqnivalent from foreigners 
in return.—And that a memorial, founded upon 
the foregoing resolution, be sent immediately to 
the Board of Trade, praying that the Honourable 
Board would immediately recommend to his Ma- 
jesty’s Ministers to abandon the present ruinous 
measures, and adopt the long-tried and better 
known system of prohibition, uuder which the 
silk trade flourished so many years.” 

Died.] At Stoekport, Mrs. Claye. 


% “WARWICK AND NORTHAMPTON. 


The Birmingham Scliool of Medicine and Sar- 
gery has been recently opened, when an introduc- 
tory discourse way delivered by Dr. R. Pearson, 
in which he offered some remarks relative to the 
gin and formation of this praiseworthy esta- 
Dlishment, alluding also to the various literary 


Warnick, Norfolk, &c- 


663 
and scientific institutions that have sptung up 
within these few years in all parts of Great Bri- 
tain, not forgetting the two new universities. 

A meeting bas been beld by the inhabitants of 
the hamlets of Duddeston, Nechells, and Osten, 
when it was resolved to apply for an Act of Far- 
liament, for lighting, watching, paving, and other- 
wise improving the aforesaid hamlets. 

Died.) . At Braybrooke, 65, the Rey. -Dr. R. 
Young, 283 .years revtor of that parish and of° 
Great Creaton —At Birmingham, Mr. 'T, Morela, 


79 years a resident of Digbeth and Bromsgroye- 
street. 


NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 


At a meeting held at Halesworth for the pur- 
pose of forming an association for the protection 
of property and prosecution of thieves, Lord 
Huntingtield, in the chair, said, “I do not see how 
a labourer, his wife, and three children, can liye 
on 10s. a week, especially considering the price of 
provisions. The state of parts of the agricultural 
population is deplorable, and the fields are crowded 
not only by our own parishioners, but by those of 
other parishes, for gleaning, which will force the 
complete suppression of the custom.” <A series of 
resolutions were passed for an association, but 
none of the money allowed for prosecutions founded 
on the Game Laws! 

At the sessions lield lately for Norfolk, a mo- 
tion was made and carried by a majority of one 
(46 pro and 45 con!) “that reporters for the 
newspapers be admitted into the grand jury 
chamber when the magistrates assemble there at 
the quarter session, for the dispatch of the busi- 
ness of the county.” 

Married.] At Eecles-lall, S. N. Dashwood, 
esq., to Caroline, daughter of P, Hamond, esq. 


Dicd.] At Hargham, Mrs. Howard, daughter 
of Sir 'T. Beevor, bart.—At Ipswich, Mrs. Raw.— 
At North Walsham, Mrs. Crane, 96. . 


WORCESTER AND HEREFORD. 


At a public meeting held at the Guildhall, 
Worcester, Nov. 7, it was resolved that an Infant 
School be opened for the reception of the children 
ofthe labouring classes in that city and neigh- 
bourhood; and a ladies committee Le appointed 
to assist inthe management of the schonl. 

The numbers of Salmon taken from the Wye, © 
in the neighbourhood of Hay, Builth, and Rha- 
yader, this year, have greatly exceeded the qnan- 
tity taken in any preceding season for the last 
twenty years, and if is conceived (the obstruction 
of the new weir being removed) that if effectual 
measures were adopted to prevent the highly de- 
structive system of spearing the old salmon when 
imthe act of spawning, which at this time of the 
year jis but too prevalent, not only in the Wye, 
but also in its tributary streams, there is little 
doubt that those rivers would again afford a plen~ 
tiful supply of that delicious fish. 

Married.| At Uéreford, the Rey. H. Allen to 
Anne Caroline, sister to Lord Southampton. 


Died.] At Wolverton, R. Styles, 83; he died 
at W. Acton’s, esq., in whose service he had lived — 
6 years !—At Thorngrove, Mr; Durino, who acted 
as interpreter to Lucien Bnonaparte (Prince: Ca. . 
nino) when he resided there.—At Canon Pion, D. 
Thomas, esq., 84, _ + 


GLOUCESTER. 
November 13, Colstor’s Anniversary was cele- 


664 


brated at Bristol, when the following collections 
for charitable purposes were made:—Dolphin So- 
ciety, £612. 14s.—Anchor, £415. 7s. 6d.—Grate- 
ful, £300. 10s. How honourable for Bristol that 
it should thus annually celebrate the memory of 
this great and good man! 


BEDFORDSHIRE. 


Died.} On the 9th, at Harpur-place, Bedford, 
the Rev. W. Hooper, in his 87th year. He wasa 
man universally respected and greatly beloved by 
his parishioners. In his conduct through life he 
was highly exemplary as a Christian minister, 
and his werth, amiable qualities,and benevolence, 
will be long remembered by his friends. He was 
upwards of 60 years rector of Chellington, and 
upwards of 57 rector of Carlton, iu Bedfordshire. 
Three rectors have now held the living of Carlton 
for the incredible number of 196 years. 


LEICESTER AND RUTLAND. 


The new county gaol, at Leicester, is at length 
opened for the reception of prisoners ; it stands 
upon three acres of ground, and is circular; the 
governor’s house is so constructed as to afford 
him occasion of viewing every prisoner’s yard 
without quitting his residence; escape is impos- 
sible. The chapel contains pews for 150 persons, 
and is so constructed that they cannot see each 
other out of their own pew. ‘This edifice has cost 
£55,000.—Leicester Chronicle, Oct. 25. 

A white marble statue of the late Duchess of 
Rutland, size of life, has been lately placed at the 
head of the new drawing-room at Belvoir, on an 
elevated pedestal of the same material. 


STAFFORD. 


A gang of bull-baiting wretches, who purchase 
the poor animals, and then take them from place 
to place to be baited, and obtain considerable 
sums by their inhuman yocation, have, at Lich- 
field, received their deserts in part, as eleven of 
them have been committed to prison for three 
months; which examples, we trust, will have the 
effect of preventing the repetition of similar bru- 
tality. 

The parish church of Wednesbury, considerably 
enlarged and improved, so as to contain nearly 
600 additional sittings, was re-opened November 
9; the exterior is richly ornamented with a stone 
battlement, and has a very imposing appearance. 
This gothic chureb, nearly all re-built, is in the 
form of a cross, and has a beautiful chancel, or- 
namented with painted windows. The sum of 
£288 was collected at the church-doors, &c. It 
has cost upwards of £5,000, which has been raised 
by the inhabitants for the purpose, except £500 
allowed by government. 

The iron trade of this neighbourhood still con- 
tinues in a healthy state ; the price is steadily ad- 
vancing, and there is every appearance of a good 
winter trade. The quantity of iron made con- 
tinues to increase, several new furnaces having 
very lately been put in motion; and the facility 
of meeting an increased demand is a further proof 
of.the mineral resources of our country, and the 
personal exertions of its manufacturers, What 
may be the extent of this trade it is impossible 
even to conjecture, if by a liberal interchange of 
commodities with France and other foreign coun- 
tries, a free exportation of iron to them could be 
effected. By the present restrictive system it is 
loaded with heavy duties on its arrival at a fo- 


Provincial Occurrences : Leicester, Stafford, &c. 


[Dec. 


reign port, which in France and America amount 
to a prohibition of its import; where, but for 
these duties, we are informed, the consumption of 
English iron would be immense.—/¥ olverhamp- 
ton Chronicle. 


Died.] At bis seat, Loton-park, Sir Baldwin 
Leighton, bart. 


LINCOLN. ‘ 

It is with extreme pleasure we notice the noble 
example of the Earl of Cardigan, in allotting to 
eacli poor person, in the parish of Deen Thorpe, 
half an acre of land for the purpose of cultiva- 
tion. We understand it is his lordship’s intention 
to ‘appropriate twelve acres of land in the parish 
of Glapthorne, near Oundle, to a similar purpose. 
This plan, if generally followed, would excite a 
spirit of genuine industry among the peasantry, 
and tend more than any other to the suppression 
of pauperism.—Lincoln Mercury. 

Married.] At Leadenbam, Lieut.-Col. Chap- 


lin, M.P., to Millicent Mary, daughter of W. 
Reeve, esq. 


SOMERSET AND DEVON. 

November 5, Axbridge again witnessed the bar- 
barous exhibition of bull-baiting. After the rab- 
ble had enjoyed their cruelties, and the poor ani- 
mal had lost an eye, and the civil officers, with 
the mayor at their head, assaulted, they returned 
triamphing at their infringement of the laws ; but 
as they were watched, the next day several of the 
miscreant ringleaders were convicted, and fined 
according to the statute. At the Episcopal City 
of Wells, some dozen ruffians were allowed, on 
the 5th of November, the privilege of tormenting 
a bull up and down the streets for three or four 
hours, and then permitted to tie the animal to a 
ring fixed in the ground, in the market-place, to 
be there baited by dogs, for the enjoyment o 
numbers of brutal bipeds!!! . 

We are sorry to hear that the silk trade at 
Taunton is notoriously in a state of unusual de- 
pression, both as to its weaving and throwsting 
branches, and its future aspects are of a very 
gloomy description.— Taunton Courier, Mov. 19. 

By official accounts, the trade at Plymouth 
port has nearly doubled within the last 30 years, 
and the increase during the last 10 years hears a 
much greater pioportion than any former 10 years 
of that period. The quantity of shipping has in- 
creased in a proportionate rate, the number of 
vessels at present registered at our Custom-house 
exceeding 220, most of which are employed in the 
foreign trade, either to this or other ports in the 
kingdom. The Mediterranean, Baltic, and Bri- 
tish North American trades have been as yet our 
principal channels of commerce. The West India 
trade has opened lately, and we hope may be ulti- 
mately established. The quantity of tonnage now 
discharging, &c., from Sutton Poole alone, ex- 
clusive of the traders at Devonport and Stone- 
house, is at this moment upwards of 4,200 tons.— 
Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post. 

Died.|] At Stonehouse, Major Archdall, 83, 


many year's inspector-general of bairacks in the 
western district. 


_ CORNWALL. 
At Penzance, November 8, it blew a perfect 


hurricane, with a tremendously heavy sea run- 
ning. About 20 fishing-boats, of from 15 to 20 — 


1828.] 


tons burthen each, were at their mooringsin the 
Road. Of this number, 9 broke adrift ; 2 of them 
were got in without loss, and one partially in- 
jured, but the other 6 were completely wrecked, 
thereby occasioning a loss to their unfortunate 
owners of more tlian £760 ; one boat, the Nelson, 
of 25 tons register, would have readily sold for 
200 guineas the day before. Itis remarkable that 
every one of the boats that broke adrift had chain 
moorings only; whilst those with hemp cables 
rode out the gale extremely well. Some that had 
one cable of emp, and another chain, broke their 
chain, and owed their preservation to the hemp 
mooring. This fact may, perhaps, be considered 
ofsome importance to the slipping interest. A 
a collection is now making in aid of the poor fisher- 
men, who are thus suddenly bereft not only of 
property of considerable value, but are also 
thrown out of employment, and we cannot too 
strongly recommend their case to the notice of the 
public. ’ 
Died.| At Holwood, the seat of John Rogers, 
esq., Jobn Daw, aged 113, as appears by the pa- 
rochial registry of baptisms. For upwards of 100 
years he resided in the same house, the faithful 
and attached servant of the family ; having been, 
when very young, bound an apprentice to an an- 
eestor of Mr. Rogers, by the parish of Quethiock, 
and having lived to see the estate in the succes- 
sive possession of four generations. Hebad three 
times received the reward adjudged to the oldest 
servant in the county, whose character had never 
sustained a blemish !!!— At St. Juliot, 70, Joanna, 
wife of Wm. Bath, yeoman. She was carried, by 
her own desire, to the grave by her six sons, fol- 
lowed by three daughters and their husbands, 
with a great number of grand-children, 


, 


WALES. 

At Swansea Quarter Sessions, the following 
memorial was agreed to, and signed by the chair- 
man and 25 magistrates of the county :—* To the 
“Hon. the Commissioners appointed to enquire 
into the return of the Courts of Law in England 
and Wales, with a view to their improvement.— 
_ We, the magistrates for the county of Gla- 
_ morgan, assembled at their General Quarter 
Sessions, beg leaye to submit to you our firm con- 
_ yiction, that the abolition of the provincial judica- 
ture of Wales, and a participation in the benefits 
_ derived from the authority of English judges, is 
a measure anxiously looked for by the owners of 
property and principal inhabitants of this county ; 
and that we are well satisfied it would be produc- 
tive of large benefits in the administration of jus- 
tice, both as it regards the acquiescence of suitors 
in the decision of their judges, the economy of its 
executive department, and the diminution of frivo- 
lous litigation. The details of evidence of the 
Committees of Parliament, and the statement de- 
rived therefrom, and other authentic sources, set 
forth in the very able letter of the Earl Cawdor 
to the Lord High Chancellor, render it quite un- 
_ necessary that we should enter into any matters 
of detail; we therefore humbly trust, that the 
Commission which His Majesty has been gra- 
_ciously pleased to appoint, may be enabled speedily 
point out the best practicable mode of effecting 

lesirable an object.” 
A Common Hall has been held at Carmarthen 
: or the purpose of considering the expediency of 
applying for an Act of Parliament to enable the 
ough magistrates in Sessions to try for petty 
cenies, &c,, and to hold their sittings four times 


Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. 


665 


a year. J. Jones, esq., M.P., showed strongly the 
advantages that would result from such an ar- 
rangement; and, at his suggestion, it was unani- 
mously determined to apply for an Act to effect 
that. 


’ 
A new road is about to be made from Rhaya- 


der, Radnorshire, to Llangerrig, near Llanidloes 
Montgomeryshire. Nothing could be more de- 
sirable than this to travellers; the present road 
is highly dangerous. A bill will be brought into 
Parliament the ensuing session to effect this im- 
portant work. The effect of the improvements 
already made, is evinced in the increased value of 
land; an instance of which was given at the sale 
of the lots of common land (disposed of under the 
Rhayader Inclosure Act), for which the following 
extraordinary prices were obtained, many of 
them, as will be seen, having been sold at the 
rate of 40c2 per acre! Common Land :—1 rood 
19 perches sold for 60/.; 1 rood for 6927; 14 
perches for 35/.; 16 ditto for 30/.; 15 ditto for 
291.; 17 ditto for 34/.; 14 ditto for 367. ; 12 ditto 
for 34/.; 12 ditto for 33/7.; 15 ditto for 377.; 16 
ditto for 412. ; 15 ditto for 237. ; 20 ditto for 337, ; 
2a.34. 24p. for 260/.; 4a, lr. 20p. for 2107. 

Died.] At Llanio, Cardiganshire, in her 67th 
year, Mrs. Jones, relict of the late T. Jones, esq.— 
At Llandinam, Montgomeryshire, Mr. E. Ashton, 
in the 96th year of his age.—82, Mrs. Jones, relict 
of the late J. Jones, esq., Penybryn, Ruabon.— 
Mr. J. Jones, of Chester, 88; this gentleman has 
beequeathed 207. for the support of the Wesleyan 
Sunday School, John-street,- Chester ; 207. to the 
Sunday School in Trinity-street, Chester; 1002. 
to the mayor and sheriffs of Chester, the interest 
of which is to be annually divided among five of 
the senior gownsmen; likewise his estate, near 
Ruthin, the rental of whicli is to be applied to 
the gratuitous education of poor children of the 
parish of Llanfair-Dyffryn Clwyd. 


SCOTLAND. 

It gives us great pleasure, as regards the pro- 
gress of improvement, to be able to announce 
that an experiment was made yesterday of a 
steam-hoat onthe Forth and Clyde Canal, from 
which the most satisfactory results are expected. 
The boat tried was the Cupid, which has been 
plying during the season on Loch Fine, and she 
is not of course adapted for the canal—yet, mak- 
ing due allowance for the vatious imperfections 
she labours under, the experiment demonstrates, 
most decisively, the practicability and vast utility 
of steam on such a canal; and when the improve- 

,ments which are contemplated, as regards the 
construction of boats for passengers and towing, 
and the banks, are carried into effect, we have no 
doubt the results, as regards expedition and eco* 
nomy, will be yery important to the public and 
the Canal Company.—Glasgow Journal. 

The Commissioners of the Northern Light- 
houses haye ordered their Secretary to give no- 
tice, “That a Light-house has been erected upon 
Cape Wrath, county of Sutherland; the light of 
which will be exhibited on the nightof Thursday, 
the 25th day of December, 1823, and every night 
thereafter, from the going away of daylight in the 
evening, till the return of daylight in the morn- 
ing.” The lantern light room ia elevated 400 feet 
above the medium level of the sea, The light- 
houses now erecting upon ‘Tarbetness, in Cromar- 
tyshire, and Mull of Guloway, in Wigtonshire, 
will be lighted in 1829, of which due notice will 
be given, 4 


4Q 


“ye 


5 


666 J 


- DAILY PRICES OF STOCKS, 
rom the 26th of October to the 25th of November, 1828. 


E, Eyton, Stock Broker, 2, Cornhill and Lombard Street. 


< (3 Pr. Ct3 Pr. Ct.34Pr.Ct./33Pr.Ct./N4Pr.C. 
Red. |Consols.|Consols.| Red. Ann, 
853 §| 963 g|94 3] 943 g| wiz 2 
852%] 862 § | 947 5 | 942 5 | 1022 
ie es 95 4 | 94% 5 | 1028 
858 Z| 864 §| 943 4 | 94 §| 109k g 
858 2] 86g a] — | 942 2| 1023 g 
853 § | 86, 2 | 943 § | 943 2 | 1003 
aot | eee Z| 94g a4 4 1024 
853 41864 §| — | 944 #| 1023 4 
364 | 863 g| 943 Z| 942 5 | 1025 3 
85Z 6h | 86 95 94% 8 | 1024 3 
36 86, 7+ | 954 | 95° 2 | 10% 
86 86 zi 943 ¢| 954 4 | 1028 
864” | 86 27 95 | 1028 
868 4| S6,_ — | 953 2| 10223 
85 ; ert i 954 951 1 | 109% 3 
863 4] 87 3 | 95 95t 2 | 1022 3 
86 1| see 7| 95 | 94% 52 | 100% 3 
852 6 | 868 3| 95 |:948 5 | 1098 & 
aa #| sof 3 |94§ 3 |"943 ~3 | Joa! i 
53 a |ssz6r| — | 937 4 |-1012 28 
854 i ae” i 94 4194 3] 1098 


a 
MONTHLY METEOROLOGICAL REPORT, 


From October 20th to November 19th, 1828. 


Barometer. 


© 


De Luc’s 


Winds. 


By Witriam Harris and Co: 50, High Holborn. 


Long India | India 
Annuities. | Stock, | Bonds, 
_— — 86 87p 
193 3 2358 63| 85 86p 
193 4 — | 87 88p 
19 5-16 7-16) 236 7 | 87 88p 
193 5-16 | 237 86 87p 
19 5-16| — | 85 86p 
19i 6-16} — | 86p 
195-16 § | 238 86p 
19 7-16| — | 85 86p 
19 7-16 | 2383 85 86p 
197-16 3 = — 
19 7-16 4 — _ 
19 7-16 _— 87 88p 
197-16 4 | 2493 | 86 8p 
19 7-16 2 | 242 3 | 87 88p 
197-16 4 — | 84 87p 
197-16 4 | 2492 | 84p 
19 5-16} 242 77p 
19 5-16 241 | 74 75p 
193-16 5-16, 240 | 7op 
19 3-16 5-16 — 48 52p 


Foggy 
Rain 
Rain 
Fine 
Foggy 
Fine 


Exch. Consols 


Bills. 


75 76p 
7475p 


7476p 
75 76p 


48 58p 
45 55p | 


The Quantity of Rain fallen in the Month of October was 0 inches and 52 100ths. 


woman 


forAce. 


86} F 


863 
re | 


© 
Sey | 
Ko 


le ols) 
Ee 


Atmospheric Variations. 


w 


pest rf Angus); the 


Dey Ee 


VOL, VI; 


ORIGINAL PAPERS, &. 


. 
td 


- GC Page 


oo LESthy ol Un ror eeeSpe Ree rele De eee coEongecictedoc PoSECrEE Hee Orange cen “Coupot aor coe reel 


Angus Gilchrist . rad Seecerieeroo ct ikonnnocacncotmaatantice of kedanctter, ol 
Autobiography, a 1 Leaf from my.. Sdotcdoeccaeores -oo saereetodceceoerestnee: | ENE 
Affliction ; a Sketch from Life .....,....secsevees 48 
Agricultural Reports.. pebeL oo cicee ben socne-ce "101, "e165, "326, “439, ‘551, 656 
Algesiras, the Smugglers of .. Sones ead caine name te ae neleaietias totes - 347 
Affairs in General.. se eeecerees "507, 620 
Arragon’s (King of) “Lament for his Brother, by Mrs. Hemans ....ss00. 72 
Appointments, Political ........-+++++ 000. serdacsccresares L0G, 21 By a29 5442 
Bankrupts .......... Sev covsvece 104, al7, 328, 441, 554, 658 
Biographical } Memoirs of Eminent Persons.. covessee 99, 205, 321, 431, 547 
Bacon’s (Friar) Key .. a resided sande tasd stan ccaduaccuean dx areata Een 
Banks of the Towey, Lines itittent aki’ .J2e eae eo a ace ersceceroceese 488 
Brunswick Clubs, the . Ac Siineissuanvar ce ealevetenice ae san UE 
Calamities of a Clerk, communicated d by H Himself .. sdasiestencasessaceincies oom crt 


Clergy, Echard’s Soret of . Srenasioastscas Wake taraen cash acceee eee code e ate 


Convent of Catania .....ccsccsesececececsceceenenes vee peptent Gee 
Commercial Reports.......0crcocecrcocesecvecevescece “103, 216, 827, gop 553, 658 


-Corombona, the White Devil . SiSutn ed cncecedectat ss de teacup codaccuceseoereee bet 
Court of Chancery, No. H.. Po nncanOLOEDOACOCCIqDOO A JOUTE CO icoeoamendacicow Zee 


as Tesesssesssnsssentnseesnsetnseeneeeanetene tne 372 
NR TPIESRM CV etree Saereetccesccas ser cc cosas anes cacocdicteces aeovesenersecerser actor 
Covadonga, the Maid of.. auise so vneesy once gvOt 
Cawdor (Earl) on the Administration of Justice in Wales......0.......... 469 


Don Alonso, ou l’Espagne, Histoire Contemporaine ........... 9 


Daily Prices of Stocks ...........++ Ravens ELON OOAp 336, "448, ‘560, 666 
Deaths in and near London, and Attica - 106, 219, 329, 442, 555, 661 


NINN: SSEAISEE SS dd. ci co cu'de'as' de'cc'es'SUMMBsa's oo'cu'ssclie cs'uvve so vs cuaguete seteposr es Lap 
-Durrenstein, the..........+0+++- sclavlosetanlocladav stiac ur ature bien staueruee cote eo 


Dissection Committee, Report ‘from .. asinine Geeta snitoce caesiseieecare « 337 
Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh... . 391 


_ Ecclesiastical Preferments.. so Lea elsenle "105, ‘218, 320, ‘442, 555, 660 


Early English Drama, No. TB bisde ce 2s Sage se shentdeesess 3s wilecce hs oe 
STD NNN: AR fos 2s ce 2c adcces sea tadte as otto es coves s Snoces poonge ddesan TTR 
Bevenriig Star, thes: ...jao:2+ as evinsins 02 os c0i snon can soks cosecees ce seer ceeeonssoncene SOD 
See WLMIATVECRTIINE oy av uulaten se wtas'scsv's¥lsgpweciag ao diedduics npos oe os auaghewacentin 
Friar Bacon’s Key .......es+e0seee e+ sO Ee oS Sesh. ch od danse ca 
Forsaken Hearth, by Mrs. Hemans..... Seasese onepepeaneeen nee 
Fermoy (Colonel. Roche 4 on the Moral and Physical Force of Ireland say = 
Myintail GTAZISe atone tanec ccvssspcseys Ustanepasseanse 

Granville’s (Dr.) Travels to Petersburgh. .....+sesseseseesrereeereesesneven secs 391 

Harold Harrung, the Norwegian Mariner..........s00cceece seecses ceeeeeesee LT 


: High Holborn, a Romance Ofs.s.cesesssesevee svsereeses Jods aaeee atuebantos hae 


INDEX. 

Page 

Host’s (Mine) SecondsStory. ews cae: scieves cose cncvsaweseas on as ov ores SannEE ETS 
Hearth, the Forsaken .......... Pe Pere Cee 
Improvements, Metropolitan—No. “ one. cvieecece adics icc eyeeigelssins ete ee te mmmEES 
ae a TT wo ee oo'un aviesias uowplavas sip amet meme 
No. TTT 2. csacenaSsens! see 604 
Insanity (Commentaries on), by Dr. Burrowes .......sesssseeeeeesseeeeeecese 449 
Jurisprudence, Welsh . sate Joe .csececies cocelesedaeecener eee ss eemenien 
Ireland, Six Words on the late Election in. a soins ocpoecinecoconsmeunsengees> MoE 
Poor Laws in . = OO i ec - 295 
King of Arragon’s Lament for his Brother .. af ssocscesese 72 
List of New and Expiring Patents ... poeta “98, "203, ‘321, 430, 546, 656 
London Incidents, Marriages, Deaths, &ei.. 106, 219, 329, 443, 555, 661 
Leaf from my Autobiography... Ss sacuss sey desuspreney ocee ce cme 
Lines written on the Banks of the Towey .. Bs - 488 
Literature, Monthly Review of .. ae “73, 186, 297, “409, ‘521, 633. 
Lord Lyndurst (Letter to), by.1 Earl | Cawdor.. a+ sees os'ec enlasbs eas Supaael cs pes AUG 
Meditations on Mountains . Widaislecce.wi ce cuaseste.cuiss sees ae unneneeeeeeneeewn. tl 
Mysterious Tailor, the.. Sie eelacan\e tea ied seeeeeeiesacen tot) 1A 
Monthly Meteorological Reports. Beh ve/aslenanes eae ae » 119, 294, "336, 448, ‘560, 666 
Metropolitan Se ee SF 00 sn ssicescee ve econ sees cous cnsesvonsnangsh AEs SOs. GOS 
Mine Host’s Second sa" Br Se ee ee - 235 
IIGHEMMGEICUUTES osc cs've v0 cclns edes'sdics co ss 0 as aa seca ve ccieelsenolen cele ieee eee tel 
Madnipht, a SOMBEE, oo aces <aesedeenslevesies onenige ecictioe ets dsvias celncheseens aq Iaeaeeetaren AGE 
Maid of ES OS eithaida! lite See ER RR AE Landed aa Sb scghiesine shad CU 
TUIGRE (an) Bf CMIMNING 350505 05 G0.08 o> snes wesnntign caudsunus0+ anes wvvewuseesheeninenea oa 
Night (a) at Venice seiner serretri ss rarearan earorseset Sein eae tas 144 
Notes‘for the Month .o.2-<'..... dcccacvovssecdscunyeovestssosscs si anan teen one 
Old Pictures .. ening abisa'Waley acidin.o< ¢ e/a sium tASiylay sented OS's ol omieirapeeie ane 
Political Appointments .. aacitned “106, 218, 329, 442 
Provincial Occurrences, Marriages, an ‘and Deaths... “108, 220, 330, 443, 556, 662 
Pictures, Old and Modern .........-+. NRE Rf betes? ay" we » 26, 363 
Proceedings of Learned Societies.. .........+00cscceseesycecsoveeee 91, "199, 314, 426 
Portugal [aastrated... csues arsvicsss00 ovo. 2000 50sec ceasascessseece sevdedescooee 165 
Police Report ...+ssereeseerseererttenerereeceaeeneresaceseeeeesaaerasatepeseessesenee 489 
Poor Laws in Ireland .. anew anavigniis eo 0s o0.e0.ss'nu.cs.sk so 06 Galas pelts ateehabisinien einem 
Romance of High Holborn ......... go canecn ss voce sdieiiy/gucbiie aqiee ti eiieameraeaes 
Report from the Dissection ‘Conaniittee "., .. .csisccsssansdfeysgtesseaeetaenee 
Rousseau : his Eloise, and ee: de v0.00 00 00s +0 tine Sate Manni eae maaan 
South American Sketches, No. I., te 'egani de en ivbrohre3 een Se Oe en pac epi ans oeann 
Stanzas on AB I6, of IV Suis a beaglade gorda debs erenernpeelchd teas alee aE 
Select Vestries.. Sm shecttudleslduaras ines soerecavccs0 candvanael OarcuaaeaennLas 
Slang Dictionaries... o dh Osiuwtwecieege cee rece edepewesicd ovlanee -orovice eve siesicccvecicesssesy ae LAS 
Smugglers of Algesttas, wie ns ove o0\ stv on cnisUMtNNius vous io0 ons ec'vece.ce cesinylslas gee En emenail 
Shaw, the ......... sino .scins 90's ovn\esiee'seesac.ce'de ada sass osiccinsiss abil Eee 
Star, the Evening ..- w.s0.90epeees ee ssas'ee 00.00 opianieate dopinsies SS n'ai Shea anatanEmnEnnIEE 
Sketch from Life.. es oe edvecwedasievteath «ctadenes enlewiontast tang aalitaeaemmnLee 
Six Words on the Clare Election .. eae TES 
Theatrical Reports... etereccecescsccccereeceseeses 89,3L, 425, 537,649 
True Story ofa Storm at Sea.. ee et ee ES 
Travelling Particularities ........ seven veenneteetneegvetseegneneneana 241 
Tale of the Pyrenees ........ retraseanceesctbagas cance sedoainetie igted eee 
Travels to and from St. Petersburgh... sraeeceer cso -<ntseiea ataweseete sa 
Varieties .....cscsces ae ee ee 92, ‘200, 315,, 427, 542, 655 
Village Sketches: The Shaw—Hannah Bint ...s-ss+ceseseseovessvevaase 387, 572 
Vision of Tears ....... ae sciovien me dato eseaies owomenh siaceeaseenvonss &b anes Ol 
Works in the Press and New Publications seeeeee 95; 201, 319, 429, 545, 654 
Winter Cruise, the)... scapes ss oe 00. squnyhenitden voneccp teen nh = pean 
Welsh Jurisprudence CP COCO Sree CO000 00 010 C000 08 voce 00 On SUV UROEE SOY O ES oo He FEBS CSN SEESD 469° 


+4 


INDEX TO WORKS REVIEWED. 


Page Page 

Americas or a General Survey of the Dialect of Craven, by a Native...... 300 
Political Situation of the several Ebers’ Seven Years of the Opera.... 414 
Powers of the Western Continent, Evans’ Designs of Russia .......... 410 


&c., by a Citizen of the United 
SLENYES ees SRE RR = 5. Seip Binisiaiea oft 
Anglo-Irish, (the) ....... Se a.e eel 
Anniversary... 
Arundell’s Visit to the Seven Churches 
CASI Ay OLanin mn «Kinin disse elena) « 


ee ey 


Barker’s Parriana ......... 
Beauties of Don Juan..... 
Blanchard’s Lyric Offerings ........ 
Boy’s Own Book 
Brand’s Journal of a Voyage to Peru, 


eter eee 


BER a tows ie 

> _Burton’ s Diary 
» Brunton’s Compendium of Nediahtin 
“Cambrian Tourist 
Castle’s Manual of Surgery ........ 
% ~Cawdor’s (Earl) Letter to Lord Lynd- 
hurst, on the Administration of 

_ Justice in Wales....... Srarefatars as 
Clarendon Correspondence.......... 
Croppy, by the O’Hara Family...... 
Cuyier’s (Baron) Animal Kingdom, 
arranged, in conformity with its 
Organization, by Edward Griffith, 

:y ¥.1,S., and Others....5 ..-. 
 Davy’s (Sir Humphry) Salmonia, or 
_ the Days of Fly-Fishing .......... 
Derwent Conway’s Solitary Walks 
* through many Lands ... 
_DIsracli’s Commentaries on the Life 
and Reign of Charles the First .... 


ee 


528 
637 
536 


73 
287 


. 307 


418 
195 


412 
Ae af 
532 
304 
418 


469 
411 


74 


521 
298 
199 


190 


Farewell to Time, &c., by the Author 
of the Morning and Evening Sacri- 


"TS Ae nels vomre e eee 310 
Fellowes’ Historical Sketches of Chas. I. 522 
Forget-me-not......... sve ielenlalow +. 533 
Friendship’s Offering .............. 534 
Geena: Sis Bes erarn Visigate tstele cielo nai ioe ib. 


Gomez Arias, or the Moors of the Al- 


pajarras, by Don Telesporo de 

Truebo y Cosio ........ SR cr 198 
Gorton’s General Biographical Dic- 

TIDTIBIW 2 x) ferns - bib pMaaTaw an ala PERN 197 


Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine 200 
Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh 391 
Grimshawe’s. Life of Leigh Richmond 526 
Hankin’s Account of the Public Cha- 
rities of the Town of Bedford .... 
Heber’s (Bishop) Journey through the 
Upper Provinces of India, from Cal- 
cutta to Bombay.iis.as isi es eens DED 
Henry’s Institutes of the Laws of Hol- 
land, translated from Johannes Van 


308 


eLsPADEeN) a. aia; c -'s'ss cele eee ae 
Holberg’s Subterraneous Travels of 
Niels Klim ......... veccnepwpee 290 


Italy as it is, or Three Years in Italy 302 
Johnstone’s Specimens of the Lyrical, 
Descriptive, and Narrative Poéts of 
Great Britain, from Chaucer to the 
present Day....... aid’y +e este gi 
Kinsey’s Portugal Tlustrated. 


306 
166 


eee 


‘ 
- 


- 


, ae 


¢ 

; fi { > 

= § UCU C 1949 = 

INDEX. i 

Page — awed age 

Kennedy and Granger’s Present State Railton’s newly-discovered Temple of 


of the Tenancy of Land.......... 637 
Kuzzilbash, a Tale of Korasan ...... 84 
Life and Remains of Wilmot Warwick 423 
Wiferin Wie 5s mtete ase <icietelsis cele = - 647 
Literary Souvenir ............ eee. 936 
Memoirs of General Miller, of the Pe- 

TUVIAU AS CIWACC as iois sisiajelee(aiseies oes 639 
Mémoires sur l’Impératrice Josephine 634 
Memorable Events in Paris in 1814, 

from the Journal ofa Détenu .... 195 
Military Reflections on Turkey!...... 415 
-Montgomery’s Omnipresence of the 

DEY: no te aiee oles ert a ees aly 
Montgomery’s Puffiad........ Mietee ists 418 


Napier’s History of the War in the Pe- 
ninsula, and in the South of France 185 
Nares’ Life and Administration of Lord » 
Burghley......--..sse eeeeeeee 930 
New Year’s Gift, and Juvenile Souvenir 535 
Nicholls’ Illustrations of the Literature 
of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. V. 304 
Notions of the Amcricans, picked up 
by a Travelling Bachelor ...... Pig til 
Pettman’s Essay on Political Economy 525 
Portrait of the Right Hon. Mary Eli- 
zabeth, Baroness de Clifford, in the 
Series of Portraits of Illustrious Fe- 
males, and Nobility of Great Britain 
Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentle- 
SIAN thle ie ore ole ets e018 BL ae re 


536 


186 
Pringle’s Ephemerides, or Occasional 
Poor Laws in Ireland, or Finance and 

Currency for the Year 1828 
‘Rector of Overton ..... 


295 
429 


oe 


‘Pew 


Cadachio, in the Island of Corfu. . 
Ramble among the Musicians of Ger- 
many, by a Musical Professor..... 
Raper’s (Admiral) New System of Sig- 

nals, by which Colours may be wholly 
dispensed with, &¢...,......++ ++» 644 
Religious Discourses, by a Layman .. 201 
Rickard’s India; or, Facts to illus- 
trate the Character and Condition of ~ 


the Natives..... stata heb eae . ae 
Rennie’s Poems). 2 = 2 = eosin eer 195 | 
Richardson’s Sonnets .... 2. .seee- 195 


Salmon’s Strictures of the Rectum.... 422 
Scott’s History of the Church of Christ 78 
Smith’s Nollekens and his Times .... 642 
Smith’s Sketch of the Present State of 

the Island of Sardinia......... ate 
Stewart’s Compendium of Modern 

Geography, for Schools .......-.. 308 


86 


Strangford’s (Lord) and Colonel Na- 
pier’s Pamphlets............ . 409 
Tales of the Great St. Bernard ...... 633 
Tales of. the West, by the Author of 
Travels in.the Hast........0.0..06- 80 
Teeling’s Personal Narrative of the 
Trish Rebellion of 1798 ........ -- 188 
"Tao: Wears in. Ava. «(1c = re-asomteielets tee - 193 
Thomas’s Treatise on Universal Juris- 
pradesh i 2 wie SPS .. 419 
Uwins on Indigestion............ -- 3 
© Valpy’s Etymological Dictionary of the 
Latin Language........ eae she Ste : 308% 


Wickham and Cramer’s Hannibal’s 


Passage over the Alps..+c+e+ee+.. 424, 


‘Wainter’s Wreath: « .. snstereteceh ations - = 532 


« 


192, 


EMINENT AND REMARKABLE PERSONS, 


Whose Deaths ave recorded in this Volume. 


Rt. Hon. D. Browne, . Rev. W. Coxe, 211 Peter Moore,Esq. 99 Charles MannersSut- 
: 549 Hon.Mis.Damer214 Lord Mount Sand- ton, Archbishop of 
Duke of San Carlos, M. Van Dyk, 549 ford, 209 Canterbury, 208 
434 M. Ersch, 437 Lord Oriel, 549 Sir T. B. Thompson, 
M. Charles, 435 Lord Forester $525 Baron Ramond, 212 551 
M. Choris, 324 Dr. Gall, 432 Duc de Riviére, 101 Miss Tomline, 322 — 
Capt.Clapperton, 323 M. Gallois 430 Mr. Scott, © 100 Sir H. Torrens, 433 — 
Goy. Clinton, 550 M. Hoffman, 101 Comte de Seze 439 St. George Tucker, 
Sir W. Congreve, Bt. Marshall Comte de Dugald Stewart, Esq. Esq.) _ 
“i : 209 Lauriston, 210 210 Sir Ralph 
Bart., 


. ; ‘ 


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PVM ROME SS Malate hd, (A 1) vay 
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IBN Reet Rh te tie 1 Pr Ge) 
PE MMA Me Va 32. 
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BAP cae ted G Bhs) ATL) i hy 
SAN ee Vhs bits yt a 4 ny Ay an vs) . ? yi 
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